Gus_Mahn

The leather seats (tan) in my 89 TA are in good shape except for the top of the rear seat. It looks like I should be able to sand the finnish off and paint the top of the seat. Turbo Buick guys have been refinshing their wheel using SEM paint in rattle cans. It's supposedly very durable if you use the proper techniques. I'm not really interested in buying the $2000 interior kit. Any thoughts or links for me to check out?

Thanks

Gus

Faded

I'd really like to see what that leather seat looks like after sanding and painting it...

LUVmy92

I used to repair leather interiors and you can wetsand them with 1500 to 2000 grit paper to remove the dye from the seat and the top layers of leather to ge to a fresh cleaner layer. The problem with the spray can dye is it wont match good from my experience. We had to custom match the dye to the seats every time. You can probably get away with blending a larger area to mask the top. Also use a top clear coat that matches (flat,semi gloss, gloss,etc.) probably a semi gloss. Car dealerships have people come by and do this to cars every day , not just cheap cars either. I worked on Jags , Porsche, BMW, even an older Ferrari. It holds up ok but its a cheap fix that can look good for some time, but it can be noticeable if yu dont blend enough.

Gus_Mahn

Thanks for the reply. I have a good touch-up gun, and can paint well. I'm sure I'll be able to blend it. I'm sure most interior touch up's on 15 year old cars require blending/color matching since the interiors tend to fade.

Did you use any kind of adhesion promoter or primer for the leather? Brand/part #? What about the clear coat? Brand/part#? My paint guy wants to sell me Dupont Chromabase Vynil paint. A lot of Buick guys are using SEM, but I'm not sure if that is sold as a mixing system or rattle cans only.

Thanks

LUVmy92

Iwas supplied by my company which I cant remember what the brand was (not retail stuff). Let me check on finding something for you, I am not to sure about that Chromabase stuff.

LUVmy92

http://www.leatherworldtech.com/leatherdyepaint.aspx

This page shows some stuff related to what I used to do. I forgot after you wet sand you use a filler which will even out the surface and also fill cracks and holes for a smooth look. It really depends how far you wanna go with this but if you read up on some of that stuff in the link you should get some more insight.

LUVmy92

Also the grain of the leather will be lost after applying the filler but we used a latex type stuff and you can pour it on a good spot and when it dries you have matching leather grain! Heat the filler with a heat gun and it looks like it was never touched! It was pretty cool stuff and you would be amazed at some of the repairs you can do. I turned a complete Ranchero from mustard yellow to black and you culdnt tell it was ever any other color.