This morning it was onto the serious stuff - prepping the seats. Being leather, there is another stage of prep that I could not do on the rear quarter cards, and that is to use 'leather prep'. This is described as a solvent, which you bathe cotton wool balls in, before wrapping them in a scotchpad and wiping over the seats. Then stand back and watch 28 years of crud pull out of the leather right before your eyes!!
The stuff is pretty pungent, I suspect it is some sort of acetate. The only complaint I have with any of the stuff supplied is that the glives they supply for doing this job dissolved in it! So, using my own latex gloves which are a bit more hardy, I kept going
Then on the rear seat back rests I removed the old carpet, pulled out the old staples where possible, and tapped them fully hole where I couldn't get them out, and then prepped them too
You then wipe them over with the alcohol based cleaner, to remove a different range of contaminants. At this point, the leather feels unnervingly sticky, a bit rough, and has also had some of the colour lifted out of it.
Then onto the front seats, same process, but they end up looking even worse due to the prior damage / cracks etc. I made myself an impromptu workbench using wheels and tyres and some old wardrobes sides I kept because I knew they would be helpful one day
Because there are so many tight bits to get into, Having the seat fully reclined and also tiled forwards was needed to get into everywhere I needed to. This then jogged my memory that the passenger side backrest tilt mechanism didn't work at all on one lever, and poorly on the other. I was hoping it wasn't a snapped cable, so went investigating.
First remove the hard plastic covers, which need painting anyway, you can see that the cable pulls a little cam to operate the release. If you look at the angle, you can see this pulls the cam up to operate the release.
On the other side, it was in totally the wrong place, and had no 'pull' left, and the cable seemed in good order
So removing the small circlip, I pull off the arm and it is on splines, so appears had slipped round
So I just repositioned, refitted the circlip and it works perfectly. Easiest fix ever!
I then removed the covers from the electric seat switches and then set about filling the damaged areas of leather, the black filler used on holes and white filler used on the cracks.
So I have left the filler to set overnight, and will sand off tomorrow then start the colouring process. The garage is a bit of a nightmare, with bits of interior everywhere, it just takes up so much room