Leather Rear Seat Repair

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MetBlue
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Leather Rear Seat Repair

Post by MetBlue »

---THE PROBLEM, and a quick fix – surely? ---
A not uncommon problem with aging trims – Leather shrinkage and fragile / torn stitches across the top of the rear seat. Leather apparently still intact though. The car is a 91 Excel, technically I’m told NOT an SE, although it is one of the last to be made. The trim is similar to (same as?) the Celebration models, with full leather and the perforated leather centre panel.
Responding to requests for a more detailed description of my recent repair, I’ve put this thread together to detail the good, bad and the ugly, plus some things I learnt and would do differently if doing again. Hopefully you’ll find something of interest and relevance in the following, even if you don’t need to cure this particular problem,
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So what to do?
Plan A : Remove from car, get some leather feed products, then hopefully draw gap back together with what I think would be called blind stitching ( The quick fix). I got a bottle of leather rejuvenator and leather clean from Leatherique and set to with the rejuvenator ( this was August last year, so you’ll soon see this has been a long journey – I was doing other things along the way though ). Fortunately you don’t need back seats to drive the car, or even get an MOT as it turns out, as long as the seat belts are in!
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This product is wiped on or pour a little onto surface and rub in with fingers ( which I later realised was a better way to go, but more about that later), then leave for 24 hours to soak in, then repeat until it’s not getting drawn in any more.
Several days and applications later, I realised essentially this stuff was softening the surface leather colouring, turning it very sticky, but I wasn’t sure it was actually getting through and into the leather. In effect, it was initially a very expensive colour remover. Gradually though, larger areas were being exposed of the base leather with no applied surface colour, and the rejuvenator was starting to do what it’s designed for. It was here I realised the other method of working in with the fingers was more effective. You can tell when the rejuvenator is being drawn into the surface, as the surface darkens, then lightens some time later. Essentially, the surface colour acting as a barrier has gone and the surface is now porous.
After a couple of weeks, I was ready to try drawing the gap back in. Laced up some thread and very carefully started to tighten the thread.
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:( :( :(
Note the second from left stitch on the bottom row and how it has just torn out. This happen with very little tension in the thread and certainly no sign of the gap narrowing. 
Conclusion : The leather fibres have lost all their strength and the leather is not going to re-stretch.
Time for plan B
What goes together.... Must come apart.

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MetBlue
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Re: Leather Rear Seat Repair

Post by MetBlue »

---PATCH PLAN---
Now convinced the leather was beyond recovery as far as any strength was concerned, and that in no way was it going to stretch back to original shape, I decided to patch a piece of leather in. Earlier, I’d bought a full black leather skin for remaking a few easy trim parts (to break up the mass of mucky brown trim, see my Excel interior trim thread), so material readily available. – Add a couple of Black flashes into the damaged area – Lets call this plan B.
The patches would need something solid to stitch to, so in good “Repair Shop” tradition, it was onto fleabay for some pig skin to stick along the old leather edges.
FIRST LESSON : At this stage, I thought I could do this whole repair without major invasive surgery, so had removed staples and turned back the leather from the seat rear, ONLY in the middle area (essentially between the top seat belt mountings). It was in this condition I stuck the pigs skin on using contact adhesive, but results were not great, with a few ripples that I later had to cut out with a razor blade. I think it was also the difficulty I had sticking the Pigs skin on smoothly that made me realise I had to turn back the leather over the whole top surface.
So what followed was an hour or so of carefully separating leather glued to foam padding and occasionally resorting to a razor blade. A couple of photos showing most difficult parts of this step.
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To be honest, it was not too difficult and I couldn’t have got the job done to my satisfaction without doing this.
I should have added that as I started to unfold the leather, a few seams were coming apart at the ends, so these were repaired before doing too much peal back.
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And the end result at this point of “No going back now !” Finally you can see the pig skin and how much easier it would have been to apply at this stage of the job. You can also see that the fabric backing sandwiching the perished foam was cut back and I stuck it down to the leather to stop it moving and rippling up.
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What goes together.... Must come apart.

