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In this video, I completely restored the totally destroyed leather seats in my E39 BMW for under $100. I show you two different methods depending on the condition of your seats. One method applies to most of us that just want an easy and very affordable method to repair things like worn-out bolsters, cracks, and dye fade and the second method is a color change option that requires more work but is still very easy to do at home. Enjoy the show!
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Oh, come on: no, it's like a magic eraser. I've literally seen companies charge two three hundred dollars to basically do the same thing: hey guys, welcome back to legit street cars and welcome to another episode of legit flip to get you guys up to speed. This is my 2001 bmw 540i with the coveted six-speed manual transmission. It has 119 000 miles a clean title and i only paid 900.

for this car now, as you could imagine, this car had a lot of issues when i bought it and in each video i tally up what i've spent so, for example, i fixed a rough Running engine with a coil for 50 bucks, a hard to shift transmission for free, and i even include the cost of gas which at this point is sort of an investment, because i filled up the tank about three months ago. So i think this fuel is now worth around 50 more than i paid so technically. I could siphon it out and deduct that from the tally in the second e39 video i did some cleaning and detailing for a grand total of forty dollars and in the video. After that, i did fifteen separate mechanical repairs for about eleven hundred dollars, so i only have two thousand two hundred dollars into this car and in today's video, i'm gon na invest another one hundred dollars into restoring these nasty leather seats.

These are some of the worst leather seats i've ever seen. They were probably in poor condition before and then someone attempted to dye them very improperly, i might add, and we need to remove all of that dye and and re-dye them. So with that, let's get to work and get these seats out of the car all right, so i'm going to start with what i hope to be the easiest part of this job, which is removing the rear seat all right. What are we gon na find under here? Wow? They didn't even take this out.

Are you kidding me unbelievable all right, all right, so here's our seat bottom yeah - they really just went up to here with the dye and they they caked it on we're. Gon na have to remove that not too bad just a little bit of human hair, not the end of the world on a receipt for pizza from 2004. It doesn't say how much, though, probably like eight bucks back then all right more of the same. At least we get a good idea of what the leather is supposed to look like all right.

Then we just have some t-50s for the front seats and i'm gon na move this out and i'll probably move this back, just get it in a good position. So we get all the dye in there mb financial bankruptcy available balance 154.29. Definitely cannot fix a car like this. For that, unless you're doing it yourself, then you can.

Okay, i think that's our only connector seat come right out very gentle taking seats out. It's really nerve-wracking doing this on a super expensive car like when i worked at the dealer and had to take seats out of 180 000 mercedes. You could easily scratch the dash or something it's wouldn't make for a good day. Gentle gentle gentle nasty, okay whew.

We got him out all right, so, with the seats out, we have a lot of work to do. I'm gon na, be here probably for two or three days but uh. Let's just get right to it. This is a little intimidating.
I'm not gon na lie. Oh, my gosh, it's like just everything's glued glued on wow and i'm gon na go ahead and separate the seat back in the seat bottom as well. There we go okay, so that's good enough! We're just gon na leave. It separated here we're not gon na mess around with the harness or anything we just simply need to get in under here.

Okay, so i'm gon na show you everything, i'm using for this job here in a minute, but i've been experimenting with cleaning off some of this dye. This lighter colored dye that they put on here see what we're gon na get yeah. So we just pulled off the first layer of dirt right there now there's the dye, let's see if we can get down to the original leather, almost there. Okay, that's pretty good.

We don't need a hundred percent of it off. This would be more than fine to re-dye it and yeah. We might stand a chance at making this nice all right guys before we get to some more very satisfying leather dye removal on the e39 seats. I wanted to show you a very simple way of restoring the leather seats in your car, using this clyde's leather recoloring balm.

