LS430FL

Hey guys,
so its been a few months since I upgraded from my 01 LS430 millennium silver with black to a 2006 Crystal white with cashmere leather.
I love everything about the new car except one thing. I think that the grey color leather on the dash,tops of the doors and steering wheel could be more my taste if it were black. Is the material leather? It is a custom luxury model...Does anybody know if it could be done? Any body have experience already doing this with dye or something? Tried searching but nothing. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks

yuri.ber

iTrader: (7)

Top of the dash and door panels are plastic, bottom of dash and door handles are leather. It's doable but expensive. You have to disassemble the whole dash and take off door panels. Then a good upholstery shop can cover it with any type of leather you like. It's easier to sell this car and find one in your desired color combo.

BradTank

I had an older project car that I dyed the dash a different color. They make specific products for dyeing interior panels.

To really do it right, the interior needs to be disassembled and sprayed outside of the car. If you're not doing it yourself, you're talking a lot of money in labor costs taking apart the dash and door panels.

I'd personally steer you away from something like this and echo that you'd be better off selling the car and buying another LS with the color combination you want.

Kira X

iTrader: (24)

You can use a dye called SEM to do it. It's really popular stuff on the SC400 forum. It's more work taking the interior apart than it is to actually dye the pieces though.

wuznme

If use SEM product make sure you follow all of the steps for the prep work. If you do the job will turn out great.

LS430FL

thank you very much for all of the replies. I am going to take it to an interior guy just to see what it would cost me. In the meantime I will search up the SEM product in the SC forums to see if I could work with that. It might be a bigger project than I thought or willing to take on...

Yaff

"Then a good upholstery shop can cover it with any type of leather you like."

I second that. The other option is redying the whole thing. It's going to be about 40-60% of the price of replacing the leather. Also, re-Coloring shops will work on pretty much any kind of surfaces not just leather.

I don't know what kind of sun lotion the previous owner was using. I got my car in show room conditions except for steering and driver's elbows' area. After few years of thinking about it. I finally got it fixed. Steering was 125$ and 75x2 for elbows. He also offered to redo the lower edge of the navigation display for 75$... Which I declined.

The job he did is outstanding.

LS430FL

yea, I am going to go to a leather/ vinyl dye place probably tomorrow to get a price. I basically only want the dashboard, top part of the door panels where it is grey leather instead of the cashmere color.

fensterlip

There is a company in South Carolina called Leatherique. The url is the same. He sells the best water based dyes for interiors I have ever used. You clean and soften the material on and ongoing basis or a prep for re-dying the surface. I have used his products to rejuvenate an existing color and to change the color. It works well. It can be sprayed but I have used a couple quality nylon brushes and either masked off doors and dash or in the case of seats, removed them from the car.

He sells the stuff for restorers and for very high end cars (think RR) so this isn't a Whitney's special.
I've done Lexus, Mercedes, BMW and Corvette all with good results. When I've sold them the comment from the purchaser is, "Gee the interior looks so nice. How do you keep it that way?" Of course, I mumble something...