Don’t pay to have your leather seats in your car replaced when they begin to fade. Aaron Baird owns West Coast Recon, an automotive reconditioning company based in southern California. Here he explains how it’s possible to fix faded leather so it looks as good as new.
If you have faded leather in your car, generally it is on the bolster on the seat where you slide in and out every day, usually on the driver’s seat. Basically, you just rub the dye off of the leather due to everyday use, and it begins to look worn and faded. Luckily, there is a fairly simple way to repair it.
Using a Leather Cleaner
We start by cleaning the leather off with some leather cleaner and maybe a brush, getting all the dirt out of it and cleaning it well. Then we tape it off or mask it off, and sometimes we just use towels to cover it up. What we are aiming for is to cover all areas of the interior of the car that you don’t want to get dye on.
After that, we scuff the leather where we are going to be redying it with a light pad. That helps create a certain surface area so the dye can bond well and really sink in. Then we match the dye by eye to get the perfect color match for your leather.
Getting a Color Match
We have four primary colors when we match paint to the leather: black, white, red and yellow. We can make pretty much any color that is in a car today with those four primary colors. We match it by eye which takes only about five to 10 minutes. I have been doing this for 15 years so it’s pretty quick.
Then we put the dye in small airbrush gun, an HVLP or High Volume Low Pressure gun, and we strain it into there, making sure no impurities are in the dye. Then we blend it a little until it looks like it has never faded.
Successful Process
This process works well. The only instances where it won’t work are where the person is quite dirty, with sunscreen and lotions soaked deep into the leather of the seat. At that point, the leather is so filled with oil and leather it will not bond. Luckily, I have literally only seen that once!
We also can repair small rips or tears in your car’s leather interior, and can also take care of cigarette or cigar burns not only in the leather but also in your carpets and vinyl areas of your car. We also can repair and dye leather steering wheels. Give us a call today!
