I love posting stuff in the silly hope that I may some day be able to help someone struggling like I did doing something for the first time with no experience. So here's my Leatherique restore project

Beginning. My seats weren't all that bad. I had no stitching missing or any tears. A few small scratches, some wearing away of the finish and scuffs, stuff like that. There were two places where I had somewhat serious cracks which I define to mean places that probably would have turned into a tear in about 6 months months with steady use. Mostly the Leather just showed signs of age. Here are some pictures of what the seats looked like when I bought the car two Marchs ago. Thye may not show up some of the wear, but it was definitely looking old.










I think I'll post the pictures in successive replies because I'm worried about size limitations.

Anyway, I hope the wear shows up on these pictures. I can see it clearly on my computer. The Driver's side was worst.

I decided to use Leatherique because I didn't know any different and because Sanchez posted some great pictures of how his came out. It seemed to be a well respected product. People said the sellers were really good about helping you if you had problems. My experience is that I think it is a terrific product but I did not experience that great support. I thought the support was lousy . There was one person very famiilar with the product who was great (I don't want to get him in trouble by using his name), so this critique is not universal to Leatherique everywhere, just I had a really bad time trying to get the US people to give me any advice at all. Certainly not in a timely fashion. In other words, I put in a call or email and would have expected a return in a day or two. I didn't hear from them for like a week. And by then, I'd wasted alot of product figuring things out on my own.

The directions are pretty weak too. I'd say they are complete, but they don't mention taking all the old dye off and I believe ( In my one support session they said you don't need to) after doing the job that you absolutely have to. So what happened was I wasted several days and about 1/3 bottle of Rejuventaor oil on the unstripped seats. I actually ended up wasting similar amount of each of the products (Oil, Cleaner, Prep and Dye) because of lack of clarity in the directions, Also, the web is not much help because of the many people who have done this, no two seem to have done it the same way.

In my next post I'll describe how I did it, observations on the work and what pictures I have of the work in progress.

 

So, the work. I was doing my headliner when I got the great idea to redo the seats too. So for all my work the seats were all out of the car. I did the console lid too as it was badly worn. I would highly recommend that you not attempt this work while the seats are in the car. It is extraordinarily messy. You will want to take your time as well as you will DEFINITELY wonder if you are doing it right or not. You WILL have things not work the way people have written so you'll want to be able to take your time. Also, I did my work in April/May so I couldn't leave my seats in the warm car or sun because of the weather. I compensated for this by leaving them to sit for a long time between stages. This is OK. Warming them in the sun just hastens the working of the materials. All in all, my redo took me over a month, doing maybe an hour or two a night. A lot of this time was spent researching and re-researching to figure out if what I was epxeriencing with the work was right.

According to the Directions I received for a "Re-Dye" You first massage in a liberal amount of Rejuvenator and let it sit in the sun. As I said, I did not have that option. I did the work in a 50-60 degree garage and moved them into a basement room to wait. I first wanted to follow the directions exactly. So I applied the Rejuvenator to the console lid first. It was worn so I think this skewed my thinking because it softened up pretty well. Since that worked I did the front seats. They seemed to soften up OK. The directions said til they are "Supple". I have no idea what supple is. I work on a 30 year old greasy car for fun. I equated "supple" to means somewhat soft. I got that with the Rejuevnator without having removed the old lacquer dye. So I did the back seats as well. When those had all been slathered up and soaked for a few days I cleaned the Fronts with Prestine Clean as the directions said. The back seats were still slathered. When the fronts had been cleaned I noticed that even though the seats were softer they still creased noticeably when pressed. You couldn't press down on it and have it push in like your skin. It would kind of fold. I decided that this could not be right. 1/4 Bottle of Prestine Clean down the drain. I went back to the research and read about removing the lacquer dye first. This advice is very frequently given in many places, not just Jag Forum.

So I decided to remove the old lacquer dye and then start again. The directions said to use wet sanding with 400 grit. They interweb said use lacquer thinner. So I tried this. It was a waste of time. I sanded and sanded with the lacquer thinner and nothing came off. On a lark I tried sanding with the Prep Solution. This actually worked fairly well. But it also used up a tremendous amount of Prep Solution. About a 1/3 of the bottle on just the console lid and the passenger seat bottom. I didn't need to be a mathmetician to figure out I was going to run out if I kept at this. Assuming I was doing it wrong again, I tried to use the lacquer thinner again, this time with Grey Scotch Brite pads. Angels from above! Heavenly choirs sing etc! Doing this strips the lacquer right off. Dissolves it as if it was water colors. I completed more in a 1/2 hour with the grey scrubby and lacquer thinner than I had in two days with the sandpaper. So this is definitely the trick. The down side to this is that even if you wear gloves the lacquer thinner will absolutely destroy your hands for a few weeks. You will look like you caught greyscale like in Game of Thrones. Your hands will chap and crust but won't peel off nicely. You'll be rubbing them together like a an obsessive compulsive miser trying to get the little flakes of your skin to sand off other little flakes of you skin. So be ready for that.

