Revive leather trim
We love a leathery classic, especially when the leather has the creasing and patination of a life well-lived, but sometimes patination crosses the line into decrepitude. The leather cracks and splits, the stitching tears its holes, and the leather’s life is over.
There are leather magicians who can remedy such damage, but normally it’s time for a re-trim. Yet if the leather is just worn, faded and scuffed, you can revive it yourself with very pleasing results.
Done the wrong way, a DIY attempt can look unnaturally shiny, as if you have painted your leather with Dulux Weathershield. Done the right way, with a lot of patience, the result will have the correct subtle sheen and will simply look like gently sat-upon, well-preserved leather.
I used a Gliptone kit to revive the Buckskin-coloured leather seats of a 1967 Rover 2000, but other systems are available. The leather was intact but dried out, its colour faded to a light, patchy grey, with the brown of the base hide showing through in places. The first task was to remove the seats, because you need to be able to get at every crevice and contour.
Next, I cleaned the leather with the kit’s ‘gentle cleaner’, scrubbing it in with a nailbrush, letting it soak, wiping it and the released dirt away with a damp cloth, and repeating until clean. With the leather still damp I rubbed in the kit’s conditioner with a soft cloth, the heady, albeit artificial, smell of fresh leather pervading the garage as the conditioner soaked in. This I repeated until the leather was supple, then I wiped off the residue with the kit’s degreaser.
It’s important to get into all the seams and cracks, to make these stress points supple and ensure the leather dye will adhere properly. Now comes the exciting part: applying the water-based dye. The easy way to a good finish is to dab it on with a sponge, covering the dark, worn patches first, then, when it’s dry, dabbing the entire seat. You might need a second coat for full opacity. The dye’s natural finish is matt, but you can add glossing agent (in the kit) for a slight sheen in the final coat.
The whole process has taken a few days and your garage smells like a leatherworks, but with its seats refitted your car’s cabin, with luck, now looks fabulous.