Seat restoration

[vandenham]

I decided to try restore my front seats and thought some might be interested in seeing what is involved.

My drivers seat was starting to pull away in the pleats and was cracked and dirty.



I started by removing the leather from the frame and then started to disassemble the seat. The first thing I found was how the sides of the central pleated part is held down.



Here is a closer look:



The hog rings on the cloth/wire are only attached to the foam at the bottom of the seat. The foam is quite solid, but would break loose quite easily. Here is how it is attached.



The central part is in two pieces that are glued together.



Once separated you can see the top part has pieces of felt that are sewed to the leather and hold down the pleats.

[Danglerb]

Anxious to see what you do, but those seats started out in WAY better than typical condition. Most would just give them a good clean and condition.

[vandenham]

Now you can see how the felt has pulled away and is no longer holding the pleats.



Now for the repair

Gluing the felt to the foam did not seem like it would be strong enough (that is why they came apart in the first place) so I tried several methods to address the problem. I ended up lacing the pieces of felt together with thick thread. This allowed me to still glue the seat parts together, but with some added strength with the felt pieces connected together



Then I re-glued the two seat parts back together. It is now back together as it was before, but with the added lacing to hold the felt.

For the side connections, I added some supportive wire underneath that I could use to attach to the cloth/wire coming down with hog rings.



I then cleaned the seats using the "Leathique" products 'Leather Rejuvenator' and 'Pristine Clean'. Here is the final result.



The seat looks much better and the cleaner has removed most of the dirt.

I've ordered some filler and the leather dye from Leatherique and plan to repair the cracks and then re-dye the seats. I'll update this post with the results when I am finished. With some luck the seats will look like new.

[vandenham]

Here are the before and after pictures so you can see the difference.






It doesn't look like a lot because the seats were not too bad to start with, but you can see this effort would have a dramatic effect on seats where the all the pleating was separated and the sides were coming apart also.

[MPDano]

Love it. That would make a great addition to the "common fixes" thread.

Can you put your fix here?

**MOST Common 928 Issues AND Fixes**

[vandenham]

I am waiting for some dye from Leatherique. When it arrives I am going to dye the front seats. I'll take pictures during the dyeing process and will load it on the common fixes thread.

[Linderpat]

another keeper.

[amschnellsten]

You will be very happy with the results of leatherique! I did the whole interior of my old 740il and it turned out brand new looking. I cleaned the seats, sanded them down, filled the leather, sanded again and then dyed them. The seats looked like they just came from the factory. I am not sure about the center section of the porsche seats but the filler will get rid of all the creases and tears in the smooth sections. Here is what mine turned out like
E38 740iL front seat leather restoration project

[amschnellsten]

I did mine two years ago and it holds up great

[vandenham]

Thanks amschnellsten - I am hopeful that my seats will look as nice as yours do after I am finished. Looking forward to working on it as soon as the dye arrives.

[vandenham]

Well I finally got one of the front seats finished. Here is a short picture view of the process using Leatherique products.

I started with the seat shown in the earlier posts.



Step 1 - wet sand the leather using the Prepping Agent from Leatherique. The Prepping Agent softens the dye on the leather making it sand off quite easily. I used 400 grit wet sandpaper. Here is how it looked after sanding.



Step 2 - fill the cracks with the Crack Filler product from Leatherique. This is a white paste that goes into the cracks. I applied a couple of coats in the large cracks. Here is what it looked like after applying the Crack Filler before the second sanding.



Step 3 - second sanding. I actually sanded, applied additional Crack Filler and sanded several times. I also ended up poking a needle into all the holes in the leather as the crack filler filled them in. Here is the result ready for dyeing.




Step 4 - apply the dye. I tried using a brush on a sample piece but found it took three coats and used a lot of dye. I ended up using a pencil sprayer with my compressor to spray on the dye. For the most part, only two coats were needed. I bought "Cork" colored dye as that is the original color for my car. The seats had been replaced some time ago and were "Champagne". Here is the final dyed result.




Since the color changed, I decided to mask the piping to give it a two tone look. If it doesn't look okay I can always brush more dye on the piping and make is a single color. The piping is not leather - it is plastic. Here are a couple more pictures of the final results.






I'm really happy with the results so far - they look like new. Just a bit of cleaning up to do to remove the dye due to my poor masking and minor touch-ups in a few places and it is ready to back in the car. The only bad news is that I now have to re-dye the back seats and door panel pieces because of the color change.

Rick

[vandenham]

Side by side difference from beginning to end.




Well worth the effort.

Rick

[MPDano]

Dude, that is AWESOME!!! I didn't know this can be accomplished like this. Thanks for sharing!!

[Dean_Fuller]

WOW!!!! Very dramatic change. Looks great! CORK is my favorite interior color.

[MPDano]

Did you re-punch the little holes after the filler? It kinda looks like you did. Still in Awe

[Gonzotiki_666]

Vandenham nice results on your restoration. Anyone ever gone from a darker color to lighter? I have some cork manual seats that I'm considering dyeing before I drop them into my '81. The original color is champagne I believe and those are TRASHED. I've read good things about Leatherique dye kits & think that's the route I'm going to take.

[vandenham]

MPDano - yes I had to re-punch the little holes after the filler. They were all filled in.

Gonzotiki_666 - I don't think there would be any problem going from darker to lighter. It goes on just like you are painting a car so you will just need extra coats. I think the Leatherique products are great and worked just as they advertised.

Rick

[tychain99]

unreal!!! very nice job, what did it cost for the kit

[tychain99]

post a pic of the rest of your car interior if you have one?

[vandenham]

I ended up spending around $200 for all the Leatherique products.

• 16 oz - Leather Rejuvenator - an oily product used initially to soak into the leather. It softens and pushes the dirt out of the leather pores. Only used 8 oz.
• 16 oz - Pristine Clean - a cleaner used after the Leather Rejuvenator to clean the left over oil and surface dirt from the leather. Only used 8 oz.
• 16 oz - Prepping Agent - used with wet sanding paper to sand the leather. It also softens the old dye to help sand it off. Only used 8 oz.
• 4 oz - Crack Filler - fills in the bad cracks in the leather. I only used it on the drivers seat and still have over 3 oz left.
• 16 oz - dye - final color that I sprayed on the seats. I used it all and could have used a bit more.

That gave me enough product to do the front seats, back seats and the small leather pieces on the door panels.

Here is a picture of the interior before I dyed the seats. I am waiting for the warm weather to put the seats back in and will take another picture like this one to show the difference.