So obviously, what i'm doing to the e39 seats is very extreme and more along the lines of a color change where i have to disassemble everything strip, all the old leather dye off and then i'll be using a very strong liquid dye. So it's definitely not for the faint of heart and you can make mistakes and damage things. So what i'm doing here is way more applicable to all of us out there who don't want to change the color of our seats, but want to restore them and make them look much better, especially after 22 years, like on my ml55. Now this process just takes a few minutes, and the first step is cleaning the seat with the interior cleaning foam from clyde's very easy to do.

Just rub it on with a microfiber next, i've applied the clyde's leather, prep and deglaze onto the corner of my microfiber. A little bit of this goes a long way and you're gon na see that this is going to turn into a matte finish like this right here after it dries, and that means we've stripped away all the old, waxes and greases that have been sitting on this Seat for probably the last 22 years now for the very satisfying part you're just going to take a little bit of this on your foam sponge and just work it in and it is seriously like magic, unbelievable results here, unlike some dyes, this is actually reconditioning. The leather other dyes can kind of dry it out and the cracks get worse later with time. This is definitely one of the most satisfying things you can do to your car.

It only takes like five minutes per seat and the difference is night and day as i'm going to show you here in a few seconds. This is too much fun. I just want to go to a junkyard and restore leather seats for a day, a little sneak. Peek on the driver's side, so i've never done what i'm doing to the e39 before using a really strong liquid dye.
So i'm a little nervous about that. But i've been using clydes for years and the results are so good and i asked the guys at clyde's if they can hook me up with a discount code for my viewers and they did it's legit 20 and that's gon na get you 20 off their entire Website it's like a magic eraser. Okay, last one, i swear it's just too satisfying. I want to show you guys how to repair very minor, bolster wear.

So what we're doing here is kind of extreme on the driver's seat that one was pretty bad. This was very, very typical of an older car and then i'm going to show you on the cl65. If you just have wear on the bolster, you can fix that too, and it matches perfectly and don't be shy. You can restore your center console as well check it out, and yes, the previous owner installed a cup holder in the middle of this.

That was not factory. Look at that look at that when you're done, you just want to wipe off the excess with a microfiber towel just like so then you let it cure for about 24 hours, and these are the results. Are you kidding me? This looks so good. I've done this to quite a few of my cars and i'm always shocked at how well it works.

Look at this bolster so before the bolster looked like this, and now it looks like this and the leather is conditioned, so it's not hard anymore. It feels kind of like it did back in the year 2000. and i'm not even done next, i'm going to use the clyde's re-moisturizing cream. This is the last step, and this is some good stuff to use, even if you haven't just restored your seats.

This is great for maintenance purposes to keep your leather, nice and supple, and it smells amazing too. I just finished off the driver's seat with the moisturizing cream and the driver's seats are always the ones in the worst condition. Obviously, they're used all the time, but this looks about a hundred times better and just for a few dollars in material and maybe like 10 minutes total of work, and i know what you guys are thinking alex. Is this stuff gon na come off on my pants? No, it's not at all look at this pushing hard on here, absolutely nothing whatsoever.

So your factory seats are dyed, the leather off a cow doesn't come in different colors, they do have to dye it and once the clyde's recoloring bomb soaks into the leather, it does not come off seriously. Look at this. Nothing watch i'll wipe the entire seat bottom. As hard as i can, and this stuff doesn't even rub off even after a couple of hours, but if you let it cure for the full 24, it's not going anywhere see.

Look at that! Nothing and here's the side bolster on my cl65 amg. As you can see, it's worn out, like many side bolsters, are so we're going to use the same process clean it with the foam. Then we're going to deglaze it and, as you can see it kind of turns into a matte finish, and then we just apply the balm, let it dry for 24 hours and so after 24 hours. This is what it looks like and what's nice when you're doing quick, spot repairs like this, is it blends in beautifully with the rest of the seat and then we're just going to top it off with the moisturizing cream and there you go a quality five minute Repair job on a side bolster with 135 000 miles and it looks fantastic.
I've literally seen companies charge to 300 to basically do the same thing, so this stuff actually comes in a bunch of different colors. So i'll leave you a link down below to the website. So you can check it out. They have a bunch of other awesome products as well and the code legit 20.

