Nonna’s interior repairs started first, so I’m willing to sit in it for a test drive. This is because aging cars are always full of signs of use. In addition to normal wear, there are also pollutants that are invisible to the naked eye. I don’t consider myself a germophobe, but I still don’t like sitting directly in a 31-year-old cockpit.
The current state of Nonna’s leather is one of the reasons why I like her. The beige leather is worn and hardened from lack of maintenance, but there was no obvious damage. In the past, all the cars I’ve restored have looked like brand new, they tend to have super low miles and refined leather. This time, I wanted to preserve some traces of time in memory of my grandma. From a deeper understanding, I don’t have any psychological burden of using it on a daily basis. I don’t have to worry about my near mint leather aging again and can spend a lot of time in the driver’s seat.
Therefore, Nonna’s restoration is a completely new attempt. We no longer emphasize factory new, but rather preserve its visual history as much as possible. This led to a new set of debates, as cars are a complex jumble of organic and inorganic matter, obviously everything cannot be restored to the same extent in the same way. Overall the car has no vital signs, but the leather from the animal adds warmth to the car and makes repair difficult. For Nonna, almost only the seats are leather, so we discuss this most difficult issue first.
First let’s look at what we inherited. At first glance, the beige leather seems a little darker than it should be, a result of 30 years in the tropical sun and dirt. Due to different materials and manufacturers, different shades of beige appear in the interior rather than uniform beige. Beige interiors do cause this headache more than other colors, even if you check the car on BAT with only a few hundred miles on it, it’s faded. In the past I would have definitely replaced any faded parts, but not this time, just leave it as is. Color is part of history, not a target for healing.
Both front seats have noticeable wrinkles, more so on the driver’s side. The cushion leather has been hardened to a cardboard-like texture and is shiny, sides of the backrest recevied many wrinkles from frequent in and out. Fortunately, these issues were covered up by the beige paint. Because the exposed naked leather after the paint peels off is also beige, they are less noticeable on the beige paint. So if you want a car with aging seats, beige is the choice. If it were black, it would be disastrous white cracks on black leather.
My butt detected that the driver’s seat cushion had lost support on the left side, which explained why the piping was cracked, and apparently the seat cover was stretched as it lost proper support. I actually think the perforated area on the seat cushions is almost cracking as well, they’ve completely lost their toughness and can’t handle any more stretching. Therefore, in order to save the fragile leather and ensure future use, the padding must be replaced. In addition, there are problems with the relay and motor of the electric seat, lumbar support and so on, complete disassembly of the seat is inevitable.
After disassembling the leather and padding, you can see the damage to the padding. The outside of the pad has cracked, but the sponge looks fine. I removed a seat cushion from a Californian car and it had a very full shape. In the meantime, I use Leatherique’s rejuvenator to pre-soften the leather cases. It may not like the expanded padding, now it’s as crisp as a pancake and I don’t want the remaining fibrous layer to break later on in the installation.
Compare the two paddings. The donor was a California 1998 S 320, which stayed in California until 2007 and then went to the continental climate western China. This is an ideal padding resource, given how important climate is to these cars. But as of now, I have no regrets about my first tropical resident.
After installing good padding, the leather case did not become as straight as expected, and the obvious wrinkles were still there, or even more serious. Yes, the leather has actually been stretched due to the collapsed padding, and the stretched area is now slightly larger than the padding under it. For a preserve example like this, you must lower your expectation. Those Of course, before we get too frustrated, we can see what Leatherique’s products can do.
I deal with many leather care products and Leatherique is the type that you can’t go wrong with. I usually order 8 oz bottles, as the website recommends 4 oz per seat, to see if that will suffice for the two front seats. In past experience, I have found that Rejuvenator is significantly affected by gravity. For the backrest, if you don’t square it and quote it, the liquid will collect in the waist. This will keep the waist sticky until all the excess fluid drains out again due to gravity. Surface wiping with Prestine Clean does not work. So it’s best to disassemble the backrest and lay it flat.
The moment the Rejuvenator came into contact with the leather, many dark cracks immediately appeared. This is where the paint is flaking off, and since the color of the skin is so close to the beige paint, the ravines where the paint is lost are not that obvious. The skin is now a darker color from being soaked and it looks like it has a lot of black cracks. Softened seats must be seats with obvious cracks? Would rather sit on hard leather to cover up cracks? Don’t be too quick to despair about this. I’ll figure out how to mitigate this later.
I use a roller and hand massage to help the leather drink. For such hard leather, you cannot expect immediate results after being exposed to the sun for 30 years in the tropics without any maintenance. The first day I applied 3 oz to each seat, which is 1.5 oz each for the seat cushion and backrest, and then sealed it with protective film overnight. I applied them about four times on the first day, and they held up really well, and the oil that was originally attached to the surface dried completely in a short time.
The next morning the leather was much softer, but there were still areas that were completely dry, so I reapplied the remaining 1 oz to those areas and sealed it. The two seats consume a total of 8 oz, which I think is not enough, after all we still have the headrests and center armrest. The Rejuvenator is very hard to get for me, there are no agents in the whole country and I have to import it from the US.
Now we have soft seats that have corpse-like veins. I don’t plan on re-dying the leather, so that’s a problem. The fact is that oil does not dry out on its own, rather the veins will remain as long as the leather remains supple. So the goal is to remove grease from the surface, and only. Our factory matched product, Prestine Clean can’t do anything about it, it can’t break down grease. If you check closely, the Priestine Clean also didn’t take all dirt in the pores out, whether how hard you push. This is theLeatherique cleaner, it’s not aggresive, and less effective in some way.
While there are many cleansers that can remove oil, alkaline cleansers are generally not recommended for use on skin. It is best not to use highly fluid liquids. We only want the oil on the surface to be neutralized, and we do not want the detergent to penetrate below and destroy the hard-won softening. I chose two kinds, one is WD40 oil remover, which is foamy and has a very strong cleaning effect. It only takes a little bit to remove the grease and dirt on the surface. When the cracks become shallower, don’t forget to use Prestine Clean to remove the remaining WD40 immediately. The other one is Dr. Beckmann’s carpet stain remover. They don’t recommand use it on the leather but my experince is it’s ok to use less dosage and remove them quick.
Due to gravity, the oil does not move up back to the surface, so we have a softened and clean skin. It is for this reason that it is very important to disassemble the backrest and put it down. We need the oil to be hidden vertically under the skin instead of flowing along the direction of the core to the waist. During use, the grease may return to the surface due to pressure, so use the same method to remove it.
Excess oil is a common problem and it’s best to heat the treated interior by placing it in the sun. When you open the car door you will smell a strong smell of oil, which is the excess oil evaporating from the leather. Okay, look what we got? After being heated by natural light for a day (the temperature inside the car may be 25°C), the dark veins have become much lighter, but they are still more obvious than the shriveled leather before.
Every employee passed by us said that the seats on the car looked old relative to the rest of it, maybe should be replaced. I have a set of near-mint beige seats sitting in storage, but I really don’t want to part with anything that’s just aged and not fundamentally damaged. So that’s it, maybe one day I’ll change my mind, but until that day comes we’ll just keep the way it is.