The other thing is that once you get the lacquer dye off you will easily notice "supple". You'll be able to run your hand over the now stripped seat and it will be soft soft soft. You can push your finger into it and it gives and springs back just like crusty old skin. This is somewhat temporary (for now) as once the lacquer thinner dries out of the leather it will not be quite so soft (wait for it ... it will get back to "supple") as when it was fresh, but it will be obviously softer than it was. I might say like a leather glove, but I've had all kinds of leather gloves and some weren't soft at all. These would be like those fancy black leather gloves that bankers and lawyers wear. You let that dry out for a day or so then you can go back to slathering it up with Rejuvenator and Cleaning with Pristine Clean. Remember you have to wait after each of these steps. You can't rush this. Once you have stripped them they will look something like the following. My seats were originally Doeskin color.









You'll notice on the last picture some white lines. This is crack filler that comes with the kit. Also you'll see a small screwdriver used for eyeglass repair. I used the tip of that screwdriver as a spatula to put the crack filler into the crack and heavy creases on the drivers seats. You do this in a number of passes alternating between sanding it smooth until you have filled the cracks. I probably underfilled mine a little in the end. The place where the two white lines cross in a kindof "X" is where the cracking was worst and would have turned into a tear for sure.

 

Final Installment.

So, I've now stripped off the lacquer dye. Rejuvenatored the seats, left them to sit, Cleaner them with Prestine Clean, left them to sit, filled cracks. I should note that people have said that the seats are only leather on top. I have a 1984 Vande Plas, and that was most definitely not true in my case. Everything, and I mean everything, was leather. Console Lid, leather, Headrests, leather all round, Seat sides, leather, Seating Surfaces, leather, Background leather behind the rear console, leather. Seat backs, leather-> EVERYTHING. I did not strip all the surfaces though. This was for a few reasons. One was I was never going to have enough materials to do this. I used up 2 Gallons and One Quart of Lacquer thinner to accomplish what I did. Sanchez suggested soaking a towel in lacquer thinner and using it to sit on the surface then just gently scrub away. This didn't work for me. Juts web scrubbing worked fine. The other reason was I was getting tired of this after a month of working on it in all my spare hours.

After I'd finished filkling the cracks, I sued the Prepping Solution. For this I hardly did anything other than just wipe everything down really well with the stuff. By this point I had grey scrubbied these seats to within an inch of their hides. (LOL, Pun intended...I'll be here all week!) and figured that if I was wet sandingthis to scuff up the surface I'd already done that and if I was doing t his to dissolve any left over lacquer wiping it down would do just as well. So I really didn't sand with the Prepping Solution. Leave it all to dry again then get ready to spray.

I decided to spray because I convinced myself that I'd never get it right with a brush. I have virtually no experience with an air spray gun but even so I read about how to do this. I went to Harbor Freight and bought a 4oz Touch up Gun of $13.99 along with a in line regulator. I was going here with Sanchez' advice and as usual he got it right (except for our climactic differences which I've learned make a big difference!) Sanchez gave some very specific advice on the set up, thinning instructions and so forth. I followed these exactly. I didn't take into account that it is hotter in Florida than in Massachusetts and that no doubt affects dye drying time. Sanchez said to thin the dye about 20-30%. So this is what I did. Then my 6 gallon pancake compressor **** the bed. So I had to borrow a friend's, I could not get my spray gun to maintain the 20 psi setting at the tip by manipulating the in line regulator. But with some fiddling at the tank (Tank pressure at outlet 40psi resulted in sustained tip pressure at 20 psi->don't know why this worked but it did) I got the pressure right. Then its spraying light coats.

One coat, barely looks like you even put any dye on. Second light coat, oh there is the color, that looks pretty good. Third light coat, wow that looks f-in great......
...

...

Hey what are those dark spots appearing???? Hmmmm.... Maybe they'll dry up.... Nope. Must've forgotten to agitate the dye (I was but figured I messed it up). Well, I'll put another coat on and cover it up. "Ohh that's done nicely"......"Oh crap" they're back. I must have something wrong here. Did I not thin it enough? The directions say thin it up to 50% and I'm at 20!. I've wasted 1/3 of the Dye. Strip it all off and start again....ARRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The directions say to dump all the dye out. I did this but I put it in a cheap plastic lemonade pitcher with a sealable top. I figured this would allow me to agitiate and pour exact measurements. I measured a plastic coke bottle with lines at exact levels so that I could duplicate the mix at the right proportions and save unadulterated dye in case I screwed something up. Well it turns out I had. I pondered and pondered till my head was sore and finally I concluded that the spots were from an excess of moisture not a lack of it. What was happening was that the drying time was so slow (relatively) that some dye dryed very quickly, but what didn't dry quickly, where say it was a little heavier attracted pigment and when it dried a blotch. I tested this theory by spraying full strength dye at the same compressor settings and voila, great coverage with no spots. So in my case, not thinning the dye at all was the answer.