It works in combination with any other sales they're having so i thought that was an error and i emailed them, and they said no, that's correct, so they're really hooking us up here so definitely take advantage, and you can also use this on anything else. That's leather! Like a motorcycle seat or a leather couch in your house, so with that, let's get to some more stripping of leather dye off of the seats and i actually think it might be paint check this out all right. So i've already started cleaning this area here. It actually wasn't too hard to do and we're retaining the leather grain, which is important i'll, show you what i'm using there, but you can see here in these areas.

Normally, when you're using leather dye, it kind of bleeds into the leather. That's what you want, but in this case it literally just looks like they painted the surface you can see. Here i mean this is really thick, so i guess it's possible. They used leather dye or maybe just a lot of it, but this looks very similar to paint to me, and i think this is where they literally had a paint can resting for a while all right guys, i'm going to show you two methods of removing old Leather dye, this gld solvent cleaner from color lock.

This works really good. This will take out the staining from jeans on some light-colored leather and it'll straight up. Remove your dye so we're just going to put it on a little rag here and it does take a little bit of work. But there you go! That's just a few seconds of rubbing and we've done this entire section.

So it's not too bad and also, let me show you guys another option, because this can get a little pricey if you're doing a big project like that, and that is simply getting some denatured. Alcohol all right. So i'll show you guys how this works. Works quite well, actually keep mine.

There is a ton of this stuff on there. There you go. This does an excellent job of cleaning the leather and it doesn't burn the leather. It doesn't remove the grain and i've done a bunch of research on it and it seems like this would be safe on leather now, go ahead and do your own research or use the gld cleaner, because it is officially meant for leather, but they kind of smell.
Similar, so i'm not really exactly sure what that's made of, but it works. Well, so does this and this costs a lot less, alright guys. So i blew all the dirt out with the air gun and then i just wanted to do an initial pass with some multi-purpose interior foam cleaner. So i just sprayed a little bit of the old tough stuff on there and got a brush and look what's going on here.

There is a chance. We don't even need any harsh chemicals look at this paint. This is this is crazy. Can we do this? All with tough stuff and this stuff is it's pretty tough i'll give it that oh come on no get out of here.

Are you kidding me? This is crazy. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing for tough stuff. I've used this like my entire life, just for normal, simple interior, cleanup jobs, it's either really really good or abnormally strong, which in that case, you might not want to use on an everyday basis. But how is this strong enough to remove this dye, slash paint? We might be able to do the whole thing with like 10 bucks worth of tough stuff all right, so i have some mineral spirits laying around in the shop and i've used this to clean paint and stains and stuff, not necessarily on on cars.

But this is kind of a harsher chemical and look at that. It doesn't even touch. This doesn't remove anything at all, but we use tough stuff that i think i picked up like a four pack or something on amazon and a little bit of just melts it away. Oh man, this is so much fun.

Look at that bam. Stuff is tough. That is for sure, okay, so i guess it was a good thing. This guy never brought it to a car wash that uses tough stuff because they would have destroyed his entire interior or made it better, but anyway, this is quite the turn of events.

I'm probably not going to use anything else, but this now so anyway, tough stuff, not sponsored at all i've just literally been using this since i was 15 years old. So i've never read the back of this, but it's got all of its automotive and boat uses and then apparently you can use this for cleaning appliances for mica, bathroom fixtures, asphalt, ceramic tile, painted walls, wow wow. You learn something new every day. All right! I bet you guys have never seen anyone geek out so hard over tough stuff, but there you have it so i'm just going to go ahead and kind of pre-soak this entire seat.

