Refinishing passenger airbag cover

Wondering if anyone has any tips for refinishing the passenger airbag cover. Mine is smokestone (light grey) but the colour coat is wearing thin so the black plastic underneath is showing through in places.

I've seen leather dye in this colour and wondered whether that would be suitable, or whether I should be looking to try and get a spray paint (presumably Matt / satin) mixed up to match?

I found the thread below, which mentions using the leather dye on the instrument cluster binnacle, so it sounds like it does work okay on hard plastic parts. I'm going to attempt to use the same on my airbag blank, and will post an update here with the outcome once I've tried it.

https://www.the-t-bar.com/forum/9-mgf-tf-pitstop/98731-trim-paint-smokestone

One thing you might consider & it would take any uncertainty out of your plan & that is to search out a new old stock airbag. These were available if eBay for less than twenty pounds & for an additional amount, (the happy side of £30) you could find a dual controller & have a functional dual airbag system. EBay again
All the infrastructure is there & as it is, to all intents & purposes a stand alone system, it is virtually a “plug & play” system.
It was often said, in the olden days, that the passenger bag was of limited value, my comment would be; if it helps in any small way, surely that has to be better than no help at all.
Having been given a small mountain of duff gen some years ago & after several false starts, I fitted the correct controller & bag for subsequent faultless results.
M

The Smokestone trim paint I bought was from someone with the email address  [email protected]

Airportable wrote:

One thing you might consider & it would take any uncertainty out of your plan & that is to search out a new old stock airbag. These were available if eBay for less than twenty pounds & for an additional amount, (the happy side of £30) you could find a dual controller & have a functional dual airbag system. EBay again
 

The difficulty seems to be finding airbag modules, or blanks, in smokestone grey.

I have managed to source a smokestone blank which is in better condition than mine, but still far from perfect, so I'm going to try dyeing my original one, and if that doesn't go well, I have a reasonble one to fall back on.

Airportable wrote:

It was often said, in the olden days, that the passenger bag was of limited value, my comment would be; if it helps in any small way, surely that has to be better than no help at all.


 

I'd much rather be sat too far away from an airbag for it to have any useful benefit, than sat too close. 

Because my wife is only 4'8" she always drove with her seat set all the way forward and as high as possible - last year she had a relatively low speed frontal collision (less than 25mph) which triggered the steering wheel airbag, and the steering column airbag in her smart car. The car had very minor damage (basically just a broken headlight and some cracks to the front bumper) but she took the full exposive force of the airbag deployment. She ended up in intensive care with 11 broken ribs, a shattered femur, and acute kidney injury and spent over 2 months in hospital. 12 months later and she is still learning to walk again, but given at one point they were talking about possibly having to amputate her leg, she was lucky that they managed to piece everything back together reasonably successfully.

Apparently this is not an uncommon issue when it comes to airbag deployment and short drivers. I'm 6'3" so not likely to experience the same issues in a crash, but it has certainly made me more conscious of the potential risks, and more diligent in taking the necessary precautions when working on or around airbags!

Wow!
That's horrendous.
I hope she eventually makes a full recovery but she was actually badly hurt.

My Vito van is on a recall for the steering wheel airbag. They are waiting for the parts. Apparently if it goes off it can just explode!!

Yes I'm bored!

If the adds were to be believed (and who would believe anything an advertising agency said) the slow mo images of air bags going off look live big comfy pillows you could sleep on..... quite contrary of the fact of the extremely violent reality of airbag deployment!
Nasty bastards of things! Though in a serious pile up you may be glad of it's presence!
There are 2 different standards for air bags that I'm aware of, those for the US market are much bigger that those for use in the rest of the world, as the US is the land of the free range idiot and they don't have to compulsory wear seat belts, and then there are those intended for use in the civilised world, these are for use with seatbelts, and these have less inflated volume as they're intended a to compliment seat belts not replace them!
I lot of cars in the normal parts of the world, will have the larger US market airbags by default as they're also sold in the US.
The US airbags are much worse than the others. As the F/TF wasn't sold in the US they're probably not to the US standard so not as violent as some others........still I wouldn't want to be close to one deploying!

I've seen footage of a practical joke where a stack of tyres had one inside the top tyre an a board across the top to make a seat There must've been another board under the top tyre to concentrate the force upwards, anyhow an unsuspecting victim sat on the board and the airbag was activated, probably controlled by a remote switch......the poor bastard was launched in to the air! 
I have a few old airbags lying about........anyone want an improvised seat in my shed? 

Also It's important not to stick things to the airbag cover like extra badges or nonsense like satnavs, mobile phone mounts, air fresheners etc. to or between the airbag cover and the passenger as the extraneous item may end up launched into the unwitting passengers face!
I there is an OEM badge fitted by the manufacturer, as is the case of many F and TF steering wheel mounted airbags, then one would like to think that they accounted for this when they designed it.
 

Good to see you posting Cobber..love the anecdotes!
Your point about satnav and phones is very well made.
I wouldn't want to wear one between my ears.