Overall, I am very pleased with the results. The seats look new from two feet away. it's only when you get really close that you can see any old creases. They are nice and .....oh what's the word??? SUPPLE!, Uniform. Pleased as hell after all that work. Now the only problem is the LEATHER on the door cards and the console tunnel and door arm rests looks like crap in comparison, And I thought they looked great when I first got the car. I'll save that work for some other time though....I need more Leatherique products to do those.

Here's the afters.


























And that's the end of my story.

 

Great looking restoration! If I can do half as well on my seats, I will feel I've accomplished something. Really nice.
Dave

 

Wow. The end result looks amazing. Factory fresh. I wonder what's up with support being great for one person and practically non-existent for someone else.

I have to say that your post will definitely help someone out down the road. The Forum is the central repository of our collective knowledge. Excellent job documenting for folks in the future working to improve their Jaguar.

Jeff

 

As we know you are... You should be VERY proud of that job! Outstanding!!!

 

Fantastic job. You should be proud of yourself.
I just completed the interior on my (new to me) 1992 XJ40.
I only used the leather repair from Leatherique because I had some left over.
Since I did my seats, I have been educated by others as to where I can purchase the required materials locally.
Instead of "Pristine Clean" the recommended cleaner was Dawn Dish washing Liquid(Cheap) and Isopropyl Alchohol(Cheaper)

Driver seat


trim pieces from JY. They were originally grey and black from 2 different cars

Finished product

finished product
.
The dye was purchased at a company called FinishMasters.

 

@Sanchez Very nice, but I can't believe you'd do that job again so soon! Glutton for punishment eh? When you make your homemade Prestine Clean are you saying to mix the Dawn with the alcohol or is it either/or?

Oh and how do you put a signature to your posts? I've been looking at my profile for 5 minutes and can't see how.

 

DAWN with LANOLIN cleans and softens the leather because of the LANOLIN in it. Apply leave on then wipe clean. takes a little longer to remove all the soapy suds but worth it.
ISO Alchohol is used to prep the seat before dyeing.

To add your signature:
Go to the top of the page.
Click on USER CP
Scroll down to EDIT SIGNATURE
When the field opens up you can add your car/s and pictures if you wish.
I just went in and added the 92 XJ40 and 2019 Honda Pilot.
See below.

 

Awesome




Lets see how I did

 

LOL: you did well.

 

An update. Sad to say, that great job didn't hold up. The bottom seat had cracks that came back even though it was all nice and soft when I did it. Perhaps I put the dye on too thick or something. Don't know. I have enough dye left to redo the bottoms so I'll probably do them again and then just live with it.

 

Jeff beat me to WOW" !!!!

And others to express the approvals So, that leaves me to applaud not only the result, but the effort and the well written and illustrated report!!!

Enjoyed it immensely..

Carl

 

Hello everyone, I recently noticed that my beloved leather seat is starting to show signs of wear. Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar with leather restoration techniques, so I would like to seek your expert advice.

Firstly, I would like to know how to thoroughly clean my leather seat without causing any damage. What products or methods do you recommend for removing dust, light stains, and built-up dirt over time? I found an online leather-restoration product, but I'm unsure of its effectiveness. Lastly, if I want to refresh the color of my leather seat, are there any specific dyes or coloring products that you could recommend?

Thank you sincerely in advance, and I look forward to your valuable advice.

 

Unlike leather clothing and furniture, most Automotive leather for seats, door panels and such, is coated with first a "dye" which is really a paint put on with a spray gun, and then sprayed with a layer of Poly-Urethane. How thick this layer just depends. This Poly-U layer effectively seals off the surface of the leather, making it tough and a bit slick, thereby preventing stains from spills, but also making any attempts to "nourish" the material underneath futile (unless you take the leather off and treat it from the Unfinished back side, which someone here did with great success).

Some say that leather treatment oils and such will gradually soak in through seams and vent holes. But in the meantime, "Leather Food" merely sits on the surface until you wipe it off, being prevented from penetration by the aforementioned Poly-Urethane layer.

Of course they don't tell you that in the ads, because they want to sell you the product. And, it does clean the surface, which will look much better simply because it's clean.

For cleaning my seats I use either Mother's Leather Cleaner or Meguiar's Leather Conditioner (I like the smell of Meguiar's better). Or it they're Really dirty and stained (like the driver door where my arm rests), I use the bathroom cleanser Soft Scrub with Lemon (NOT chlorine!!). I use a *soft* brush to clean the creases and "scrub" gently, or there's danger of breaking through that Poly-Urethane layer. (If you scrub enough to get through that Poly-U layer to the paint, it's sticky. And then you have a real mess. I can tell you how I learned that) This product works Really well for stains.

I find the best way to keep seats from cracking is to keep the sun off as much as possible; parking in the shade but not under a tree (birds Love to poop on Jags), and park with the rear to the sun if possible.
(';')

 

Well done & documented. I am using Classic Leather Dye, but all these products are amazing. Using Eidechse for harder surface repair where filler is required.