With this, my only recommendation with the tough stuff is, if you're going to use this on your car, which again i have for a very long time. I would definitely test it out in an inconspicuous spot, because i mean geez. If it's doing this, i know this is a low quality job that whoever did this did, but i mean i could imagine it it could damage leather seats. I don't know i mean in this case.
I love it, but i would hate to do this on. You know a darker colored, leather or something and then have a light spot. Something like that. This brush is key, though too we're able to get in all these little nooks and crannies, see if it'll take away the yep.

That was definitely home paint. Someone just left a paint can sitting on the seat. Oh wait a minute, nope tough stuff come on! You can't get that tough stuff. What's wrong with you, okay! Well, we'll have to work on that a little bit more all right! Here's a little denatured alcohol see if that helps out.

Oh, it's not helping out with that, but i can tell you it's going to be an excellent last step here. Look at how clean it gets it all right, guys! It's the next day, uh, there's about eight hours worth of labor into what we have done so far, which is looking very promising this just oh, my gosh was this a lot of work, but look at this. The seats weren't even that bad. So this is obviously where the seat belt straps were resting for a long time, but overall the leather seems to be in excellent condition and with the tough stuff and our little brush on the drill we're able to get into all these little nooks and crannies.

We've even cleaned up the stitching for the leather which looks great. This bottom seat is in a little bit worse condition. Uh we were able to get the paint off, but some areas kind of peeled off. This is where they had spilled the paint or dye or whatever they used, and it kind of peeled up a little bit of the factory dye.

So you can see that's the factory dye and that's what lies underneath, so that should hopefully be all fixed up once we get our liquid dye on here, but overall, the leather is in great shape. We didn't damage any of the grain. It's all still there all right so before i start cleaning the front seats, i'm going to dye the rear seats, i'm kind of dying to see how this is going to look. So i just want to use some sandpaper.

This is special sandpaper for leather and it has a little sponge in between any area. That's had peeling, i'm just going to kind of sand a little bit. You don't want to go too crazy, though, or you'll remove the grain. Also, we'll probably never see this as the seat back goes over it, but i'll still hit this as well all right here we go one last cleaning before the fluid leather and then the die and i'll probably let this dry for about 15 minutes before we do Any repair work all right, so i've sanded down our trouble areas on the seat bottom and also on the seat back.

So everything is nice and even and then i just went over all the leather with the sandpaper just a light scuff and at this point i'm gon na use some of the leather cleaning spirits. So this will be kind of our final clean and then we're gon na be using some fluid leather from color lock, and these are specific uh to the color of this interior. As you can see, bmw sand beige, so i've never used any of these color lock products before this is my first time so we'll see how this all ends up all right. So here is our liquid leather, and a little bit of this goes a long way as well.
They don't give you too much of it because of that. So so we're just going to be using this little spatula here to spread it out and i'm practicing on these back seats first, because that driver bolster is going to need quite a bit of this and we're just going to spread it out really smooth. Just do a little bit more okay. There we go so now this dries for about two hours and then we can sand it down, and you can already tell that it's built up and filled in the void there.

So this is going to look really nice once we're done. Do all the places where the top layer of the factory color has come off and we'll fill it in here, and this is obviously meant for leather. So our dye will soak into this as well. But it's nice that we're starting with the factory color anyway, so this is really nice.

Also, if you have cracks in your leather, you can just fill it and it's going to dry, but it's still going to be flexible because this product is specifically made for leather. It's called fluid leather all right and on the seat, back we're going to do the exact same thing, and this is worn out right where the armrest sits. So there's a lot of movement going on here. This is also very satisfying.

I'm not gon na lie pretty much. Everything in this video is very fun and satisfying all right, since we have two hours of dry time for the fluid leather, i think it's time to clean up this front seat. It's been a while all right, so i'm starting off all of the cleaning with some shop air. All right, you guys know the drill, we're going to use some tough stuff and our drill to clean these up, and normally this would have just been my first method of cleaning and then i would use the chemicals but kind of learned.

