got a blue leather interior?

[Gayle]

Always feel a need to start with the disclaimer, this is not my car. It is hubby's former 525 we are putting up for sale tomorrow. Doing the last detailing. Wanted to share this technique and the results.

I treated these seats a couple of years ago with a product called "Hide Food" that is lanolin and then put blue shoe polish on them. They looked fabulous mainly because of the shoe polish, not the hide food. People would get in and talk about how great the interior looked. In the recent detailing supply binge, I bought the leatherique rejuvenator oil and cleaner. The leatherique took the polish off and seats looked like **** afterwards. All the cracks stood out and the leather seemed faded. Just redid the worst spots with the shoe polish again. Much better.

Three sets of pictures to follow. First is drivers seat bottom. Second is edge of drivers seat back. Third is a spot in the back seat where the color is worn off. The camera flash makes the pictures very unforgiving. To the naked eye, they look much better than the pictures. The color looks uniform (in the flash you can see the polish which is not yet dry).

If you want to try this at home, the polish is Meltonian boot and shoe polish --color 57 Imperial blue. About $3 at shoe stores that carry a full line of supplies. Ratings: Ease of use. High. A 5 minute job. Wear rubber gloves to avoid blue fingers. Effectiveness: Based on test of last to years, highly effective. Zen fator rating: The cream in the jar is pleasant to look at. Finger paint texture. No noticeable smell.

[Gayle]

This is the most worn area.

[Gayle]

spot with color worn away

[ukm5]

Not gloating or anything, but the professional stuff gives a much better finish
http://www.netmgr.co.uk/seat1.jpg
http://www.netmgr.co.uk/seat2.jpg

[Gayle]

Enlighten me. What did you use? Yes yours looks very nice. You can gloat if you want. You deserve it . What kind of condition was in before?

[ukm5]

first of all you have to clean the leather, this is important otherwise you will leave the cracks open, i used some stuff from these people in the UK
http://www.liquidleather.com/liquidl.htm

then you dye it, again from these people, what you do is send them a sample of your leather and they mix up the stuff, when you apply is its just like cream but you dont rub it in you just leave it and as it dried it rubberises and adhiers to the leather

the smell is just like new again, its designed to bring out the leather smell not mask it with a perfume

EDIT: those seats are now about 16 years old and have done about 200 000 miles

[Gayle]

I haven't heard of that product. Wish I had known about it as you seats certainly look nice. I popped for the $50 for the leatherique rejevenator oil and cleaner and the seats looked worse afterwards. It seemed like the cracks opened up. I didn't want to do the leartherique color treatment after seeing the pictures of what happened to Whits with the passage of time so I didn't order that product.

http://www.bimmer.info/forum/showthread.php?t=12198&highlight=leatherique

We had the seats in our former e30 convertible professional redyed. I wasn't happy with that result as it seemed to dry out the leather even though they swore it wouldn't.

It is all mute now for me as we are selling the 525 and as I said the seats look much better than the pictures. The seats in the 535 are fabulous. I want to keep them that way... Maybe I should consider that product.

Anyone else had any experience with that product?

[Dan in NZ]

I saw a Porsche site where they had used the full Leatherique system, with amazing results. The guy re-dyed his seats from dark brown, to that light buttery tan Porsche colour.

There's that leatherique product that you put on the seats, then wrap them in cling film and leave in a warm area for a day or so... Supposed to be a miracle for worn leather.

[winfred]

i have the ultamate solution a buddy that owns a upholstery shop, i work on his car and he works on mine, all i gotta do is call him "oh dwane when ya got time to spiff up the e30?" theres no sub for the real thing i put a good 50k miles on the first respray in the e30 and it still looked decent when he said why don't you let me tighten that interior up? uh..sure :D

[McWatters]

O wow, i should post post pics of my leather seats from my 89 535i, its just horrible, grandcanyon(i prolly spelt that wrong but hey im Canadiand eh what do i care :P) of cracks. I never new such leather healing products were available.

I also considered putting some very nice racing seats into the car, however that was probably just the idiot street racing youth inside :D:D

I will post pictures of this tomorrow and you will cover your eyes in horror.

Cheers

J.Mcwatters