I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on: __leather seats.
Hi,
I am negotiating purchase of a 2008 MX5 2L Sport with leather seats, I live on the Wirral and the dealer just south of London.
The dealer has sent these pics which seem to show a degree of cracking on the seats and I wondered how easy to repair, either as a DIY job or a professional job.
Any thoughts generally as to the seats welcomed and I hope I am correct in assuming cracking not bad enough to make me not proceed with purchasing the MX.
You can get DIY kits to fill the cracks and recolour, but Pros will do a better job. The recolouring is a matched paint (not a dye), and like any paint, it will wear off. The results can look spectacular (seat looks like new) but I’m not sure the repairs will be long lived.
I’ve seen worse, a good deal worse than those. If it’s got average mileage for the year then expect some cracking and bolster wear, they do.
Black leather cream is available to rub into those seats, it masks the wear but isn’t long lasting. Leather paint is also available to do a better job localised application. Cheap as chips black boot polish is probably just as good too, regular application. OTT approach, have them recovered but as said they look far from shabby.
I have an LE with red leather seats that looked far worse than yours, but after three applications with red shoe polish they are not perfect by any means but are 100% better than they were.
I recon your seats could be refurbished; I have just refurbed my Mk3 seats using 'Colourlock products. I sent them photos of my seats/damage and they advised what I should use.
My Miyako seats also had contrast Red stitching which I recoloured too.
Their phone support is Brill.
Give Colourlock a call, you will find them easily with Google.
See my pic attached before and after, expand pics you will also see scuffing near the stitching.
Your cracking is due to the seats drying out and requires a slightly different repair to mine, not a lot different but I recon Colourlock will provide some special repair stuff for the cracks and other products to fully refurb, colour and protect them.
Colourlock is a German product, I would not use anything else having used it; their products and support is so good but a tad costly but worth it all day long.
Matching your colour is important if just patching areas but if you pop the seats out you could do the complete seats so a slight difference shouldn’t matter, speak to them on this.