We really don't even need any chemicals at all. I mean tough stuff, apparently is a strong chemical, because it's melting this stuff, as we speak, look at that it looks pretty good now all right, let's do a wipe right now kind of get an idea all right. There we go look at how easy that is look at how much paint slash dye they used in these areas. That's gon na be tough, but not as tough as this stuff.

All right, i'm done with dad jokes, we're good all right. I've done one complete pass on the bottom. Let's see what we got here, let's get in there. It's easy to do kind of the big areas and see a result right away.

You know i'm only like 10 minutes into this seat, but probably be about two hours. Maybe two and a half hours for this one seat because of all the nooks and crannies. I don't know if i need to get it that perfect, but because i know that i can. I will and uh i'm really curious to see what the real condition of these front seats are, because, like this passenger side, i don't think it's gon na.
Be that bad. I don't know why this guy did all this work all right after about an hour. I have the passenger seat bottom, looking like so i'm starting to wear the factory leather a little bit in these areas, because i'm trying to get this paint out of here, i'm worried that the dye is probably not going to change the color of any of this. Remaining paint, so i'm still kind of picking away at that, but i did disconnect this here, so we could get in here and somewhat in here.

I'm not going to go too crazy, though, because, as you can see we're just wearing into the leather, if we try to get a lot of that paint out, you're never going to see any of that at all. That's why it's got a line of paint. He wasn't able to get in there, but i'm working on this one too. I just finished a pass on this side kind of taking a break from picking pieces out and yeah.

My first wipe is so satisfying. Look at that, so nice, all right so a moment of truth on this outside bolster on the passenger side. And yes, this is as messy as you think it is pretty bad. Luckily, the shop needed a big cleaning anyway.

So it's okay, all right! Let's see what lies beneath a very nice and clean, bolster wow, why? Why did he do this? These were such nice seats? Unbelievable all right, so i'm done cleaning up the passenger seat, and this took a total of about three hours with really no breaks whatsoever. So just a ton of manual labor to get this job done, but it definitely helped to remove this guy here and you can see there's a lot more wear on the seat bottom as you'd probably expect, but because i've been using tough stuff on this. For the last three hours, we're gon na go ahead and kick a fan on and dry this seat for probably about an hour before we start to dye it. So the fluid leather has dried and we're just going to give it a light sand all right and there you have it i'll, give it one final wipe here before the dye, probably just go over everything again all right guys moment of truth, we're gon na start Dying and uh, i'm not gon na lie, i'm pretty nervous right now many many hours have gone into prep.

So if this doesn't look good, you know i'm gon na be kind of upset. Also in case you're wondering the alternative. A few alternatives buying used seats on ebay like 1500 2 000 for a set. If you could find these sports seats and they're used they're, not perfect, going to an upholstery shop.

A couple grand there and having this done professionally is like fifteen hundred dollars, also and they're, probably going to use the exact same stuff so for a couple hundred dollars i'll take what we get and what we're gon na do here is just kind of wipe it You're, not gon na, really see much of a difference here, because we did such a good job cleaning it, and this is the factory color. Let's get to some areas here that are a little bit worn out and since we've removed all the previous paint, this dye will soak into the leather and we're probably gon na have to do like three to six coats here. So we rub it on dab. It.
There's a little wear spot right here, so not really gon na get that instant gratification just yet because we have to work this in a few times. What i think i'm going to do is i'm going to stop right at this line here. So i won't do the entire seat in one shot and we'll dry this one off all right, so i do think it helps when your sponge is kind of saturated, but i'm just taking one section at a time wiping it down that way. Moving on to the next section, so i don't forget anything and going on it's a little scary because it looks very streaky, but it does actually soak in because we are using dye, unlike our painter friend, who owned this car before.

Okay. So after i've covered everything using the back side, i'm just doing kind of these little blobs - i guess you'd call them. I don't know and that's kind of just getting any of the excess off and even after this you'll see that there are still lines in here. But they do go away so yeah.