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MetBlue
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Re: Leather Rear Seat Repair

Post by MetBlue »

---CHANGING PLANS---
It was about this time that I was making good progress on some of the black highlights around the car, (all of which were reversible) but I began to question whether black flashes in the back seat (that would not be reversible) was the best end game. – Onto plan C, back to Fleabay and a bought a smaller piece of leather in a sandy light brown colour. By this stage, a separate project of repairing and re-colouring the drivers seat was progressing well, so plan was to re-colour the leather to match the seats, but thinking it needed to be done from a base leather colour that was close”ish” to the gold.
After receiving, re-colouring and prep though, the grain on the new leather piece was completely different and wasn’t looking right,, so ditch plan C and onto D, which was to try re-colouring the black leather. I had been concerned that a base black leather would not re-colour acceptably to a very light gold colour ( hence buying the piece of light tan base leather) , but the re-colouring products seem so good that I needn’t have been concerned. I coloured a couple of patches ( after removing the black finishes with Cellulose thinners – another story for another day), but at this stage chose to sew into the seat before applying the sealing lacquers that come with Furniture Clinics re-colouring kits. Logic being that the whole seat needed re-colouring ( recall first post and effectively removing the applied surface colour before the rejuvenating liquid started doing anything), so get the patch close to colour, complete sewing repair, then re-colour the whole seat and seal at the end was my thinking.
What goes together.... Must come apart.

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MetBlue
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Re: Leather Rear Seat Repair

Post by MetBlue »

---THE BIG STITCH UP---
There were 2 major areas of concern in my mind all along.
1 / How tidy can I get the “pointy bit” where the two old pieces of leather and the new piece come together?
2/ Trying to maintain some tension in the leather across the back, so it looked tight, but not so tight the new inserts would tear out within a year or two.
I also hoped the whole repair would sit flat, but that was not my highest priority, as anything was going to look better than where things started.
Now obviously both sides need to have the same size of leather inserted ( otherwise it would look odd), So first step is to establish what the worst expanse of problem is on each side. Take as an example the length of the flash I’d be putting in, you need to decide which side has opened the furthest,, then add new stitches into the unbroken area of the seam to ensure it doesn’t carry on extending as you do this work.
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In a similar vain, which side of the centre panel has shrunk the most, and which seating panel ( N/s or O/s) has shrunk most. Then I made a hard board template of the planned finished shape based around the worst condition of the 3 area mentioned. The template is seen in the following picture being used as a guide for punching pilot holes every 3mm ( more of that later).
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As a reference, the dimensions of the flash I had was 250mm long and 55 mm wide. I thought long and hard about whether to make the shape symmetrical, but in the end decided to go 25mm one side of the centre line, 30mm the other. I then had to be VERY careful to remember to turn it over depending on which side I was punching !.
Then it all comes down to careful measurement, setting things square, drawing around your template, then clamping a block of wood under the old leather, securing the template so you can punch pilot holes in the old leather on the seat back.
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I’ll add a note here that for all the sewing work I’ve done with this leather re-trimming of the car, I’ve used these 3mm pitch punches to prepare the holes in both pieces of leather. It does 2 jobs for me ( CAB would be proud). Firstly it makes it easy to get straight lines of evenly spaced stitching, secondly, it makes the needle go through the leather much easier. As long as you pull the thread good and tight, I’ve had no sign of the stitching in the finished items. Whether someone more professional at this would do it the same way, I have no ideal ( I doubt it : they’d probably take the whole cover off and resort to a sewing machine), but what I do seems to work.
Now, we are finally ready to hand sew. A year ago, I had no previous experience of any sewing, I just do what feels right. I guess what I do is called a simple running stitch, then I go back on it so you end up with both side of the joint visually being a full line of thread, passing through every 3 mm. Allowing for the material thickness, you need to start with a length of thread at least 4 times the total length of the seam you’re sewing, so for these patches, around 2 metres of thread (– I’ll detail materials I used later in this thread). Another reference to the “Repair Shop” and leather work they do, maybe a better practice is to use 2 needles, one each end of the thread and do both sides at once as you work along the joint. Maybe easier to control the tightness of the joint, but what I did works for me .
Following picture shows mid stitching, but also that the closure at the point 3 pieces of leather meet worked out very well.
Image

