About a year ago I purchased a used 330i with the ZHP option. With that option, the steering wheel is wrapped in Alcantara (basically a suede) material. The previous owner failed to maintain the wheel and by the time I purchased the car with 60k miles the wheel was quite caked with dirt, oil and grime. With the sensitiviy of Alcantara, I've so far treaded lightly on attempting to remove the dirt and grime. I began with using a leather brush to agitate the surface and remove the loose dirt. I was amazed with the amount of "dust" that this caused to come off the wheel. Once agitated, I wiped the wheel with a damp MF cloth. The MF became quite dirty with minimal effort... However, I was left with the still heavily matted areas where the majority of the dirt/grime had accumulated. I recently purchased some Leather Masters Foam cleaner as it seems to be highly touted on various forums. I used it last night in accordance to the directions with minimal results. I think a damp MF cloth would have pulled just as much dirt. So far am less than impressed with the LM Foam product. Am curious if anyone here might have further recommendations on how to use the foam or if anyone has successfully cleaned Alcantara?
Try this site for the proper instructions on cleaning and maintaining Alcantara. It seems as if you should only use alcohol or water to clean stains. Maintenance - Alcantara
Alcantara is a fabric and not suede which is leather. Follow the link above. I would go easy with the brush as it could damage the fabric (this would be OK on suede but not on alcantara)