What you just saw there is one coat of half of the seat bottom. So it really is mostly prep work and if you guys don't have a heat gun you're in luck, because a blow dryer works a lot better. In this case, we don't need a ton of heat. We just need kind of more volume of air and i'll do this for about two minutes.

Maybe something like that. That's about it and it's impossible to see on camera, but the little streaky lines are disappearing. They're already gone all right, so i think four coats is the magic number. I don't think putting any more on here would do anything and we still have our grain.

Everything is nice, and even - but this looks amazing, so we stopped right here and you can see what the other side looks like and what that side did look like. So this is the discoloration, mostly from us cleaning and you can see it has kind of like a pinkish hue and just all sorts of blotchiness going on, and then we move over here and it is the factory bmw sand beige. Now i can move on to the other side and i'll show you guys the final product, i'm totally finished, with the rear seat. Bottom very happy with the results.

Very even it looks practically brand new and i've moved on to the rear seat back. So i've already dyed this entire section. It has four coats of the die and i'm running into an issue right here and here. If you remember it looked like this, but a little bit worse on that side, and that's because this dude, whoever he was decided to die or paint.

This might be dye, uh, the rear seat belts and i guess the front seat belts too. Maybe no that doesn't. I don't know he just ran out of dye. I guess he did that little section there, not that he didn't do the center for some reason, but anyway, so whatever this is, was rubbing on the seat and caused that discoloration.
But that's okay. We got ta roll with the punches, so i think i'm gon na use some of this fluid leather and hopefully that will fix our issue just kind of spread it out there not sure if this will work, but i wasn't sure of this entire project. To be honest with you and it's working out pretty well so far, so we'll see what happens here, i'm just going to do some of the darker spots. I don't really want to use this on the entire area and this side might come out.

I don't know, i don't know all right, i don't know, what's gon na happen i'll, let that dry for a little bit sand it down and then i'll dye the whole rest of the seat back and uh we'll see what happens all right so that actually worked. I'm surprising myself many times in this video. You can't even tell at all look at that. So all i did was the fluid leather that you saw and then i just dabbed on a few more coats, two or three coats and it's gone.

Wonderful. Let me just show you exactly what i did so i dabbed on some and then this stuff basically will dry right in front of our eyes and all i did on that side. Is i kept the hair dryer going? I do some dabs dry, it real, quick dab, it some more give it another dry and we might be there. So it looks like you can do spot repairs, which is beautiful all right.

So at this point i can go ahead and apply dye to the rest of this side. So it'll match this perfectly, but the seat belt marks are gone after four coats. This is what the rear seat back looks like, and you can't see any of the marks from those dyed seat belts whatsoever looks amazing, so the back is done. Let's move on to the front! Well, we have a seat back down.

Folks looks like they tried to paint this one brown first and then painted whatever color they painted it and we're not able to get the brown off. So i will have to order one new seat back, but at this point we are ready to dye our first front seat. So this is what it looks like before, and hopefully it looks much better after all right, so we're gon na go top to bottom here with the die and i'll wipe off any excess from any plastic pieces. A little later, we'll come right off.

I tell you this: the passenger seat is going to be sweet. This bolster was already in really good shape. All right, let's see how some of this more damaged stuff is going to look after pass number one. This is really my big area of concern.

I don't know i got a lot of confidence in this dyno after using it on the rear seats seems to work really. Well, i don't know what was sitting on the seat here. Was that sunglasses with something heavy on top of it? Maybe it's there to stay? What's cool is we can dye these areas here and then we can dry it really quick with the blow dryer and i'll do the same with these areas here that are going to rub up against it. Now we can kind of put this back.
It's not really going to touch all that much right now. I don't know about you guys, but i'm so excited to do the driver's seat. I still have to strip it down. That is going to be the biggest difference maker and i think on that one.

