Automotive Interior Repair with The Interior Guy

This was a fun one….Actually it didn’t give me to much of a fit. The leather laid just right, I was able to pull it together quite nicely.

I first cleaned the leather seat thoroughly with my prepping solution, I know I always say this, but I can’t stress prepping enough, it is the only way to a top notch job. Read the rest of this entry »

Today was pretty much a lazy day, didn’t have a real busy day. Did mostly leather repair with a few cloth repairs thrown in. Didn’t get any pics today though.

I wanted to talk about a Volvo S70 that I worked on. This was a definite cracked leather repair. The drivers seat was the worst as usual, but this one I also did the passenger seat and the rear seat base where someone decided to dye it the wrong color. Gotta love the people that think they can cover up dirty seat with a rattle can of dye, what they don’t take into consideration is the customers that buy these cars, it’s pretty sad. Read the rest of this entry »

As you’ve probably noticed on a lot of the newer cars on todays market with a leather interior have a nice little twist to them. A two tone look on the leather seats. Although this looks great and all, dyeing these two tone wonders can be tricky, and can take a while, but if you know the right tricks and use the right materials it can be a breeze. So with that said, heres a few tricks on how to dye a two tone leather seat. Read the rest of this entry »

You left the car window down or the sunroof open and there’s a water stain in your car’s leather seat….or your girlfriend spilled here red wine in your leather car seat on a night out on the town….or your kids decided they were a soon to be artist and tried their techniques out on your leather car seat with a pen, arrggg. Got kids myself, so feel your pain. Stain removal in leather seats can be tough, heres a few tricks to help get you going. Read the rest of this entry »

This is definitely not a quick fix or a temporary fix that I’m going to talk about today. This is the way that I repair leather on a daily basis that has been worn or cracked.

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Resurfacing a leather seat in your automobile with today’s leathers require a real technique and the right leather dye to achieve a professional job. There are 2 types of leather that I have seen and worked on in today’s leather car seats. You have Nubuck leather or as some call it the soft leather and you have the finished leather which is mostly what you see. The leather dyes you use are completely different too. Aniline dye is used with the soft stuff and a water borne urethane dye for the finished leathers, both mixed with premium tannery pigments. Resurfacing leather applies to the finished leather, when you dye suede the aniline dye is a penetrating dye, so heres the right way to apply dyes to a finished leather seat. Read the rest of this entry »

There are so many different types of automotive leather seat repair, all with different situations and applications. There are holes, scratches, gouges, cuts, scrapes, worn or cracked, and just down right grungy looking leather seats. I think I got them all covered, well in this article we’re going to talk about how to repair a small hole in a leather seat lean back, for those of you who don’t know what a lean back is well it’s the upper part of the seat.

Now when I say small this can apply for a tear up to 1 1/2″ to 2″, probably might go a little bigger, but lets not push it, if it needs to go to the upholstery shop for an insert then that would be better then a crappy looking leather repair on something that probably wouldn’t hold anyways. When in doubt, insert it. Read the rest of this entry »

Color Matching is a huge skill and a must in the leather repair industry. I’ve been coming across a few vehicles lately that have been dyed with not so good color matching. Knowing that it’s usually someone either color blind or just down right…well I won’t go that far, but if the color isn’t right then your repair will look worse then if you had just left it alone.

Good lighting does help and pretty much a necessity. Natural lighting is better but in the garages we get stuck in the winter months it doesn’t help much, but what do you do, you improvise as my wife says. I use a dent light, which works pretty good, but I have also have used a under the hood light bar then hooking inside the car that stretches the width of the car and hooks on the door jams, they work great. Shorter light bars are great for light in a small places. Be careful with using florescence they sometimes throw your tinting off, if you can get some natural light to your project then great. The customer sees the the car in natural light mostly anyways so your color needs to be spot on.

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