Hey guys,

I've been meaning to do the leatherique treatment for about 2 years now. It's finally time to bite down and buy it.

I want to buy the whole restoration kit with color matched dye, but to my understanding, you have do sand, etc do remove old dye. Is there anyway I can get around this procedure? I personally like the grain in the leather, it makes it look thicker, more expensive, etc. Every time I've seen leather restored completely, I notice the lack of grain. How in the world can I get around this? Sandpaper will just remove it!

Thanks a bunch!

bump :help

http://www.leatherrepairkits.com/bmw.htm , look on the bottom of this page for something called spray grain.

If the grain is gone, they probably applied the dye too thick. I did the leatherique re-dye on my driver side bolster and I still have the same graining as the other panels do. The sanding procedure, done right (lightly!) doesn't remove the grain. When you rub sandpaper on your skin, your skin doesn't become smooth does it? You are just sloughing off the top layer. You don't have to sand it hard like a piece of wood.

If the grain is gone, they probably applied the dye too thick. I did the leatherique re-dye on my driver side bolster and I still have the same graining as the other panels do. The sanding procedure, done right (lightly!) doesn't remove the grain. When you rub sandpaper on your skin, your skin doesn't become smooth does it? You are just sloughing off the top layer. You don't have to sand it hard like a piece of wood.
knowing you only did the bolster, how does it look compared to the rest of the seat? does it really stand out? I have a pair of vadars that I want to install but the driver's side outer bolster could use some TLC before it goes in. I don't want it to be a mismatch to the rest of the seat.

If you stare at it in intense light, its' maybe a hair of a shade off, but 99.9% of the time you would not be able to tell at all. Do the entire panel and stop at the seams and it should blend in pretty well.

cool, thanks for the tip.

I applied the dye too thickly and lost the grain/had lots of brush marks...once the original dye had cured (48 hours) I dry resanded lightly with 400 grit to take off the brush marks then cleaned with pristine clean and left it for 30 minutes. The (black) leather, went very matt grey, but...

I then applied a very thin layer of dye with a very small and firm kitchen sponge and it looks fantastic, the grain came back and you'd have to really look to find the small smooth patches where I went a bit mad sanding.

This isn't in the instructions but I couldn't live with the imperfections, so thought I'd give it a go instead of restarting, glad I did! You'd be hard pushed to tell the difference between the untouched and pretty perfect leather on the passenger seat and the (now) pretty perfect restored drivers seat.

on the bottom of my seats they were cracked very badly. The areas where i had to use a lot of crack filler its competely flat and no grain at all. What type of songe did you use (specifics please) and has anyone actually tried the spray.
-Evan