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Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

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Old 03-31-2009 | 08:28 PM
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Default Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Just wondering if anyone had any tips for how to do this. Did a search but didn't find anything. Anyhow, I have a few minor scuffs to the outside bolsters of the leather seats in the 05 Limited Roadster I just bought. No actual tears to the leather, thankfully, just kind of worn down in a couple of small spots. Driver's side outside bolster is the biggest problem area, as you would expect.

Car has the Slate/Cedar interior, but the scuffs are all on the slate. I've used leather car seat stuff you can get on eBay on another car in the past to cover this problem, but it never lasts.

Any suggestions? I was thinking paint, or maybe even a solid wood stain. Anyone else done anything like this? I really just want to cover up the problem so it isn't noticeable, not make any big repairs. Thanks in advance for any advice!
 
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Old 03-31-2009 | 08:45 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Originally Posted by Toddy
Any suggestions? I was thinking paint, or maybe even a solid wood stain. Anyone else done anything like this? I really just want to cover up the problem so it isn't noticeable, not make any big repairs. Thanks in advance for any advice!
Do not use paint or wood stain. That will ruin your seats. It will be cheaper to just buy new seats or have them reupholstered with new leather.

On an all black seat, the preferred method would be an alum mordant pre-treatment with Solvent Black 7/Nigrosine dye diluted 2:1 in Ethyl Acetate. use a dauber, and never a spray bottle. Still use urethane gloves and an organic respirator with safety glasses. Solvent Dye is basically the stuff that is inside bic pens. It is non water soluble and very mildly ethanol soluble. Performing a post-dye wash with 70% ethanol/30% distilled water in a spray bottle and dry buffing will remove most of the ethanol soluble surface dye. The resultant finish should not transfer to clothing.

Do not attempt to use a Methanol and Aniline Dye combination as it has extremely high toxicity. I do not know what to recommend for any color other than black.

There are some kits out there that use polyurethane crack filler and paint, but while they claim "great results" it just sounds like a bandaid fix and would probably look pretty bad within months.

If all this sounds scary to you, I would consider just having the seats re-upholstered or simply replaced.
 

Last edited by sonoronos; 03-31-2009 at 09:01 PM.
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Old 03-31-2009 | 08:53 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

I found this leather cleaner conditioner called moneysworth best gel cream cleaner conditioner that i had bought for my leather jacket and never used. so i decided to give it a try. It worked great for the scratches and sofened the leather on the seat. Its actually in your neck of the woods woodbridge ontario the web site is www.moneysworth-best.com


Adrian
 
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Old 03-31-2009 | 09:00 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Thanks guys. I'll check that out, Hoverhog, thanks for the advice.

BTW, Sonoronos, I'm not talking about slapping paint all over the seats. I'm not quite that dumb. I was talking about using a fine art brush and just doing very tiny little touch-ups. I've got a dark stain that would almost perfectly match the seats. The stuff I got from eBay, that's really all it was, a stain. Looked awesome at first, mixed the colors perfectly, but it wore off in a few months. Too much of a pain doing all the mixing to get a color match again, and the paints had dried out anyhow.
 
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Old 03-31-2009 | 09:02 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Oh, I started conditioning the seats with Maguiar's on Saturday, too. I'm hoping a few good soakings will help the scuffs, but based on what I went through with my 300, all conditioner will do is mask the problem when the seats are still soaked.
 
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Old 04-01-2009 | 08:38 AM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

If the seats are truly scuffed then the dye has actually been abraded off. No simple leather cleaner/conditioner in the world is going to fix that. The situation is not all that different from sanding paint off a fender - you don't apply a coat of wax to fix it.

There are auto upholstery places that do a fine job of dying leather, and others that are a total waste. The trick is finding a good one in your area.
 
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Old 04-01-2009 | 09:47 AM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Change your entry/exit habits as well. Left bolster wear is due to sliding in and out of the car. If you kind of plant your butt into the middle of the seat and swivel, it's less wear on the bolster. Otherwise, leather treatment will help but not undo the damage.
 
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Old 04-01-2009 | 11:29 AM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Originally Posted by Goldwing
Change your entry/exit habits as well. Left bolster wear is due to sliding in and out of the car. If you kind of plant your butt into the middle of the seat and swivel, it's less wear on the bolster. Otherwise, leather treatment will help but not undo the damage.
I just bought the car, so it wasn't my butt doing this... Though I'm 6'4" and 280, so any way I can get in there will have to do.

The scruffing isn't bad enough to warrant a reupholstering, or spending a couple hundred bucks at an auto shop that specializes in this sort of thing. Went down that road years ago with a Chrysler Daytona Pacifica, had to get a whole seat cover from Chrysler to do the match, was stitched perfectly, but the leather quality was so poor that the problem reoccurred within a couple of years.

Don't want to make any big alterations, as the leather quality in the Crossfire seems fantastic, and I don't want to mess this up. Was hoping something simple would do the trick.
 
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Old 04-01-2009 | 01:03 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Found this stuff at eBay just now. Not sure if there is a color match for the Xfire, though. See nothing but GM and Japanese cars so far...

http://search.stores.ebay.com/Summit...360995QQsofpZ0
 
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Old 04-01-2009 | 01:11 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Found it. Looks like 160 Dark Slate is what I would need. Just bought a can, I'll let everyone know how this works out.

http://www.bryndana.com/cchart.html
 
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Old 04-01-2009 | 01:29 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Originally Posted by Goldwing
Change your entry/exit habits as well. Left bolster wear is due to sliding in and out of the car. If you kind of plant your butt into the middle of the seat and swivel, it's less wear on the bolster. Otherwise, leather treatment will help but not undo the damage.
Two words Goldwing. Old and fat!!! If i can't get the door all the way open due to parking impediments then I have a hard time getting in that car real easy. It's rather ego deflating as well. I need slippery clothes.
 
