Adventures with interior detailing (lots of pics!)

(After re-reading my story, sorry if it sounds like an ad. I’m not a product shill, but just a guy who was happy with the results of a few products I used.)

Over the long memorial day weekend I took the opportunity to address something that has bothered me for some time. From the outside, my 360 has always looked great, but the interior of my car showed the signs of fairly heavy use and a lack of detailed cleaning by previous owners. The pours of the tan trim leather were dirty, the aluminum trim had a few greasy handy prints, the carpets haggard, and the worse part….. the seats looked flat-out old and dirty.

I’m probably making this sound worse that it really was, but it was just one of those things that only the owner himself would ever really notice, and it got the better of me.

Since we are not experiencing “full-time driving weather” as of yet, it wasn’t a problem having it out of commission for several days. I started with pulling the seats out of the car so I could apply a full course of Leatherique treatment. If you have never done this, I’ll just add that seat removal is easy (although power Daytonas can be rather cumbersome to lug around) and that even though the Leatherique process takes some time and energy, the results were VERY good!

I did two full Leatherique applications; the first was to simply apply the oil, let sit overnight, and then cleaned the next day. After this first “quick” application I started seeing results so it encouraged me to whip out the big guns and do a full 48 hours sitting with the oil, in 90 degrees, with plastic wrap cover the oil-applied areas. After this I cleaned them thoroughly and was very happy that I took years of use off of the seats.

Seats before; the leather fairly dried out allowed creases and wrinkles, which then allowed lots of dirt to set –
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Seats soaking –
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Seats after –
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While the seats were soaking I turned my attention to the dash and door panels. As I did on the seats, I applied a nice coating of the Rejuvenating Oil product and covered them with plastic.
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While the various items sat under wraps, I next focused on all that leather trimmed out on the inside of the car. Had a few greasy finger prints and generally it was dirty in places. While it probably wasn’t the best for my leather, I found that a general-purpose household cleaner did a great job removing the dirt. This left the leather somewhat dry feeling but I had planned to finish it all off with a conditioner anyway.
Since I didn’t have enough the Leatherique Rejuvenating Oil stuff left to do the entire inside, I tried what some others say is good: Lexol. This was MUCH easier to use, too…. pretty much just shot some onto a rag, wiped it down, let it set for a few, then wiped it mostly dry.

While the results are a little tough to see in the shots, it turned out nice and clean with a nice glow (but not cheap “Armor-All shiny”) throughout the cabin.
Before (notice the surface dirt) –
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After –
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Next it was the lower half of the car’s turn. I noticed that the dealer prep on this car, when it was new, must have been pretty minimal. They had left lots of shipping plastic over the carpets throughout (many spots were plainly visible) so I spent some time and picked off all of this wrap off. I found no less than 10 individual locations in the cabin that they must have pulled this shipping plastic off, and where it tore they simply left it. Pretty unimpressive.

One example of the plastic wrap, between seat mounts –
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After the plastic was removed I snooped into my wife’s cleaning supplies and found something called a “magic eraser”. These are a type of sponge cleaner that you get slightly wet and scrub away. Gave it a try to the aluminum trim and they turned out great! Followed this up with some more general-purpose cleaner and Lexol to the e-brake boot and center console coin tray.

Carpet plastic removed and the center console looking like it just came from the factory –
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Since the seats were out, I also gave the carpet a quick steam clean. No pictures, but the water pulled from the carpets looked like coffee! It probably could have used a second cleaning, but I was running out of steam by this time.


After this, I pulled off the plastic from the dash and door panels and gave them a cleaning. Based on this result, I think its much better to leave the Leatherique for seats where you can fully massage the oil in. The tight leather on the dash and door panels didn’t honestly look that much different. This the light tan on the panels, and lower half of the dash, showed lots of grit, I spent the effort to whip out the general purpose cleaner, tooth brush, and micro fiber towels and went to town. After clean up I Lexol’d the whole mess and they, too, look great.

