quality of the plastics and their substitution
 

I'm new of this forum, but I like to share my point of view with you.

on my x-type 2.2 of 2006, I can see a lot of little details that are bourdering me, for example the chrome inserts of the bumper are slightly deformed, with the ends sligthly coming out of the bumper, also the chrome is bubbling.

The gear knob is consumed, and so is the paint of the steering wheel came off.

I think that this car is aging very bad. I'm wondering if also the engine components and electric parts have the same lousy quality.
I'd like to ask if is it easy to substitute the rear inserts of the bumper or does it need to take the bumper off?
also, In order to substitute the knob can I just screw it?
best regards,
Adriano


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...c5200cf733.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...158e88969b.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...b39877f62b.jpg

The wrap on the wheel is leather. I bought some dye and fixed mine about a year ago, but it’s looking bad again. I suffer from hyper hidrosis so that probably why

The knobs are easily available on eBay, wood or leather from 50-100 bucks.

To me, what I see in the pictures is more related to the person who drove it daily more than the quality of the materials. Could be things like a certain type of hand lotion used or a type of cleaner or dressing used that did not play well with the materials. Or like Spike mentioned, just sweat from your hands over a long period of time.The climate could play a role as well. You also have a 13 year old car. Unless the car was hardly ever driven I would expect to see some level of wear.

Have you owned the car from new or did you just buy it recently? It looks like there is some glue that oozed out of where the wood in the steering where it met up to the leather part. That looks like it might have been taken apart at one time.

Because of how close the bumper picture is I can't really see what is going on there, but I can't say I have seen posts in the past about the chrome bumper inserts coming loose or bubbling.

I just dug up some of the color I bought to dye the steering wheel. It’s mocha

Looks to me why the "ends are coming out" is from an impact changing the shape of the strip. Notice the impact paint breaks on the top of the painted bumper. Of course an impact in the body of the strip will tend to move the ends "outward".

Chrome bubbling is usually from underlying rust (I.e. lots of posts on the window sills on cars).

https://itstillruns.com/repair-damag...-12132600.html

I agree with Alpha on the wheel wear. Mine is 13 years old and 143,000+ miles and is still perfect. My shifter knob is a bit different, being a solid wood one. Still very nice with a nearly invisible hairline crack under the varnish coat (I assume from expansion/contraction in a hot car). A little bit of normal bolster bottom seat wear from entrance/exit but nothing significant yet.

If you want to redo the steering wheel leather, a Google search will give you places to buy the dye and finisher. The other option is re-wrapping those small leather parts with new material. Not very hard at all. Chris Fix has a video re-doing an entire wheel on a car and even a full wrap was not very hard.

There was a post on the bumper chrome inserts on this site recently. The bumper has to come off to replace them, but not too hard a job.

I add two other parts that are deteriorating
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...b5bf03ac42.jpg
I don't know how this seal is called and where to order online.

Check SNG Barrett, a forum sponser