And so it Begins - Leather Restoration

I've decided to start the interior Leather Restoration.

My leather is in poor shape, and in need of restoration. The leather has faded, there are some cracks, and one very small hole. In addition, it just looks dirty.

I've ordered the Leatherique stuff, and am having them color match the original leather - from a small patch I cut off from under the passenger seat. It's amazing how the leather has changed from the original color and suppleness (is that a word?).

I tend to take longer on projects, especially major projects like this. I travel extensively for work, and can only grab a few hours on weekends to work.

Anyway, here goes, I'll keep this thread updated as I progress.

Any suggestions and/or comments would be greatly welcome.

I'll start with some pics of the interior teardown. I'm about 60% into the teardown today. Rear Seats, rear console, and side panels are out. In the front, only the passenger seat is out. I still have the door panels, dash panels, center console and drivers seat to remove. I'm targetting this weekend to have the remainder out.

Here goes:
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Notice how the color and texture have changed!

For those that are curious - that is a 1967 Karmann Ghia convertible that is in the pic - behind the extracted seats and panels.

Sid
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Your leather appears to be in good but soiled condition. I don't see the need for any significant leather repair. Your first step will be preparation. Have you decided whether you will strip the existing dye. You may want to use a good cleaner and then take some alcohol and treat an area as a test. That might set you up for a simple re-dye. I'm looking forward to your posts.

 

One very small hole, about the size of a cigarette, and a small rip - about 3 inches long.

Other than that, not too bad. Very discolored and soiled. However, the leather is still a little bit soft. Not supple or good feeling. On the otherhand, it's not to the cardboard phase yet.

I'm going to strip the old lacquer dye first. Probably with lacquer thinner. Then use several applications of Leatherique Rejuvination Oil.

Have you seen this post on Leatherique's website? I'll basically be doing exactly what Mike did here: Ferrari Re-dye by Mike Charness | Leatherique Restoration Products

I'll take many pics and post. However, don't hold your breath for updates! I generally work slowly and methodically. And with work travel interfering (it's Q4 and I work for a software company), things will progress slowly.

sid

 

Sid,
Went through this summer what you are doing now. Not sure if you followed the thread and pictures of my restoration of my '86 interior. As I stated in the thread I spent 6+ weeks stripping the old dye using Laquer Thinner (be sure to wear THICK rubber gloves), as it plays hell on the fingers. I went so far on mine to using a toothbrush on every square inch of the tan leather. I wanted to get all the old dye and dirt out of the grain so it would pop. I then had a professional re-dye, it took them 2 full long days. Good Luck, Andy

 

A few thoughts. You will need to repair the hole and rip prior to re-dye obviously. The repairs are not as quick or easy as some would have you believe. The trick is to use the proper filler in thin layers and not over do it. And take your time. The thin layers give you more control and allow drying between layers. You will need to sand the area smooth using 1200 grit. Don't be afraid to first scrape away any char in the burn hole. When re-dying, you will want to hand apply the first coat of dye with a small sponge or cloth. Later coats are best sprayed on for even coverage. It may take several coats but the more coats the greater the loss of original grain. Have you thought about a finish clear coat? There are several ranging from mat to gloss. I've never seen a definitive word on the proper clear coat. I used a mixture of mat and gloss on mine. My final bit of advice is that every layer or coat needs to dry before applying the next. You can use a hair dryer to speed up this part of the process. Too much heat will, however, dry the leather.

 

To glue a piece of leather under the hole and the small tear. Maybe pull it up with a toothpick to hold it while the glue dries. Then fill it with the Leatherique crack filler.

As for a finish coat - have you done that? I've thought about it, but am worried that it will stiffen up the leather, or give it a vinyl type appearance/feel.

Sid

P.S - Keep the advice coming. While I've done a lot of car restoration - it's all been mechanical until now (with the exception of a convertible top). I'm approaching this with more than a little trepidation. I've told the wife (to prepare her) that worst case - since the leather is already "ruined", I can't harm it - and may possibly have to replace it!

 

Very nice Sid! Looking forward in your progress and the end result.

 

Great, can't wait to see progress pics!!!

 

You can use a piece of leather or even cheesecloth for the backing. The technique you outline should be fine. Use your filler in multiple thin layers and don't over do it. Like filling a ding with bondo, too much makes for a lot of unnecessary work. The top or "clear" coat is recommended. It is actually the wearing layer. Most often what appears to be damage to leather is limited to the clear coat. Often re-dying isn't needed if the clear coat is repairable. A few thin coats sprayed on should be sufficient. Too many coats can get you to the plastic-feel. From the photos you've posted your leather doesn't seem to be in bad shape and I think you will have some excellent results. Get your technique down in a less visible part of the leather.

