Automotive Interior Repair with The Interior Guy

I Just got this email from one of my suppliers today and thought I’d pass this little jewel onto to you my readers. I’ve got one of these and if your into airbrushing and art of any sort then an image projector is an awesome little tool to add. Read the rest of this entry »

Well that time of year is here again. The cold weather has arrived and here we go with trying to get our automotive water based dyes to dry in a reasonable amount of time.

Painting in temperatures less then 40 degrees makes it almost impossible to yield a perfect repair without a little preparation first.

The first and foremost thing is to heat up the area where the repair is being made. Now the best way to do this is with a hairdryer, not your heat gun. This will heat the area just enough to make it easier to work with and not damage the area any further (like a hole in vinyl getting larger due to to much heat being put to it).  Heating the area will also help your compounds work like their supposed to along with giving you a warmer surface for the dye to stick to helping in curing time. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve run across this one a lot lately. Leather seats turning a shade of Blue on the lighter colored tan and gray leather seats. It’s what I call “Suit Blue”.

What this really is, is when the leather turns a blue color where your back, butt, or arm rests on the wet leather and the dye from your clothing is then transferred to the leather.

The dye from your clothing is actually dyeing the leather in your car. The leather soaks it up like a sponge, like I’ve always said “What you put on leather stays in leather”, and as you see it’s true.

Whats really bad about this is there’s is no cleaner to remove this from the leather without damaging the leather or the leather’s original dye, at least not one that I know about.  Your only solution to this is to have the seats, armrests, ect. resurfaced or dyed to bring it back to it’s original color. Read the rest of this entry »

Today was definitely the day for “Blue”. I worked on 3 different blue interiors today which is kinda unusual. It’s weird like that though.  I’ll go for weeks and not have one blue interior and then bam all at once I’ll get them all in one day. The last blue one I worked on today was a 1980 Mercedes 450sl. The dash was cracked from Read the rest of this entry »

Heat guns have got to be one the most used tools in my business. I use them for heating my repairs on a daily basis, whether it be a vinyl repair, a leather repair, melting plastic when needed, or just heating up a piece prior to repair.  Having the correct heat gun to do these repairs is crucial to your success.

If a heat gun breaks down while your doing a repair it can cost you time and money in the long run. So Read the rest of this entry »

This is gonna be kinda a quick post today. Sorry for the lapse in info lately I’ve had other duties to attend to lately and haven’t had a lot of time to write. But I did want to throw a little info out to all of the automotive interior repair professionals. This little trick gives you a pretty good grain pattern when done correctly. I call this “The Reverse Grain“.

This graining technique is actually pretty easy and gives you a light grain on a leather repair when a little more hide factor is needed. Read the rest of this entry »

I get questions on occasion on whether seat covers are needed to keep a cars leather seats looking new. This is one question that I have to ask a question back before I can give a truthful answer.

” Are you going to leave them on all the time? ”

If they answer is yes then I have to say that their seat probably won’t look new when they take them off say a year or two from now. Read the rest of this entry »

I get into so many autos that the buttons on the radio are peeling off and what your left with are white buttons that just look awful. At night it can be at the least distracting. Have you seen one of those? Well Viper Products has done it again and has come up with a fix for those peeling buttons. Its a two part film. A translucent film and a black film with cut outs for the lettering. All you do is sand the peeling radio button to give you a smooth surface to put the film onto. Prep, then lay the film over the radio button and heat it to reform the coating to button. The lights from the radio still shine through the lettering and the finished product looks, as Viper Products always does, factory. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey guys…It’s been a while since I’ve posted a helpful tip to add to your arsenal of automotive interior repairs I’ve given here on my blog.

So I thought of giving you a little bit on Stain Removal in Carpet. This is one thing I get a lot of questions for and that is how to get those nasty brown, or black, or even red stains out of the interior carpet of the vehicles I work on on a daily basis.

