Does anyone know if the interior door panels and quarter panels are all leather or combination of leather and vinyl. Based on what 850's cost new, I think it should be 100% leather.
I wouldn't know definitively, but the realoem.com descriptions sound like they were either leather or cloth. http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do?model=EG23&mospid=47335&btnr=51_2013&hg=51&fg=50 If you run your vin in a vin decoder, might be a mention there - http://www.bmwarchive.org/vin/bmw-vin-decoder.html
It just says black leather with the vin decoder. It's just that, if all the surfaces on door and quarter panels are leather, they did some weird things to it to make it do what it's doing. Well I'm going to go with leather. Thanks Have a new thing I'm dealing with, but I'm going to save it for another thread.
Using one of the pics from the ebay listing, I'd say it's probably like this - The E34's then (& others since) had problems with the vinyl on the doors, and other interior panels. They used a molded board material (kinda like a really dense sturdy cardboard) and the vinyl door coverings were adhered to it with a latex-based adhesive. Over time, the latex would deteriorate, plus age/temps would have the vinyl shrinking, and the vinyl trim would come loose off the base trim card. Re-gluing attempts only stand a chance of success if all the old adhesive is removed from the back of the vinyl, and even at that, it's a challenge to get the shrunk vinyl reattached as securely/strongly as it was originally. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if 8's might suffer the same issues - the door panels in the one above look good in that regard.
So, i tried a leather treatment on the whole quarter panel, found out it's not all leather. There is a section in the middle that is leather, kinda like the picture that is leather, but the rest is vinyl. Oh well...