 

Just out of curiosity, have you considered just giving the leather a good cleaning and then treating it with a strong conditioner? Outside of the hole and the tear that you mention, the leather doesn't look that bad from the pictures that you've posted. It just looks dirty and dry. I'm willing to bet that a light steam cleaning combined with a mild cleaner would work wonders on its appearance. Check out the Ammo NYC video on Youtube about leather cleaning.

I had planned to redye the seats in my 911, but a cleaning followed by a couple applications of a great conditioner made all the difference.

2cam

 

While it helps, it really doesn't change the hard texture, or the dirty look of the old/faded/cracked lacquer.

See my next post - Using lacquer thinner (YIKES!) really helped change the appearance and feeling of the leather.

Sid

 

The rest of the leather is out (mostly) - I've decided not to remove the dash panels. It looks rather difficult. So, I'll just mask the rest of the car and restore/re-dye those panels in place.

All seats are out, center console is out. No major surprises found there, other than finding it fairly easy to get the console out.

For the big update, I've started stripping the old lacquer finish off the leather. Started and finished the back seats, back console and back side panels.

I have to admit, applying that first rag, with the lacquer thinner, to the leather, was psychologically one of the most difficult things I've ever done to a car. It just seemed sooooo wrong. However, after a while, after seeing the results, I embraced the thinner. It really made a huge positive difference. The leather looked much cleaner - with most of the nasty, cracked, faded lacquer finish gone. The leather also felt much better - softer and more supple - which is weird as I expected the thinner to dry out the leather.

Here's some pics.

The first 2 pics just show the Leatherique products and the other supplies I used.

The next 2 show the back seat console (notice the contrast between the exposed leather, and the part that was hidden behind the seats).

Also, it's hard to see, but the last pic shows what the console looks like after using the thinner. It looks much better. What's really hard to see, is the lesson I learned on this piece (which was the first I cleaned). I found that if I tried to get all the color out, and kept running too long, I would accidentally create suede. I learned very fast when the appropriate time to quit was. More on that in the next post.

Oh, one other thing. I just notice the Lexol cleaner in the second pic. I thoroughly cleaned all the leather before starting the striping process. None of the instructions called for it, but I didn't want dirt, grime and other stuff mixing with the lacquer thinner and possibly being ground into the leather.
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Here's more pics from the first day of finish striping.

The first pic shows the 2 rear passenger consoles. One has been stripped, the other has not.

The second pic shows one of the rear seat bottoms. Half has been stripped, the other has not.

In both of these pics, you can see a big difference. I was hugely pleased with the results. Much better than I was expecting.

The third pic shows the results, on the cleaning rag, of the finish coming off. The rag on the right shows a dirty grey awful looking mess. This is what came off first. This was the nasty top layer of the old finish. The cleaning rag on the left shows a more orangish/saddle color. This is what came off the leather - after the nasty grey mess. When I started seeing this color on the cleaning rag, I knew that it was time to stop on this section and move on.

The last pic shows something that I perhaps shouldn't have done. However, I was excited to see what the new dye looked like. The instructions are to remove lacquer, apply several coats of Rejuvination Oil, Clean again, then dye.

However, I really wanted to see what the dye looked like, so we (my 27YO son) and I decided to try it out. WOW - what a difference. And this is only one light coat of the Leatherique Dye. And, the color matched perfectly the original Ferrari (VM 3218 Pella Beige) dye color. I can't wait until the entire interior is done.

Sid
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Really enjoying this thread as i will be carrying out a leather restoration to my Mondial soon ...
Question = once you have re dyed, what do you intend using for the top coat to protect the colour and for the dye to not mark clothes ..

 

I see you only show one quart can of Laquer Thinner, I ended up using 3 gallons on mine, yours must not be in very bad shape. It took over three days to just do EACH of my front seats to get all the layers of dye off.

 

I hope you are wearing a respirator with some good filter cartridges when you are using the laquer thinner!

That stuff can get you very high, very quickly without proper protection.

"Huffing" lacquer thinner was/is common in some areas as a cheap way to get high, and damage some brain cells in the process.

Nice work, BTW!
Alden

 

Finished off the first quart already, and haven't touched the front seats or door panels yet.

the back seats/console/panels were in fairly good shape. The front seats and door panels are in very poor shape. The dash panels, which I haven't pulled, are actually in fairly good shape, and I plan on refurbing those in the car.