Again, the pictures don’t do justice to the before/after, but here are the arm rests…
Before -
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After -
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Finally got the car reassembled and even gave the shift knob a nice polish. Pictures of the final product ….
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It’s amazing that when you focus on the small details like dirty, dulled light-colored leather and you clean/condition it all….. the end results are pretty dramatic when you put it all back together.

The heroes of the story (along with a toothbrush, steam cleaner, and about a million rags & towels) –
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The whole thing was a lot of work; almost as much as writing up my story. I’m glad I did it though and it just makes the car even nicer to me.
PHEW, I’m exhausted; time for a cold frosty one as I think I’ve earned it.

 

That looks great, awesome job. I did that on my E38 yesterday. The magic eraser did wonders for my grimey black steering wheel! The eraser was completely black by the time I was done, and it was the extra strength one!

 

Truly impressive.

 

wow man night and day difference.. good work

 

wow.....

 

Great work and write up.

 

Very nicely done!

 

Great work. BIG difference, that baby looks great now.

 

Nice work! Leatherique is the best.

And you're not alone on the shotty dealer prep. Unfortunately I've seen that plastic wrap on plenty of Fcars.

 

Well, after seeing that demonstration from Zippy, I ordered the 32oz kit from Leatherique. I cannot wait to see the results as My leather is in good condition but this product will bring out it's best I'm sure!

 

Nice work.........the change in leather is really impressive.

 

WOW!!!!! The change in seat appearance is truly impressive!!!!! Great job!

Thanks for the write up!

By the way, get a black interior next time and you won't even notice the dirt! LOL!


Robert

 

Haven't had alot of interiors in that looked like that. The change is AMAZING!!! Awsome job!!!

 

Wow! Great pix.. thanks for the detailed write up! Very helpful!

 

Yes, good move on the larger bottle. Mine pictured is the 16 oz size and even though I had enough for 2 rounds on both seats, I would have liked more left over (pictured is what is left over).
And the Pristine Clean stuff..... my jury is still out on that product. At first I wasn't even sure if it was going to remove the heavy sticky mess left over after the oil had time to do it's job. But, it did cut the grime pretty quickly though. Reminds me of Armor-All Low Luster stuff to be honest. If you plan on using the Pristine Clean, even if you only bought 16 oz of the oil, I would still buy the 32 oz of the cleaner since I found that I was using mine sparingly and wish I had more to clean the seats better.

 

Great work

 

I use this on my leather and it is also fantastic. I'm not sure if it's available in the States though.

 

Amazing job, thanks for posting.

 

Great job, the seats looks almost new.

 

Looks like a LOT of work, but the results seem well worth the effort.

Thanks for the before/after shots.

Frank

 

wow, looks great , that's some dedication to take the seats out...

 

Excellent turn around.

Leatherique really is the best, the stuff is magical.

For everyone out there, a really good alternative to the all purpose cleaner that he used is a mixture of Woolite and water. Mix 6 parts of water to 1 part of woolite. It is a little bit more gentle and won't tend to strip as many oils from the leather as a generic all purpose cleaner can.

 

Great job !

You really did a beautiful job. I have been using leagtherique products for a long time and I agree they are the best. I havent used the plastic. How does the plastic work ? What type of plastic did you use ?

Regards,

Stew

 

Good work!

 

Read it off the web (as linked somewhere here on f-chat.... do a search on leatherique). From what I recall the article saying, the plastic forces the oil into the hide instead of allowing it to dry up. This is really intended more for the "leave it sitting on the seats for a few days in warm temps"-type of procedure.
I figured why not try it since the seats were already out and I was in no hurry. I feel this made a tremendous difference in the final results.

And what kind? Believe it or not, it's simply some generic food grade plastic cling wrap that you could liberate from your kitchen. Nothing fancy about it at all. You just want to make sure it will cling to the seats so the oil has nowhere to go but down into the pours of the leather. It's a seemingly silly step, but I really encourage you to go this extra (easy) mile.