I will have to use some of the fluid leather to fix the bolster on that one, but at this point i'm just excited about it, because i know i'm gon na make it look good. This is working out so far at the beginning of this video. I really didn't know what was gon na happen. I was really nervous to put all the prep work in and then have it look like garbage um, but this is gon na be sweet and we're getting there all right.

I still have a little bit of coverage to do right in this area and then along this seam, where we kind of had to scrub really hard to get the paint off. You can see it's a little darker right there, so i'm going to be doing my little spot repair method here, all right, so i'm just going to dab it on in these areas. Back here too, even though you're really not going to see this we'll go ahead and just dry it right away, then just go right back at it and i'll do this probably three times and we should be good all right, the passenger seat is complete. The results are absolutely stunning.

This looks so good. You go right up close to the areas that had a little bit more discoloration from us scrubbing and they're gone completely gone now the lighting's a little bit weird here in the shot, but yeah. This looks too good. I mean i may now have to do more work to this e39 to make the exterior match its interior, which is gon na cost me some more money, all right, guys we're saving the best or the worst in this case for last the driver seat.

So we're going to start off with a little air gun action, then we'll move on to some booger removal. Exactly sure what this says. Okay, it's a booger on paint. Apparently there we go, then we're going to spray it down with our sulfuric acid.

I mean tough stuff and we'll do this too. All right, since you guys have already seen me, do a lot of this cleaning, i'm just going to hit the bolsters here on the side uh. This is going to be the most damaged part for sure, and i want to show you guys this kind of in real time here we go. I think he painted this even more just to cover up some of this damage here.

Let's see we got here, let's get in there, i'm starting to wonder if, if maybe this car was just vandalized in a very specific way, guys like i'm, going to paint all these seats, a very specific color for this guy it'll come off with tough stuff, so He didn't hate him too bad. Okay, so i mean honestly it's kind of what i was expecting um. The leather is not cut through, though i mean i've seen way worse. We can repair this.
I mean this is the first time i've ever done any leather repair whatsoever, but i think i can repair this. We did it a little bit on the back seat and that fluid leather was really easy to work with. So it's the moral of the story here is that, if i can do all this, you guys can definitely do all this. I'm gon na hit it with a little bit of the denatured alcohol here.

This was probably the main reason he did this to the seats and because he wanted a new color, but all right, not too bad. I'm excited after three hours of cleaning the seat. This is what we have so yeah. It looks a little rough right now.

That is for sure, because i had to get pretty aggressive in some areas just to get all of this thick paint off, but overall i'm pretty happy with the condition of the leather seat. I don't think we're going to need too much of the fluid leather. So, let's get right to that: let's just get these cracks here and then spread it in just like before. I'm really surprised at how little of this stuff you actually need.

I thought i'd be done with this tube after one tiny repair, but it just fills right in all right, so i've essentially done a very light skim coat over the entire bolster to fill in all the cracks, but not to fill in the natural grain of the Leather, all right, so that's it for the leather repair. We've done a little bit over there and a little bit over here now we're just going to hit it with a hair dryer, and we only need to let this dry for probably about 15-20 minutes since we're using the hair dryer all right. So everything is dry. I'm just going over it all with our sandpaper, and these pads are really nice.

Only a few dollars i'll leave a link for everything down below, don't worry blow it all off all right, then we have our leather cleaning spirits and it's our last step before the die, and this basically dries immediately. Probably just wait about five minutes, or so all right here we go moment of truth. Definitely the worst seat. We've done in this video, that's for sure.

I anticipate having to do more than four coats on this driver's seat. We might be closer to six. This stuff is definitely gon na soak right into this leather, since we've essentially stripped it all the way down in some areas. Oh yeah, i feel so good for this seat.

If this seat could could just talk, i would like to think it would. Thank us there. You go, there's your old color back buddy, no more paint! You were hidden for so long. Your beauty covered up for no one else to see i mean yeah and then we're gon na go ahead and put some more dye on there and that's how you do it.

