What should I do with this leather interior????

[D.A.M IT! 0]

I got these seats and door cards from an early VR that I bought last year solely for its engine. As you can see from the pics there's quite a bit of colour wear on the front seats and the drivers seat has a couple of nasty rips on the side bolster. The rear bench and door cards aren't too bad and just have a few scratches here and there.

 

They're a bit unusual though as the door cards don't have the usual ribbing above the arm rest areas and the seats don't have the usual stitching/padding style that you get on leather rado seats. I've never actually seen a set like this in a rado before which kind of makes me think they may have been re-trimmed at some point, but by the amount of wear on them I find this a little hard to believe and they do seem to be factory built. Has anybody else seen a set like this before????? I asked the guy who i bought the car from about them but he didn't know anything about it really.

 

My question really is should i repair the rip in the drivers seat and re-colour them? or just try and sell them as is? If i did do all the work to get them looking good again i'd hope to get around £450 for them but as they are I'm not sure I'd even get £100. Either way they're going to be sold. I think I'd rather spend a bit of cash doing them up and getting the best price I could for them but i'm wondering if its really worth it?

 

all opinions welcome :)

[Portent 0]

Are they heated? That will indicate whether they are retrimmed cloth seats or not (leather had heating elements and cloth didn't). The door cards won't be original though as they all had the ribbed part.

[lilfuzzer 1]

Give them to me :)

 

Didn't early cars still come with leather but were not heated?

 

I agree that the cards must have been trimmed.

[D.A.M IT! 0]

They're definitely not heated Portent.

 

I thought that having heated leather was just an option? I may be totally wrong on that though :D

 

The car they came out of was a very early VR and when I asked the guy if he knew anything about the interior, he told me that his mate said it might be some weird interim change between the old and new interior styles LOL But I wasn't buying it for the interior anyway.

 

Already though it is starting to sound like it has been retrimmed at some point.

[lilfuzzer 1]

The seats could be factory as my early valver had leather. Then due to the cards needing to be late handle fitting etc they have been retrimmed

[JimVR6 10]

My 93 has leather and they're not heated or re-trimmed cloth.

[VR6 0]

Are there any plugs on the underside of the seats though? AFAIK any VR with leather from the factory should be heated.

[bristolbaron 11]

they're early lether seats with retrimmed doorcards.

[emu 0]

Lots of work to sort them, door cards are not original, seats look genuine, try gliptone stuff, put some hard clots under the leader (jeans perfectly) and then use liquid leather to fill, then lot of sanding and painting. You are looking about 100 pounds in materials needed to make the look nice again and about 15 hours of work. The will be work circa 450 quid when You finis. I've sold my refubed black late leather for 550 and it wasn't easy, was waiting about 6 months for somebody to pay that.

 

If You value your time I would rather sold them for 100-150 quid, if You have lot of spare time, fix them, and make some more money.

[D.A.M IT! 0]

Thanks for all your input guys. I think bristolbaron has nailed it!

 

I'll have a check for any plugs underneath the front seats to see if they did come from a VR. But I reckon that these are early leather seats with retrimmed door cards. Which by looking at the different amount of wear between the seats and cards would make sense.

 

I think I will put in the effort and restore these as there's no great rush to sell them straight away, and if i could get 450 for them that would be virtually a third of the cost of the whole car recouped. + it'll be a good learning experience.

 

Thanks again all for helping me solve this little mystery and helping me make my mind up on what to do with them.

 

 

Praise be to the CF masses.

[c11yan 10]

The driver's bolster NEEDS to be retrimmed... respect to the leather filler paste but it wont last / time taken to make it even close to right is uneconomical vs new piece of leather. A small independent trimmer will charge £40-£80 to trim the driver's bolster, with a nice brand new piece of leather.

 

Then recolonise (nice way of saying paint) the front seats. Clean up the rear seats or recollinise if you think it needs it.

 

Painting leather seats is one of the easiest things in the world and black is a very forgiving colour to match.

 

But is probably not worth all the hassle...