348 Interior Re-dye

Now I know most of you have been thinking in your head "bla bla bla....all I care about is if it turns out or not so show me the finished product." Well....the time is at hand to start re-dying the pieces. I am going to do all of the interior trim first and then the seats and dash last. I will be away for the weekend so the interior parts will have at least 4 full days to dry so they should be 100% complete when I get back.

Most of you may not have a fancy compressor / spray gun setup and I'm here to say that you don't need one. I have my run of the mill Lowes Kobalt Air Compressor that has worked perfectly for my HVLP gun.

I purchased this gun from Amazon: Tool Force A-C2 HVLP Touch-Up Spray Gun - Hvlp Sprayers - Amazon.com

At $30 it's a bargain and I love it! Feels great, works great, and cleans up easy. Now for all your picky painters out there NO....I don't have an oil separator or a fancy gauge for inlet (tool) pressure at the gun. But for this project you simply don't need that. Don't be swayed by not having a 100% professional setup. You can make it work perfectly with a compressor and a decent gun.
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IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that you get your gun set up to spray an almost mist like pattern. I adjusted the fluid control down almost as much as it would go and then opened up the air adjuster valve about 3/4 the way open. What you want is a nice fine "almost dry like mist" to shoot from the gun.

Avoid the urge, the compulsion, and the desire to put on thick coats. I started out putting on too heavy of a coat...aka...made 2-3 passes on a piece of trim. This resulted in pooling of the dye and made it dry uneven, and in some cases, run. I will most likely put on 3-4 very light coats versus 2-3 heavier coats. I essentially make one full pass on each piece of trim and then stop. Even if I missed a small spot I do not attempt to touch it up until the next coat.

Following this will yield AMAZINGGGGGGGGG results.

These are the first two pieces I started spraying. The top is the before and the bottom is after one coat. I was still experimenting with my gun to get the perfect spray pattern so I chose small pieces that I could easily touch up if I messed up. I highly recommend you do the same.
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Here are a few smaller pieces of before...and after. Again, this is after the 1st coat. At least two more to go.

I forgot to mention that I have thinned down the dye 10%. Make sure you do the thinning for each time you refill the gun and not the entire bottle of dye! Follow the Leatherique instructions. Additionally, use distilled water to make sure it is as pure and mineral free as you can get.

At this point I have finished two full coats on just about every piece of trim. It is looking sooooooo nice. I know that pics are pretty high res. but I can't tell you enough how happy I am.

As a technique: avoid spraying anything that is not in the horizontal position, as in laying flat. The dye want's to run if you spray vertical or side pieces. Just wait and turn the piece so that the edge can be sprayed horizontally. This takes extra time I know...but patience pays off.
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NOTE: The white "milky" look that the freshly painted pieces have is normal and wayyyy magnified by the pics. The dye actually goes through about three different colors as it drys. But as a precaution make sure you do properly mix your dye and water to avoid any separation etc.

 

All of the interior pieces are complete. They look amazing!!! It took about 4 total coats for me to be completely happy, and I really couldn't be any happier with the result.

As you go through the process you will find small errors you made during the spraying so you just need to go back over and touch them up. I hired my wife as my quality control expert to make sure I didn't miss anything

I tried to get the best image possible and it probably doesn't do it justice. The smoothness of the texture and consistency of the entire spray job is flawless.
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One final shot of the trim pieces complete. They look purdyyyyyyy.

I will let them sit for a few days until I have time to start putting the car back together and in the meantime I have to finish the seats and the small interior dash pieces.

Just like anything it's taking longer than I wanted, but why rush the final product?!
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The seats are coming along awesome as well.

I have concluded that I get the best results when I DO NOT DILUTE THE DYE. For whatever reason the water dilution of the dye makes the dye pool much more than if I simply shoot it on.
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I took this picture to show the dramatic contrast between what the color on the leather WAS to how it looks NOW. That nasty faded mustard color is now replaced with the beautiful Ferrari Saddle.
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The seats are completely done. As you can see from the pics they look amazing. I couldn't be more happy with how they turned out. I'm going to let them sit for two days or so before I start re-assembling them.

I sprayed them with air and cleaned them with the Isopropyl Alcohol to make sure they were 100% dust/hair free. I forgot to do that on one piece of trim and it came back to bite me in the form of little specs that got caught in the dye that I could visually see. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......lesson learned!!!

Almost done. Only have the console left!
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