Recolouring a Faded Fabric Top with Renovo

While I've cleaned and protected plenty of fabric tops on camera before, I've never gone so far as recolouring them. So stick around to see me cack-handedly attempt that, with a minimal amount of masking tape and a maximum amount of Renova Reviver. So, while you might recognise this unique-looking box to speed stuff from a previous video, I'd only managed to give its fabric top a quick maintenance wash in that. So, following a shout from the owner regarding its worn and faded finish, which was now letting down the look of the otherwise clean car, I thought I'd head back over 9 months on, this time with a triplet of soft top cleaning, recolouring and waterproofing products, which if I've used before, was way back in my off-camera sponge jockey days, to see what, if anything, could be done with it. With the top being covered in loads of unsightly lint, the pre-rinse that Renova recommends to not only remove loose dirt, but also help their dedicated cleaner more evenly disperse and penetrate, would hopefully take care of some of that. So, use the old Cranzl at a safe reduced pressure to initially spray things down, but if you don't have an adjustable washer or are just reluctant to use one on a fabric top, then a hose pipe can just as easily be used for pre- and post-clean rinsing instead. While this fabric top looked to be more washed out than deeply ingrained with dirt, it was still important to thoroughly clean its fibres to give the Reviva product the best shot at adhering. So, after decanting probably half of the 1 litre bottle's worth of ultimate soft top cleaner into a plassy receptacle, as it's designed to be brushed over the surface rather than sprayed, which, being a dab hand with the bristles suited me, got to work doing just that, swiftly moving from the centre of the top out to the edges of it. Brushing a product directly onto the surface like this is, in my opinion, preferable to spraying it over, especially when working outside, but if you're slopping it on as I was here, you'll still likely get some splatter on the surrounding non-fabric parts. But this product didn't really strike me as being particularly potent, plus, while it soaked, which Renova recommends, I would be going on to contact wash the car to ensure the body didn't subsequently let the side down, so wasn't too concerned with a bit of water-based cross-contamination so long as all parts of the top are being adequately covered with the cleaner. While I probably could have got away with just soaking and rinsing this particular top, it's still good practice to thoroughly agitate the tightly woven fibres over to help tease out any ingrained grime, so went ahead and did that with a trusty plastic bristled Viken upholstery brush, which served to confirm my suspicions that it was pretty clean to begin with, there's no grotty green thumbnail where the froth was created. But generally speaking, when a fabric top is in need of recolouring, we'll also likely be in need of a deep clean, so you should always aim to spend at least a few methodical minutes mechanically agitating your cleaner like this, just to ensure that the material underneath is left as clean as it possibly can be. I could have just rinsed the cleaner right off here, but because Renovo states that it can be left to soak for up to 60 minutes so long as it remains wet, with the conditions being cold and mostly shady here, thought I'd leave it in situ for the 20 minutes or so that it'd take me to contact wash the body of the car, as although that wasn't particularly dirty either, you can't respectably clean and rejuvenate one part of a car on camera and pay no attention to the rest of it, so worked my way around its buggy body with a shampoo saturated microfibre wash mitt to ensure all of the panels that essentially contained the roof were free from light dirt and potentially streaky soft top splatter. Before then going on to rinse everything off, starting with the fabric top itself, which had now had more than enough time to soak in cleaner, rinsing it over at low pressure multiple times until no product could be visibly seen, as chemical residue left in the fibres could jeopardise the longevity of the Reviver just as much as unseen dirt could. Finishing up with the body at slightly higher pressure but still nothing too aggressive as this is a bit of a custom Frankenstein fabrication of a car, to ensure that was similarly free from any freshly dislodged dirt and soft top splatter and ready for a thorough contactless blow dry. My big brawl blow dryer was then used in single turbine mode to first dry the damp top off as I didn't want to add any more work to the impending delinting session by drawing a towel over it. But so long as you don't blast things too violently this can be a great way to quickly dry taut material like this, so spent some time getting the flick on to ensure the majority of the rinse water was driven out of the box to roof's fibres. And while I had the blower to hand it made sense to thoroughly dry the body off with it too, this time in twin turbine fashion as while the car wasn't super slick and hydrophobic which is really what you want for effective contactless blow drying was still just about repellent enough for it to work. But with this video being more about the revival of the fabric top won't bore you with too much extended footage of that. So while a dedicated clean had washed away some of the unsightly lint from the fabric there was still a fair bit of it entwined in the fibres and because simply painting a pigmented reviver product