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Old 04-01-2009 | 08:45 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Originally Posted by Goldwing
Change your entry/exit habits as well. Left bolster wear is due to sliding in and out of the car. If you kind of plant your butt into the middle of the seat and swivel, it's less wear on the bolster. Otherwise, leather treatment will help but not undo the damage.
On our Jaguar XK, I used a shoe leather dye (in tan) from CVS with a watercolor brush and applied it to the driver's boulster scuffs. Shockingly, it looked good and was 95% unnoticeable. I was pretty proud and managed to avoid the jaw dropping recover price.
 

Last edited by s40guy; 04-01-2009 at 08:52 PM.
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Old 04-01-2009 | 08:47 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Originally Posted by rush549
Two words Goldwing. Old and fat!!! If i can't get the door all the way open due to parking impediments then I have a hard time getting in that car real easy. It's rather ego deflating as well. I need slippery clothes.
Ha! Keep some crisco in the Console. lol
 
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Old 04-29-2009 | 12:23 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

I recently noticed some scuffing on my drivers outside bolster along the stitches. My entry and exit methods are alway very careful to avoid wearing on this surface.(I put new leather on my old Z car PITA) I think the edge on my Xfire is getting abrasion from the seat belt dragging across the sitching so I have been more carefull how I drag it across. Meanwhile I will order some leather dye. My seats are more charcoal grey than black, close to RC8 Dark Mist Grey. Toddy, give us a post if you have tried the dye on your seat.
 
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Old 04-29-2009 | 12:42 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Thanks for the reminder, I meant to post a reply here earlier. I did use that 160 Dark Slate in a couple of my Chryslers.

It works perfectly for touch-ups, and you can actually go all the way and cover a bolster completely. The match is dead on for this. I have one bolster in my 300m seriously worn in some spots -- there were light cracks in the leather there when I bought the car new that I should have had fixed under warranty but stupidly didn't -- and the spray perfectly covered this spot. For the Crossfire, since the marks were much smaller, I just sprayed the paint/dye on a cloth and massaged it carefully into the little wear marks. I also used an art brush. Then after drying, I did the seats with Meguiar's Gold. Presto! The marks vanished. I wish I'd taken before and after pics, but I got right into doing the job when I got the paint home and forgot.

So I'm pretty happy. Only one big warning -- this stuff dries really, really fast. I made some mistakes with the 300m the first pass and had to clean the seats off and go over everything again. You really have to use it with quick passes and very thin coats, as the leather is of course very smooth and you can easily wind up with drip marks that can be hard to get off if it dries. Use quick, thin coats, though, and the paint/dye blends into the seat perfectly.

Also, this stuff seems incredibly durable, given the scrubbing I had to do to get it off the 300m seat where I screwed up the first application.
 
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Old 04-29-2009 | 07:02 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Toddy

The 160 dark slate grey you mentioned is on which website. I couldn't find that number under Chrysler.
 
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Old 04-29-2009 | 08:10 PM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

I bought from eBay. Link to the seller is above in this thread. Here's a direct link to what I bought:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/CBD-1...3387QQtcZphoto
 
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Old 04-30-2009 | 09:46 AM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

Toddy if your spray can doesn't work Mike is correct, get the seats re dyed. Any high end car dealer in your area can tell you who they use. This is done a lot more often than you may think on used cars.
Pat
 
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Old 04-30-2009 | 11:49 AM
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Default Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

I ordered my dye from Leatherworld. I did not want a spray can. One 8oz. bottle Dk Slate Grey 7330 was $31.39 delivered. It is listed as Crossfire color so I hope it will match. I will just touch up where needed and post my results.

http://www.leatherworldtech.com/cate...?categoryid=62
 
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Old 06-30-2011 | 09:20 PM
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Thumbs up Re: Touching up scuffs on leather seats?

I just redid my outside bolsters today. Thanks for the above info -- very helpful.





As you can see, did lots of masking and used lots of drops to catch the overspray.

Used the Color Bond "Leather, Vinyl & Hard Plastic Refinisher", 160 Chrysler Dark Slate. Got a new 12 oz. can on eBay for about $21 including shipping.

And it seems to have worked! The stuff is really thin -- maybe 98% solvent and 2% pigment. So it took five coats on one side, and three on the other. 10 minutes between coats, and holding breath while spraying (potent, very flammable stuff -- use lots of ventilation). And wear goggles over your glasses, or else ...

After drying for a few hours, it felt like sandpaper. But lightly wiping it down with a microfiber towel removed the roughness. Looks and feels good! Color is very close, and the difference may just be that the remainder of the seats still have conditioner on them (I scrubbed the to-be-painted parts beforehand to remove). Will give 'em a couple of days before hitting the new surfaces with the conditioner. {July 2, 2011: Look great after treating all of the seats with Meguiar's leather cleaner and conditioner. Intentionally didn't rub the redyed portions very firmly.}
 

Last edited by LugNut; 07-02-2011 at 12:18 PM.


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