The trick isn’t to it isn’t really a trick at all, it’s timing and knowledge of what to use where and when. Getting to a spill before it gets a chance to soak in is your best defense against a stain in your carpet. If you spill something wipe it up and soak it up as quickly as possible and then flush with water and soak it up with a towel, or what ever you have at the time. But thats not always the case and thats where this little guide will help you, but really if you can wipe spills up a fast as you can and this helps to get the actual stain out later when you have more time. Read the rest of this entry »

I used my new heat tool today and WOW what a little wonder this thing is. It looks like a weapon from Star Wars and you have heat control, pinpoint control. This is probably got to be the neatest heat gun I’ve ever purchased, and really it’s not a conventional heat gun but an ultra torch equipped with a pistol grip fan motor. Read the rest of this entry »

Your as good as the products you use…Have you been searching for the right automotive interior products to get the job done right the first time? I know I have. I have been in the automotive interior repair business for a long time and have used a lot of different interior products in my repairs. I have used different water based dyes and leather repair compounds from different suppliers with so many different results, some good and some really bad. I have over the years learned one thing and that is your only as good as what products you use. If the products you use to do a repair fail then you fail. It doesn’t matter if it looked good when you left, it has to last. Why would someone call you back to do another repair for them if the job you did before didn’t last or looked like your kids did it. Well they wouldn’t. You have to have the top of the line products that you can stand behind and for lack of better words, guarantee. Read the rest of this entry »

What a dreary day….It’s rained here now for 2 days solid. We’re getting whats left of hurricane Hanna. We needed it though, things were starting to dry up. It’s hard to believe we needed the rain after all we had this spring. I makes it hard doing interior repair when it’s so wet outside though, water based dyes take forever to dry and whats really hard is trying to fix a cigarette burn in cloth when the humidity is so high, virtually impossible. But I did manage to get some stuff done today, and one that I’m going to talk about today and it’s those ugly screw holes in plastic that have been left from the previous owner of the automobile. Read the rest of this entry »

Well I hope your holiday weekend was a good one. Labor Day is always the last blast of the summer here for us. We spent our time at the lake soaking up some sun, and fun. It was a beautiful weekend, and the lake was finally back down to pretty much normal from all the rain we’ve had here. This year was definitely one for the record books. With the lake being up so far and so murky that the fishing has been terrible, but I did manage to pull a few out this year. I caught two this time down, a 14″ and a 15″ Bass, not real sure what the weight was on them though, but they were a couple of beauty’s.

As I was sitting there on the dock this weekend I couldn’t help to think of what I was going to write this week. I started thinking of some jobs that have been somewhat of booger for me, and I couldn’t help to think of the fist time I painted silver plastic trim. You know where the paint rubs off or scratches off and leaves you the black plastic underneath. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever had one of those days when it seems as if you were running in circles and tripping over everything, well today was my day. Man what a day, things went smoothly with my repairs, thank God, but I couldn’t hold on to anything and every time I turned around I was either bumping into something (like the edge of doors, ouch!) or tripping over my cords and hoses. Read the rest of this entry »

The infamous foam steering repair….Already you can see I’m not a big fan of this kind of repair, but I have done a lot of them and have had pretty good luck with them. Read the rest of this entry »

Today at work as I was working on a pretty badly cracked up Jeep Grand Cherokee leather seat, and my wife and youngest showed up to say hi. It was quite a nice break from a mind bending repair. She does that every once in a while, it’s great being my own boss and being able to take a break when I want to. As I was saying bye and corralling my 5 year old back into our 2001 Chevy Tahoe, I couldn’t help to notice the carpet. GROSS, and that was an understatement. So ya all know what I did when I got home from work, cleaned carpet. Something my wife has been trying to get me to do now forever. But working on vehicles all day that’s usually the last thing I want to do when I get home from work is work on another car but sometimes we have to do what our boss says. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

What a beautiful work day it was here in the Ozarks! We had 60′s in the morning and low 80′s this afternoon, which is really unusual for August.

Well I said in my last post that I would give you guys a post on my daily activities, and here’s the first. Thought I’d share a little of what I do on a daily basis, to let you all know in a little more detail of the repairs I do on a daily basis. The way I’m gonna try to do this is to not just list the vehicles I worked on and tell you what I fixed and so on, but I’m gonna pick a couple that either gave me fits or I feel would be a good one to talk about. Some will be long and some short, but I hope to give you a lot of info. 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 »