Again for reference, I started the stitch at a point about 25mm away from the “ 3 material point”, heading to towards the point first, then down the far side, before returning back over the stitched areas. This photo therefore taken about 2/3rd through the entire process. Working through the point the 3 materials comes together is by far the hardest part, but you just have to go through one piece of leather at a time, then through the second, remembering at all times to be going the right way. If it does look odd though, it’s probably only that the thread is not tight ( or you’ve gone through a piece of material in the wrong direction, but easy to just pull the stitch back out).
And that’s it. Photo below of the complete repair before the final re-colouring ( Helps see the repair for the benefit of this thread !.
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....and finally when re-coloured....
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And how would I rate the 3 “Quality“ points I mentioned earlier ?:
1. The joint where 3 pieces come together 9/10
2. Stretch across back once refitted 9/10
3. Flat lie of the repair 8/10
- But maybe I am a bit of a perfectionist and I would rarely give 10/10 for anything ( in my mind that means it simply couldn’t be better).
What goes together.... Must come apart.

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MetBlue
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Re: Leather Rear Seat Repair

Post by MetBlue »

---TOOLS, MATERIALS and things I’d do differently ---

A staple gun and Contact adhesive will be needed for re-fixing the leather on the frame once the repair is done. Beyond that the only other leather working materials all came off Fleabay, costing the grand total of £33.02, including £9.75 for the tan leather I didn’t use !!

This was made up of:
Pig Skin leather 12” x 9.5” x 0.7mm = £3.64 ( Supplier mixing units, not me)
Flat Sew Waxed line Cord 260 Metres = £7.19 ( I’ve got a bit of this left over !!- About enough to redo the entire Lotus production run of leather clad Excels :lol: )
Leather Hole punch Set 3mm Pitch = £8.19 ( Poor quality, but they lasted the whole of my leather project, not just this job)
Size 1 Glover / Leather needles = £4.25
Tan Leather 300mm x 200mm x 2mm = £9.75 ( Unused !!)
Piece of 3mm hardboard = £0 – Raided the “I’ll use it eventually” corner of the garage.
Leather Rejuvenator and cleaner = £58 – Yes really. Not a typo, but you can do the whole car and not essential for the actual repair (Originally bought thinking Plan A would work).

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Finally, a couple of learning’s that would mainly have saved time had I gone this route initially:
• Don’t spend too long thinking you can recover 30 + year old shrunken leather.
• If you’re re-colouring the interior, use cellulose thinners to remove the old surface colour before even thinking about Rejuvenators. It works just like expensive products from FC or Woolies, but costs far less. Just try to avoid letting too much soak into the leather.
• If you plan to apply new colour to the seat, the base colour of the leather used for the infill is not important. Even black leather will take a light gold / cream new colour.
• Save the use of any leather feed products until the old colour has been removed and the leather is absorbent to water droplets.
• You can’t do this job without pealing back the leather from the seat frame. Don’t fear pealing right back ( or even fully removing the leather from the seat back. If you did this, you may even be able to get it in a sewing machine if you have a capable machine and the skills to drive it- but work out and mark where stitch line will go BEFORE removal !!).

If your pride and joy is suffering this affliction, go on, get stuck in. This is not that tricky. Just take your time and you’ll be very happy with the results.

Tony
What goes together.... Must come apart.

Pete Boole
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Re: Leather Rear Seat Repair

Post by Pete Boole »

Great write-up Tony. Thanks. This will be a good reference later on. Worth copying/moving to the Technical Articles section as well?

Pete

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Excel SA
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Re: Leather Rear Seat Repair

Post by Excel SA »

Thanks for taking the time to write that up Tony! Next is one on how the re-colouring of the leather worked!

Neil.

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CID
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Re: Leather Rear Seat Repair

Post by CID »

Tony, very clever indeed.
I had also a leather shrinkage on the dash. But this was only solveble by a re trim.

So lessons learned. Always take care of the leather an regularly feed it especially the parts exposed to the sun.
There are products to make leather soft again. But to my experience it works only when the leather is dried in some extend.
I have good experience with leather care Effax for horse saddles, as it also contains anti mildow agents.

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Leather-Perf ... =ss&sr=1-1

RGDS Curt

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