Sorry, thought I read in the last few pages on this thread you had once owned a Dino 246...me nah just a BB512 ..
All good. A BB512 is a very special car. I actually have a lot of empathy with the dye coming off your blue interior when you gave it a clean. When I had my 308, I started cleaning the leather and I was shocked when the cleaning cloth started turning red as I assumed the leather was vac dyed rather than painted. Naturally, some shonky owner/dealer gave it quick coat of water based dye to refresh it. Lesson learned after that.
Sadly, no option other than to re dye it using leatherique. I'm not sure if you had the same experience when cleaning your leather on the 308. With the Aston (which also uses Connolly leather), whenever I gave it a clean, no colour ever rubbed off onto the cleaning cloth.
same as you ,the leather was dry and starting to crack, and the hide food pulled the colour off it , my mistake was I used a food that was also a cleaner . You know in the BBs they used the best hides the VM Connolly which was used in many previous models and models after the BB period .
The reason the colour never rubbed off is because the leather was coloured using the vac dye process rather than being painted on.
that is because it only had the leather and dye supplied from new , my DB6 Mark 2 was the same as the BB512 , cleaning the leather and all this blue dye came off...fricking 2nd hand car dealers/brokers ,
Yes I know. Regarding my 308, the leather was neither cracked or dry as it was a UK import - it was just re-dyed using a water based colour. I was using Autoglym leather cleaner and to my shock, the cleaning cloth was turning red.
In the 1980s, I used to write to the Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin factories pretending to be an Australian buyer wanting to do a factory delivery. I would ask for a brochure and price list. Lamborghini and Aston Martin in particular send me paint charts and leather samples of all the colour options and in both cases with the leather samples, you could see that the leather was vac dyed (that is, the colour was impregnated all the way through the leather).
VM leather, used by Ferrari up to the early 80's, is painted. That's why it cracks with age. Colour only comes off if the leather has been redyed. I suspect the solvent in the spray dye affects the original colour.
if VM hide is fed hide food , the best but hardest to apply being the Connolly food the leather will NOT crack, its the paint that does .. I've been applying hide food to VM hides since I was a child and that is my experience ,sorry to be blunt Ian .
That's the product I used on my 308GTB seats. Sucked up coat after coat, but no colour came off. Looked like new when I finished.
Thats now what I use on all my cars now ,3 which have VM hides that have NEVER been recoloured/dyed ..wonderful product .
Clearly because your interior/leather was restored correctly. In hindsight, you really got one heck of a deal on that car.
