In for a penny, in for a pound... Recently Leatherique-ed my entire interior and it CAME ALIVE - didn't realize how good it could look! Unfortunately, I can now see that the driver side leather is pretty rough - top layer even flaking off in places... I doubt there's a repair process (unless somebody knows different) - so expecting I'll need to re-skin that seat - which, after taking the passenger seat 'bottom" off/on to replace CPOD grid, should be doable. Anybody know where to get only the driver's seat upholstery in "standard beige/tan"? Googling didn't turn up anything... Kevin
Don't have any advice on a place to have this done, but my advice would be to do both seats at the same time. With stuff like that, you will never get a perfect match in color and then the two seats will always look different. It's the old humor, why buy one, when you can get two at twice the price?
Your least expensive route will be to find a used set on ebay or through a recycler that is in better shape than yours. Then resell yours afterwards. At least then, there will be some wear on them which won't look completely off compared to the rest of the vehicle. It's also easy to mix and match bolsters with inserts so you can swap around parts easily to make a great set. Any new cover will likely stand out as new and seem out of place and could cost twice as much as a used set.
Darn... DP and GP are making too much sense... I was hoping there's a place that sells the premade leather covers that would just need installed locally... Market opportunity for anybody skilled with leather! Kevin
You wouldn't want anybody to anyway. The seats have airbags in them. I've seen too many shortcuts when it comes to remaking a deployment seam. Too many know-it-alls out there ready to put their theories of how an airbag works against your life or whoever your passenger is.
GP, The seats don’t have airbags, but the passenger seat has a CPOD “grid”, which goes on top of the foam and directly underneath the leather. I actually just replaced that CPOD/grid on my passenger seat - removed the bottom leather, swapped the CPOD, and put the leather back on - looks great and functions great - and that’s why I’d be willing to tackle doing the same thing on the drivers seat, which would be even easier than the passenger seat. From the link above, looks like what I’m after IS available - pricier than I’d like, but ain’t that how it goes? Won’t be tackling this project right away, but will let everybody know how it goes - good project for next winter! Kevin
You can definitely repair this, but it would be helpful to see the photos. I recently redyed the leather on my 360 and my TR in the 4208 beige - the original color. I used two different products in each, and found the TR to come out better. If you have contrast stitching, this won't work, but if its the white (read usually dirty) stitching, this process will recolor the stitching to the tan, so you'd have to live with that. However, it will save you thousands in recovering the seat and the original leather is still retained. I used the colourlock system for the 360 and a combination of the colourlock and color-plus system for the TR. For the 360 - the seats looked like this: Image Unavailable, Please Login Not terrible, but there's color and wear on the bolster and the color is faded and almost a brown rather than the tan it should be. After thoroughly cleaning and lightly sanding the seats, I sprayed on the color using a combination of an airbrush and an iwata small paint gun with a .9mm tip. This ensures very even coverage. The wear and deep cracks were filled with colourlock leather filler and sanded down. The final step is sanding with 2000-3000 grit and then spraying the colorlock top coat with the crosslinker. It gives a new OEM appearance and also protects from UV, stains and wear. Without it, you'll likely get more wear and fade. Here's how it turned out: Image Unavailable, Please Login All the wear is gone and the seats look brand new. I also did a spot repair on my 355 which retained more color but had more wear than the 360 so I didn't color everything, just the worn spots. Image Unavailable, Please Login Completely gone and looks pretty good for an amateur. Image Unavailable, Please Login The TR has been a MAJOR project and the interior was very rough. I redyed every single piece in the car using the color-plus system, and then coating with the colour-lock top coat, which the car didn't have, but will protect it in the long run. All of the leather was significantly faded and the seats were well worn: Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login I prefer the color of the color-plus system, I think it is richer and seems to really deeply penetrate the leather a bit more than the colourlock. The door panels came out quite nicely and has a nice smooth finish with the top coat on it: Image Unavailable, Please Login The brown leather was also redyed and top coated using the colorplus system. This is a much bigger project than just the seats, but you can knock those out over the weekend. The cost of re-covering all the leather in these cars would be astronomical, and all in with the tools (including the spray guns) and all of the dye I used, I'm probably in this about $900. I was quoted $10k to re-cover just the brown leather in the TR (dash and center console), and now I have the original renewed leather that should last for many years. Hope this helps. Todd
USAF - 1, Thanks MUCH for the detailed reply! Left side of my drivers seat looks much like yours above - so I scratched my chin and come to the same conclusion as you that a "repair and dye" is the best path forward. Just got my "crack filler" and dye in hand yesterday so am shooting for this weekend to get down to it. My seat is also beige, but has red stitching I don't see a good way to work around... Follow-up with a fine tip red marker? Any helpful hints from the crowd would be appreciated. I'll be sure to post before-and-after pics - hope mine turns out as well as yours did!!! Kevin
Glad to hear you are doing this. I find this work very satisfying in that we are preserving the original leather with a fresh new look. As for the stitching, yeah I would not recommend using a gun on it, but you might be able to get a nice finish with an airbrush and taping off the stitching. I used an airbrush with masking tape around the stiching on the TR steering wheel to preserve the white stitching while recoloring the leather in black. Image Unavailable, Please Login And yes, you could definitely recolor the red stitching with a fabric marker. They have various permanent fabric markers on Amazon that work well. Avoid getting dye on the stitching because its very difficult to get off and recolor to red afterward.
There is a shop called color match in St. Louis (not too far from you) that does re dying and they are really reasonable. The dealers all use them here. I took my dash out and had them do it. Wasn’t 100/100 match to my existing leather, but I would give it 95/100. It’s extremely hard and you have to be about 4” away to even be able to see any difference, if you’re looking for it. Somebody else said it but everything that is re dyed won’t match perfectly but I have had my dash back in for two years and it looks good. Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat
Here are some replacement leathers for your seats a little less expensive than the one above. https://www.nicksforzaferrari.net/leather-seat-kits
