Automotive Interior Repair with The Interior Guy

Repairing and Painting Plastic

Plastic is one component that makes up most of the inside of a vehicle and can be one of most difficult to repair and paint. That is if you don’t replace the piece first. To be really honest when it comes to some of the plastic trim pieces, door panels, and kick panels its cheaper to replace the pieces then to repair them. But I do mean some, there are many instances where a little heat in the right spot or some dye applied to the surface can hide or repair an imperfection and save from replacement and that’s what I’m here today to talk about repairing and painting those cosmetic repairs on plastic interior panels. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been working lately with different leather repair compounds on leather wrapped steering wheels. There are so many different compounds used to repair leather but few that work really well for a leather steering wheel. The steering wheel takes more abuse then just about any other part in your vehicle. Think about it, you have to touch your steering wheel to drive and most of us don’t realize the damage until its already happened. There are some of you out there that have got to have a nervous habit or just like to rub the steering wheel a lot or something due to the shape of some of the steering wheels I repair, wow. 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 »

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 »

I ran across this article a few minutes ago and just thought I’d share this with my readers too, it kinda makes you think a little about how you come off to others in these hard times. The article was written by a local Missouri guy just up the road from me in Joplin. His name is JD Buckridge, he is a marketing expert.  I’ve been following him now for a while and he’s got some pretty good stuff to read, but anyways here’s the link to his blog, enjoy.

JD Buckridge – The Branding Specialist

Later…Mike”TIG”

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 »

This is a really impressive interview of a successful blogger who has been making millions of dollars from his automotive blog, Alborz Fallah. Thought you guys might want to see someone blogging for cash.

Alborz Fallah is just a normal blogger like us, he started to blog on June 2006 with 3 different blogs. Only 1 made it a huge success. Alborz started his blog like most people, sitting at home, writing content each day outside of the time he spent at his full time job. His blog grew, he started making money and he just kept working. Today Alborz’s blog has full time employees, he travels to Europe to test some of the most prestigious cars in the world and it’s fair to say he is living a dream making big money writing about a topic he loves. You can hear the complete interview with Alborz done by Yaro Starak here .

Alborz is also a graduated student of Yaro Starak class Blog Mastermind. Seems the class really works, now CarAdvice.com.au has already become the 6′th biggest traffic site in Australia. It’s just a 2 years old blog, and what an amazing achievement.

You have to hear this interview, it’s so inspiring. Ive always loved hearing interviews with successful bloggers. That inspires me to work even harder to be the next successful blogger too. The Interview is available to download in a .pdf file. You can also download the .mp3 where you can listen to it which is better here.

You might also want to check out the Yaro Starak blog class if you want to learn more about blogging for cash, and possilbly follow in Aborz’s footsteps. Go to Yaro Starak Blog Mastermind Class.

Automotive interior repair is a skill of a combination of art and magic, yes I said magic…What I really mean is it’s a skill to be able to trick the eye from not seeing an interior repair that has been made, that is the magic.

One little trick that we keep in our bag of pixie dust, is the art of texturizing a repair.

If you look in your automotive interior you see many different textures on the surfaces of the plastic trim pieces, vinyl covered door panels, and your leather and vinyl seats. All of these textures you see we have to imitate in someway to repair whatever has been damaged.

Texturizing a repair takes knowledge of products to use, skill in using them, and a lot of patience. Yes patience, when doing any automotive interior repair, patience is a virtue, if you get in a hurry you will fail, I promise. Read the rest of this entry »

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 here’s the right way to apply dyes to a finished leather seat. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a must see. Leather Magic is something else, if this product does what it says then wow. Not only is durable it stretches and holds in place.

There are a few downfalls, one the curing time. 48 hours, maybe for an individual but not for a tech in the field. The compounds I know of are quick and easy…And work. But if there is the repair that will hold up like that and then I’m all for to checking it out, looks. The other concern I have is dye, dying onto a wet surface…HMMMM. Don’t know. Well I’ll make a check into this and see.

Leather repair is a craft and not all products will work on everything. Trial and error to extent, but cleaning and prepping your area extensively, before you start any project will make your ending result a success.

Hope you like this it is pretty wild stuff.

If you got any comments on this one let me know, I’m really curious to see what everyone thinks on Leather Magic.

Sorry not meaning to be so harsh, it’s just for the past two nights I have been trying to get my website back up and running correctly. So a big apology to my viewers for the glitch in the site.

The problem was in the update from WordPress.  The new 2.5 version was released with a few bugs. Now I myself should have known to wait for a little while until the bugs were worked out but I did it anyway and payed a little for it. My site was viewable, but I couldn’t edit on my end.

Now I have confidence in WordPress and I know the bugs will be worked out, and wanted to say that I Do like the new layout of 2.5. It’s going to take a little time to adjust but the layout is nice looking and things seem to be working as they should.

So I just wanted to say hey to everyone and let you know I’m back, so post your questions in the forum and let’s get back to work.

GOT A CRACK IN YOUR SEAT?

Let me show you how the problem started, how to fix the problem, and how to prevent the problem from happening again.

Well of course I’m talking about your leather or vinyl car and boat seats. Read the rest of this entry »