And a view from further away with less detail...

 

Hello,

Now that I have had a bit of experience with this I can help you out.

I have come up with an even better solution to this and it is a heck of a lot easier.

I will post the details later tonight.

 

Thanks - I'm looking forward to reading it.

I've restored the rest of the seats to like-new feel, but seeing that one every day is frustrating.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks

 

When you say restore what do you mean?

After a couple of weeks of living with the "restore" that I did, I noticed that the dye I used was too shiny. So I removed all of it.

I had a local leather repair shop mix up some seat dye using a 100% color match.

Since this new product is water based it drys slowly and is a lot easier to work with plus no mixing!!!!

Also I was able to use an airbrush.

Well, I can tell you that this si the way to go. All cracks, scratches, marks, stains are gone. The texture is matte like the original leather and with the color match you can't tell what part had been dyed!!!!

For further details please ask.

Anyone local to me can come and see for themselves.

 

Thanks for the added information. Taking it to leather shop will certainly take the guess work out of matching the color. I feel better about pay a few bucks and not making it worse.

By restoring I meant that the seats were hard and dry when I got it. Now they feel almost new. I had to drop by the dealership a couple of times to feel new seats to make sure that I got it right. It seemed to me that the RX's all felt a little dry, but the new SC convertable provided a good standard for my goal.

Fixing that one area is unnecessary I suppose, but it annoys the heck out me me everytime I look at it so I'm going to try your repair process sometime this month. Since I already posted the 'before' pictures, I'll be sure to post the revitalized version when I'm done.

I'm still not sure how applying dye will hide cracks, but seeing your results are certainly convincing so I'll give it a shot. If you have any additional tips, I'd love to hear them. Can I assume that application of the dye was by the same method as your original post?

Thanks again

 

Now that your leather is soft, before you can apply the dye you must first clean it with alcohol to remove excess grease. This will not harm the leather. Have a local leather shop mix you up 4 or so ounces (good for an entire car) depending on what you need to do. It cost me $40.00 to have this made for me but considering the cast of having someone else fix the seats it was well worth it.

I ended up airbrushing it on. And yes it did fill in the cracks. It took about 3 hours and the next day I had to do a bit of touch up.
I will post some more pics. The seats look factory new

If you do not have an airbrush you can buy those fillable aresol cans. If you do not have much experience with air spraying, practice a pit first on carboard.

 

Thanks my seat are the same this remedy will indeed help

 

Sounds good. And thanks for the pics. Please post any after pics you may have so we can see the difference!

This is a solution that is economical, fun to do and brings up the value you of your car.

My seats look like the day they were new

 

A local shoe repair shop would be my suggestion.

Tandy Leather has re-opened in the area and various leather care supplies can be found there too. There are different dye types, some are alcohol based while others are oil based. For the stuff I do, I prefer the oil based dyes as it applies evenly and leaves the leather softer. YMMV.

 

How can you use i part of this and one part of that - if it is spray paint. Thanks for your help.

 

Heh this is not that hard. Buy Leather Filler for cracks, then spray with SEM matching seat colors. Buy at Auto paint stores.

 

Can you please tell me what you did to soften up the seats?…
I just bought a 2013 RX and the seats are a bit crispy.. .. learning from when I got my 05 LS430 back in 2017, I know that if I don’t soften them soon, the seats will be destroyed since they are perforated and one little tear is the beginning of the end for them.

I just bought Lexol and first I followed the directions on the bottle as well as what the lady said on their help line (let sit for 3 minutes)… but they didn’t feel any better…then I saw some directions online that I guess were older because the bottle in the picture was different…it said let si for 20-30 minutes… they still don’t feel much different if any (and it actually took some of the coating off the steering wheel)

I just want my seats not to tear, I hope you can help.

 

do you think the scratch (from finger nails) will restore after a while? Doesn’t seem like the surface was cut. More like pressed in.