Hi everybody,
I've been lurking on this forum for quite some time reading up and collecting info in preparation to buying a new SUV. My family is in the market for 2-3 year old 3-row SUV that we will keep for 5-10 years. Thinking about CX-9 (among couple of others). I like Signature brown seats and black headliner. Wife is OK (not very excited) with the brown leather, but absolutely hates the wood trim (looks dated she says). I'm OK with the wood (don't love it, don't hate it), but for her it is almost a deal breaker, to the point that we are considering GT as well. I'm not excited at all about black GT interior (boring) and don't like light headliner. Price difference between used GT and used Signature is not huge (not 4K like on new car) so I'm still leaning towards Signature.
So what are my options in terms or wood trim "delete" and have anyone done it already. Things I've considered:
1) Wrap with vinyl. That's probably the simplest solution. Not sure how well it will go and how good of a coverage I can get without disassembly. I'm fairly experienced with vinyl wraps, but every car/project is different.
2) Same wrap option but taking it step further. To get a good wrap around the edges, I probably would have to do some disassembly of the door panels and center console to remove the wood or get better access to the edges. Wondering how difficult is that?
3) Since I'm looking at disassembly, my next option is switching wood with plastic trim of lower models. Is it possible to buy just the trim pieces to replace wood? It would be the best option, if I can obtain these pieces and if replacement process is not too complicated.
4) Simple, but not reversible solution is using a gel stain to get wood to black color. I have worked with gel stain and know that I can get a pretty good looking and durable results without any disassembly. With this method work will be fast, but the obvious downside is that areas of wood that are not exposed will not be stained without disassembly (I will know about it and it might bug me . Another downside is that it is not reversible. I'm pretty sure I won't be going this route and rather stick with vinyl.
I've been lurking on this forum for quite some time reading up and collecting info in preparation to buying a new SUV. My family is in the market for 2-3 year old 3-row SUV that we will keep for 5-10 years. Thinking about CX-9 (among couple of others). I like Signature brown seats and black headliner. Wife is OK (not very excited) with the brown leather, but absolutely hates the wood trim (looks dated she says). I'm OK with the wood (don't love it, don't hate it), but for her it is almost a deal breaker, to the point that we are considering GT as well. I'm not excited at all about black GT interior (boring) and don't like light headliner. Price difference between used GT and used Signature is not huge (not 4K like on new car) so I'm still leaning towards Signature.
So what are my options in terms or wood trim "delete" and have anyone done it already. Things I've considered:
1) Wrap with vinyl. That's probably the simplest solution. Not sure how well it will go and how good of a coverage I can get without disassembly. I'm fairly experienced with vinyl wraps, but every car/project is different.
2) Same wrap option but taking it step further. To get a good wrap around the edges, I probably would have to do some disassembly of the door panels and center console to remove the wood or get better access to the edges. Wondering how difficult is that?
3) Since I'm looking at disassembly, my next option is switching wood with plastic trim of lower models. Is it possible to buy just the trim pieces to replace wood? It would be the best option, if I can obtain these pieces and if replacement process is not too complicated.
4) Simple, but not reversible solution is using a gel stain to get wood to black color. I have worked with gel stain and know that I can get a pretty good looking and durable results without any disassembly. With this method work will be fast, but the obvious downside is that areas of wood that are not exposed will not be stained without disassembly (I will know about it and it might bug me . Another downside is that it is not reversible. I'm pretty sure I won't be going this route and rather stick with vinyl.