The back seats were in good enough shape, that it didn't take long to get the nasty lacquer off, and to start causing damage to the leather. On my first piece - the center console, I kept going, in the assumption that there would eventually be no color at all on the rag, and ended up creating a small area of suede.

I plan to start on the front seats this weekend. I'm anticipating a couple of weeks work on the seats and door panels, between the de-lacquering, hole/tear fixing, and then 3 to 4 applications of the leatherique rejuvination oil.

More pics this weekend

Sid

 

It's really (almost) out in the open. Our weather in Dallas has been so nice that we've been working on the driveway, or just in the opening of the garage. We are being very careful about contact with both the lacquer thinner and the fumes. At my age (according to my wife), I don't have many brain cells left to lose or damage.

I'm only using a small amount of lacquer thinner at a time on the rag, and changing rags every few minutes. The used ones go into a plastic trash bag, that we keep sort of sealed. At the end of the day, the bag went straight to the city municipal waste transfer area.

My helper is my 27YO son, whom is a graduate of one of the automotive trade schools (Texas State Technical College). He studied both mechanical and body. He is very cautious about fumes and chemicals - to the point of requiring a mask and paint suit for the dye. Sometimes he's a pain-in-the-...., but having an expert on hand really, really helps! Plus, it's great when one of your kids shares your passion for cars!

Sid

 

Looks great Sid! I have never done leather repair or painting such. I will need to do my driver's seat as the last 20k miles does not go unnoticed. Keen in seeing more!

 

Most of the leather dyes are water based. As such, they don't present much of an environmental hazard. The removers are a different story.

 

Had to travel for work this past week, and mother nature interfered with my return.

I was in Vegas for the week, planning to return Friday. However, the rains/storms caused DFW to cancel all flights on Friday. Had to return, thru PHX, on Saturday afternoon.

Then, because I had tickets to a local live production of Rocky Horror, I didn't have time to get much done on Sat evening. And on Sunday, I was just wiped out.

Anyway, here's what I've accomoplished.

Stripped the finish from the front console and the console inserts. The area around the shift gate, the hazard switch and the warning console was filthy!!!

I also stripped one of the front seats. Just the one seat required a full quart of lacquer thinner all by itself.

Notice in one of the seat closeups, that I took the pick when I had only stripped half of the seat base. What a difference stripping the old, nasty lacquer makes. The seats are almost presentable!

Anyway, more to come, but probably not for a while. I mentioned in an earlier post that I work for a global software company, and it's Q4. Those of you in sales know what that means.

Enjoy. And feedback, suggestions, criticism is always welcome.

Sid

P.S - Yes, I realize my Garage is in need of cleaning and purging. Maybe someday!!
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Nice work...regarding Q4 flux...hehe, I know it well. And I won't fwd a pic of my workshop so you can't feel superior.

 

pain in the ass, reporting in.

overall the project has been a lot of fun to do.
we will likely end up using close to a couple gallons of LT as mentioned above. the one quart is what we had and started with. won't by far be what we end with, if you stop to consider too cleaning.

i'm using an iwata neo airbrush in the picture with blue gloves, and do really like the spray pattern. i beliebe it's equipped with a 0.2 needle valve from my last airbrushing endeavors. it's a two-stage trigger airbrush, and is kind of a PITA to use.

in the process we are going to try a few different styles of brush, ranging from siphon-fed two stage trigger brush (looks pretty much the same as the silver one pictured) it's first trials were painful to find a good holding position and use the two-step trigger.

after that i went out and bought a couple cheapy badger and pasche single-step trigger siphon brushes. they will be neat to test out, and the last airbrush we bought is a cheap ebay-pistol trigger side-mounting tank.

what we kind of come to is that considering the volume and detail the dye requires, we may want to go for something a bit more comfortable to use, but also something that has a bigger hopper, and doesn't expect the air line, siphon bottle, and trigger to all be in the same cubic inch.

and you can't really see it in the picture that i am holding the brush and part, but that piece is half-dyed with a few unpainted spots.

although you can't see the difference in the picture, it is DRAMATICALLY different!

our last trouble spot will be the dash. we may be attempting to do the work in-car with a lot of careful masking and overspray control. we don't want to disturb 30yr wiring and break things more than we have. haha

 

I did this job about 5 years back and used one of the cheap ebay style siphon jobs. Just keep the air pressure at a stable rate and be gentle with the material setting. It took me about 4 different coats to get a good coverage and consistency. Mix your paint real well as it tends to settle. I would turn my jug over the night before and let the stuff intermix for a while, then shake it real well.

Just put on a few thin coats, and take a break in between for a while.