The dashboard is the surface in the cabin that the sun shines on longest, and after a few years it shows. The colour is faded, the surface holds the dust you wiped yesterday, and in sharp light a fine web of hairline cracks appears on it. Wiping with a cloth lasts about a day; pump sprays add a shine on top of that, which looks foreign on a matte trim.
Ceramic protection for interior plastics (FEYNLAB Plastic V2)
A faded dashboard, microcracks and dust that holds in the surface. Ceramic coating for interior plastics at SEVEN Works in Ústí nad Labem.
What is happening to it
Plastic in the cabin ages along two paths at once. Ultraviolet light breaks down the surface layer of the material, which loses its flexibility and cracks into microfissures, where dust and grease from hands hold on more firmly than on a smooth surface. The second path is absorbency: unprotected plastic has nothing to repel water and dirt with, so they settle into the surface and you have to get them out of there again with every cleaning.
Products that give the surface an optical shine do not stop this development — they only cover it for a while with a film, after which a matte dashboard stops looking like a matte dashboard. Ceramic coatings work the other way round: they act as a sacrificial layer that wears instead of the surface itself, extends maintenance intervals and keeps small damage from adding up into a state that ordinary care no longer puts right.
What we do about it
FEYNLAB® Plastic V2 is a ceramic coating for interior plastics — the dashboard, door panels and centre console, matte and gloss alike. It turns them into a hydrophobic surface: water and dirt run off instead of soaking in, and the material is covered against UV degradation and microcracking. It adds no silicone shine, so a matte surface stays matte and a gloss trim stays gloss — the look of the interior does not change after treatment, what changes is what acts on it. According to the manufacturer the layer lasts twelve months. The material calls for a steady temperature and ventilation during application.
Where it has its limits
The coating protects, but it does not clean: it cannot be applied to a surface with ingrained dirt, stains or odour, and the order of work is the other way round — depending on the state of the interior, first Detailed interior cleaning, Deep interior cleaning or Extreme interior cleaning, and protection only after that. It belongs on plastic, not on every surface in the cabin: leather and textile have their own coating in the range, it is not applied to alcantara, and a different product is intended for exterior black plastic. On trim with polyester fibre fill, the manufacturer prescribes a test in a hidden spot. And twelve months is a shorter life than the interior coatings for leather and for textile have — count on the plastics being renewed sooner than the rest of the cabin.