Member Since: 11 Aug 2021
Location: Dobele
Posts: 100
Leather seat retrofit and recoloring
Greetings to all!
For two years i've been searching for leather seats, which are extremely hard to find in mainland Europe and LHD cars. Finally I got my hands on alpaca leather seats from low milage car, but it had a cracked sunroof, therefore it was covered in mold. Also the guy selling the seats kept them stocked one upon another, therefore there was a lot of dents.
A few things I did, that might come in hand to some:
1) It is very hard to find leather cleaners that actually get stuff off the leather. Tried at least 6 until I found Motip Leather Cleaner Foam - cheap and extremely effective. Spray it on, rub with soft brush and wipe it off with microfiber towel.
2) To remove dents - use hair dryer and massage the seat. Worked good for me, although didn't quite get out the nastiest dents.
3) After cleaning the seats, realised that mould has gotten into the leather, and had eaten some paint away. So decided to order leather paint from ScratchDoctor. Paint matched great, applied the product with kitchen sponge and dried with hair dryer, around 3-4 layers.
4) Paint didn't rub off with dry or wet cloth, but all the paint came off when used any leather cleaning product. I also didn't like the gloss that seats had. Therefore decided to apply a matt leather finish clearcoat from FurnitureClinic. It did the job, nothing rubs off and it has nice matt finish.
5) To fix wrinkles and cracks, used Leather Filler from FurnitureClinic.
6) To get rid of mould and dirt in cloth parts of seats, bought Bissel Spotclean Pro wet cleaner - good quality for reasonable price
7) The WIRING - I was very lucky. My cloth seats were manually adjustable but came with heated seats. In my opinion, due to this reason, the wiring harness had all the plugs, and in my case it was just plug and play - everything including memory function worked without using coding tools.
Final result :
19th Jun 2023 8:01 pm
lrman
Member Since: 15 May 2023
Location: Hampshire
Posts: 93
Very impressive results!FL2 2007 2.2d Auto SE. Baltic Blue.
19th Jun 2023 8:40 pm
Dave47
Member Since: 31 Aug 2014
Location: Margate Kent
Posts: 1357
An excellent result, well done. DAVE.
19th Jun 2023 10:02 pm
Brodie08
Member Since: 26 Feb 2023
Location: Glasgow
Posts: 9
Bit of elbow grease + determination = wonderful results. 👍
19th Jun 2023 11:55 pm
elvisman
Member Since: 25 Oct 2021
Location: Cambridgeshire
Posts: 43
Wow, what a difference
20th Jun 2023 9:17 am
blaster1232
Member Since: 11 Aug 2021
Location: Dobele
Posts: 100
Oh, and forgot to add - if anyone if wondering on how easy it is to remove the bottom cushion or back rest - these seats are extremely easy to dismantle. Bottom cushion is held in place with 2 10mm bolts, backrest is held in place with 4 Torx50 bolts. Disconnect the plugs and all done. Doesn't take more than 5 minutes.
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