Its an interesting fact that since the early 1980's the leather seating in auto interiors has not been dyed but painted with a flexible lacquer. This is true of almost every manufacturer...even Ferrari and Maserati did it, I doubt rolls royce or bentley did it but they might be the only ones. By spraying on an opaque lacquer it evened out the grain irregularities so that lesser grades of leather could be used. Its a nice looking final product as well. The problem is that 20 or more years down the line that lacquer starts to get a bit stiff and cracks. You know the feeling of sitting in 80's leather seats. That sensation of "if I press to hard it will crack." With a bit of scouring the web I came up with an inexpensive and workable solution. Sure the leatherique method sounds wonderful but the kit would cost more than I have into these seats.I picked up the new seats for the caddy. Some super sexy powered Porsche sport seats.  I LOVE them with almost every cell in my body. The are a light tan leather and have that all too familiar stiff and crinkley feel of older leather. Here is the passenger seat. Pretty aint it.
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The outer bottom bolster on this seat is the worst of it. some cracks and a bit of smudge that wont come off with any cleaner.
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The whole seat is stiff and cardboardish as well. A sensation that betrays their good looks. I started by removing the lacquer.....with what you ask? Well lets try the obvious. Lacquer thinner. I took a terry cloth and poured the thinner onto it and started rubbing. Lo and behold it came right off. You can see the pigment on the towel.
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This wasnt easy work. I removed the paint from the entirety of both seats and it took a good 4 hours of scrubbing to do it.You are also removing the pigment from the seats as well so they will need to be redyed later. The leather felt MUCH better now. It was alot softer and you didnt fear poking your finger through it. It looked much nicer as well. Another bonus is that most of the cracking that was visible was just the lacquer and not the leather beneath.
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Now here comes the really weird part. Get a pail of water and some 500 grit sandpaper and wetsand the seats. Yep just go nuts on em. Get every little surface, nook and cranny. If there are still cracks, go over them until they start to fade away. Dont go too far you are not trying to make suede here but get that 20 year old surface off of them. Take a damp towell and wipe them down then dry them off. The first thing you will notice is that they feel great!

THe next step I took was to set them in the sun and let them get good and warm. Then I slathered them in Zymol leather conditioner and let it soak in. Really work it in with your hands and you will feel the leather start to get more plieable. Let them continue to sit in the sun and stay warm for a while then wipe off the excess.The end result? Well I obviously need to redye them. But they feel amazing. They went from painted crispy cardboard to almost glove soft. Sadly the backs and sides of them are vinyl and not leather so I cannot use a water based dye and need to use a spray on product like SEM. Thats fine though. I will update after I dye them to the appropriate buckskin color. When they are a uniform color they will look and feel....if not new maybe 3 years old. Thats not bad for a 25 year old pair of seats.

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Hmmmmm.....Shaved

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Welded in the plugs

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After a skim coat of filler and bit of primer

turned out pretty well. Did some work on the hood as well.  A bit of filler here and there and finished it all up with a heavy coat of high build primer. Tomorrow I will cut the high build down level and give it another final primer coat on the hood and fenders and then to the hard parts the doors and bed

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OK I got a real late start today. Justin bought a E46 M3 so I spent an hour drooling on it and after grocery shopping it was noon before I got to work.

Here is the nasty and why the core needed to go.

So lets get cutting and drilling

An hour or so with a hammer and dolly and I was able to get the passenger side top into a reasonable shape.

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Prepping a used core support for installation takes almost as much time as removing the oild one. Next time I am buying a new one. This is it clamped in place. Almost all the measurements in the bentley are spot on a little tweaking and it gets welded.

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And while I spent all day working in the hot sun the dog was inside goofing off and getting crazy. Poor guy had a tough day.

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Well the twisted wreckage that was the old one left the driveway today.

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So with a fat $36.50 in my pocket in scrap value I prepped the driveway for its new occupant. That required pulling in the possesed 79 and stripping it out. Once that was out of the way I swept the driveway, hosed it off and drove the new one into its spot.

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The good news is that it fired right up and ran like a champ after sitting for 2 weeks.

The digi2 swapped 8V seems nice and strong.

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So lets look over the work ahead of me. First is the color. I kinda hate it with a burning passion. The next is this badass dent in the side of the bed

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Thats gonna take some work.

Above that dent is a dissapointing discovery of rust through the panel. Some cutting and welding is in order

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The interior is a little bijou. Spartan maybe?

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That is pretty easy though.

the hole in the roof. Already taken care of

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a Nasty hole in the bed

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here is probably the worst part. Behind the core support that is nasty and needs to go is this.

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Thinking about shaved bay options that would hide these sins.

Tomorrow I start in hardcore. Hope to get the swap to single round core support done. Fingers crossed. It seems like alot of work.

I did manage to pick up the reducer and hardener for the paint today. I want to grab a gravity feed HVLP paint gun for this job.