over it in half-arsed fashion wasn't an option as it's essentially a form of contamination had to commit to removing it so both vacuumed and hand taped the top off which does work but can take some time so don't expect to be fully delinted in a flash. Now in an ideal fabric top revival world you'd then go on to fully mask up and cover every non-fabric part of the car to prevent contaminating it with any stubborn black splatter but rarely is it ideal hence why I was working outside in the cold with a cold for free so just ran a bit of thin masking tape which is all I had to hand as because I aim to get jobs done in a single sitting don't really have time for fully masking up. Along the top part of the windscreen and the edge of the rear one but I would also have a few towels, an all-purpose cleaner and a panel prep type product to hand for if things got a bit messy but feel free to spend some time tapering up your own car to whatever sticky standard you see fit. It was then finally time to get on with the reviving so went ahead and decanted some of the black renovo stuff into the freshly swished out receptacle before dunking in a fresh brush to get it applied. Now aside from avoiding direct sunlight and trying to keep things as neat and tidy as possible maintaining a nice even application should be your main focus which as far as I could tell here can be achieved with either a front to back or side to side approach but either way I'd recommend an initial test section to allow yourself to get a feel for the watery pigmented product before committing to going full steam ahead with it. When it came to the edges I took advantage of the previously applied masking tape and worked the bristles right up to and even over it to ensure that there wouldn't be any narrow strips of untreated fabric then around the sides which I'd intentionally left unmasked teased the reviver primed bristles in behind the bits of trim there as it wasn't completely tight to the top and so made use of that fat to achieve a nice fully tucked finish. While the first coat had looked quite transformative when wet and so got me fired up for how easy it was going to be to renew things once it had dried out a bit was clear the faded fabric was thirsty for more but Renovo do recommend applying at least two coats which could technically mean far more than that so took their advice and committed to slapping on a second in similar fashion while I was in the zone. So after a couple of coats of reviver the top definitely looked darker and more replenished but upon closer inspection had also served to inadvertently accentuate what looked like previously inflicted close quarter pressure washer swashes and squiggles which had irreversibly messed with the mojo of the fabric. While that wasn't really the Renovo's fault just hoped that a few additional treatments in opposing directions would help mask that to an acceptable standard so went ahead and quickly applied and reapplied what remained of the reviver keeping my fingers and toes crossed that once dry things wouldn't look quite so pressure wash patchwork quilt like. Now although I could have cheated for the sake of a successful looking video and grabbed some after shots while the fourth and final coat of reviver was still damp that'd be doing you dirty so hit it with the hairdryer fur and squaring gave it some additional time to dry naturally while I tidied up off camera and while I did have a bit of the product left over thought if four generous coats didn't completely sort things out then five probably wouldn't either as you're into the law of diminishing returns territory at that point so committed to calling it a day for the recolouring there by removing the masking tape and thoroughly wiping the surrounding glass paintwork and trim down with a panel prep prime general purpose towel to eliminate any light spots of black tinted splatter which on a fairly well-kept car sporting a bit of superficial protection shouldn't be too much trouble and while as I said earlier you could avoid having to do this by thoroughly covering the exterior this is just the way I chose to go with the flow here while going on to subsequently protect the freshly recoloured top with renovo's reproofer product might have added something extra to the finish that requires 24 hours of reviver cure time unless I was to camp out in the garage overnight unfortunately wasn't going to happen here but it's not absolutely essential as the reviver won't wash out if it isn't subsequently proofed it just helps to guarantee longevity and likely make things a tad easier to keep clean going forward so of course apply it if you can but no biggie if you can't so while I think reviver coats number three and four did make a difference the fabric top still didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped at least not in the flesh anyway as I could still from certain angles discern the marks shown earlier but maybe that's just me being fussy or overestimating the product's capabilities still it's content the car and the top in general were looking better overall for my five-hour faff and it's another product type that I can tick off trying on camera now I'd be interested to hear of your renovo based trials and tribulations so feel free to drop them in the comments but for me here it was time to head home via the Harry Potter tunnel to scrub my mitts and warm my cockles so I'll leave you with a list of links to everything used in the description below and will hopefully return sooner rather than later with a Pininfarina inspired headlight and rear cluster restoration