Alcantara fabric will last years when minimal care is taken to keep it clean. One of the most important things to keep fabric fresh and looking good is to drive with clean hands. I have had a Alcantara steering wheel in my car for over 3 years and have only cleaned it one time. But always keeping your hands clean every time you drive is not always that simple. I have been asked many times as to how to care for and clean Alcantara so listed is a simple How To on cleaning the fabric.
Items Needed for Cleaning
- Mild dish soap
- Small fingernail brush or a tooth brush
- Microfiber cloth
1. If the wheel is matted down in areas due to oils and dirt from hands, you will need to remove this first before trying to clean the fabric.
2. What you will need to do is take the fingernail brush and press it lightly into the heavily affected areas and work the brush in small circles. You want to do one small spot without really moving the brush. This will raise the grain of the fabric and kick out a lot of dirt. Then pick up the brush, move to new spot and work in all the heavy areas. What you don’t want to do is press too hard or brush the fabric like brushing your hair etc.
3. Once heavy areas are clean, take a bucket of warm water and a very small amount of dish soap. (You don’t want it to be sudsy. You barely want to use any soap in this process.) Wet the microfiber cloth and wring it out until it is just barely damp.
4. Take the damp cloth and “drape” it over the top portion of wheel. Then grip the wheel/fabric lightly and give a gentle small twist. Continue this process for the whole wheel. (What you don’t want is for the wheel to get “wet.” You want it to be just barely damp when done.) Wait for wheel to dry. Then take the small brush and go around wheel pressing it into fabric making small circles again to ”fluff up” the fabric. Total time on cleaning the wheel should be less than 20 minutes. You should only need to do this process maybe once a year in normal driving conditions.
5. Enjoy the comfort of your clean Alcantara steering wheel.
Note: You can view, download or print the above information via an Adobe PDF File: Cleaning Alcantara Fabric
