Has anybody replaced seat covers?

[clickman]

whip, post a pic of the passenger side redone, the same view you had in your first pic

[WhipE350]

Clickman, seat is already back in car, but I took a pic tonight with a flash. The flash is good for showing imperfections. You can see it is much better and since it looks better in natural light I didn't add more dye, though after I see in the sun I may do some touch up.

[Dale_K]

Those reconditioned seats look pretty good to me. I have a feeling the tan seats in my car might not come out as good but I'm probably going to try this eventually. I've heard of Leatherique but I don't know much about them. Looks like their system works.

[clickman]

No kudos on the photography , but wow, what an improvement over the "before" pic. I'll have to keep this in mind.

[WhipE350]

Along with restoring the paint, doing the seats was one of the more rewarding visual improvement on the car. The drivers seat came out way beyond my expectations, it was pretty weathered when I bought it and felt they were deserving of a discount, but had I known how leather can be brought back to life I wouldn't have worried. I'll be doing my son's beamer seats and girlfriend's nissan seats soon too.

[sasha055]

Those restored seats look amazing

How does it hold to wear, paint transfer?

I'm worried that my biege seats will look good after painting but won't as resilient as factory paint.

Sasha

[WhipE350]

Sasha, I haven't had them restored long enough to know how well they will wear, I have wiped them hard and nothing comes off at all, the dye is very resilient. I think the factory dye is lacquer based and the stuff from leatherique is water based which makes for easy cleanup and also means it can be thinned easy so that many layers can be put on.

As I indicated I did a little bit different process then recommended, since mine are black (and it may not matter the color at all) I put many layers on with dye that was thinned with water. This gave me a satin finish which I liked better then what I saw in the pictures on the leatherique website. I'll probably send George an email tonight and ask him if there are any downsides to putting on many thing layers, like how well will they stand up. For the tough spots like I showed in the photo I did come back with un-thinned dye and then used a damp cloth once it started to dry to blend it.

I was more careful on the first seat I did with the sanding and such, but once I realized it wouldn't hurt anything I was more aggressive on the drivers seat. I was really surprised the drivers seat came out so well. This was a great project I would recommend to everyone. If you want more details how I did it I can provide, just pm me or I can put them here.