I guess that's my impression of myself doing diy style videos. I don't know. What's going on anymore, all right, i've been out here for this is uh. I guess my like two and a half days.

That's what this entire project has taken and sure it's already in the comments section, but no i'm not counting labor. On the legit flip series, i explain this in another video i'll leave the link that goes directly to that spot in the video. If you want to watch my explanation for it down below i'm not gon na, do it again, but we ain't counting labor, just something we don't do on flip cars, our own labor, that is it'll, make sense. Click on the video all right, so i've done two coats at this point, so we're on coat number three and we really have to concentrate on areas like this.
We might at the end kind of have to go back and heat the area up like this. As i'm putting it on, you can still see the discoloration there where we cleaned and wiped away a lot of the factory color. So all right, i have to restore all of that. So three more coats on top of this, i'm hoping i'll do the trick here.

It is after coat number three looking very promising. The bolster looks awesome still some wear down there. Let's keep going, and here we are after coat number four. So, there's about two minutes of drying with the blow dryer in between we're getting there, and this is coat number five.

You can see the wear on the bolster just disappearing and i think we just have one more left to do all right, and this is after six coats. We are done with the driver's seat, all right guys. So this is what the driver's seat looked like before. When it was in the car painted and disgusting, this is what it looked like after we stripped all of the paint off, and this is what it looks like now and i am blown away.

I thought these seats were gon na, be a complete nightmare and although it took a lot of labor, it took about two and a half days, roughly um, i'm very happy with the results, and we did this for about a hundred dollars. Actually, a little less we'll go, take a look and tally everything up here in a second but looks like he had a box sitting on the seat for a long time. So in the next e39 video i'll, try and fix that and we are going to be re-dying the carpet fixing all of the trim and then putting these seats back in. So i hope you guys will join me for that video, but just take a look at these seats, such a transformation, any one of you at home can do this.

If you have the time, if you have the weekend, you can completely restore the leather seats in your car and even though this is a flip job, this is a very professional result, so we didn't cheap out at all. We just spent the right amount on this. We didn't go too crazy. We worked smart and for under a hundred dollars every single one of you guys can have these results.

I can't wait to get these back in the car all right guys. Let's talk budget really quick and i'm not gon na split hairs. Here i think we came in right under a hundred dollars, but i'm gon na go ahead and say we spent 100 on the interior restoration for the e39. So let me break this down for you, so you at least know how you can spend under a hundred dollars on this project uh this right here, it's a hundred bucks by itself, but we only used about ten dollars of it and you can get a much Smaller bottle for about 15 - and now we know, that's all you need for an entire leather interior, so this little sponge came with it.
This is about six bucks. At the hardware store, this was seven dollars. This was ten uh. This was probably only like two dollars, but i bought it in a pack of 12 for, like 20 on amazon, amazing kit, i'll link it down below, along with everything you've seen in this video.

This was probably the most expensive individual product of the video. I think this is like 38 bucks, but we only use like a fifth of it, so you can reuse this on a bunch of cars. This is a few dollars here. We spent 16 bucks on tough stuff and then these i borrowed from the guys at chicago, auto, pros for demonstration purposes i'll just give both of these right back.

Obviously, the die worked out really well um, and then you probably have brushes and stuff like this. Laying around the house and tough stuff if you're, cleaning your leather seats or your driveway, apparently all right guys. So if you've been keeping track during the legit flip series, then you know in the last video we ended with a total investment of 2193. So if my public school education serves me well we're at thousand two hundred and ninety three dollars with the complete leather seat, restoration that we just did so with that.

I hope you guys really enjoyed this video if you did give it a big thumbs up stay tuned for the next e39 video we're going to complete the entire interior. So there's going to be painting of trim, re-dying of carpet reinstallation of these seats and then the final interior product uh also share the video with your friends subscribe. If, for some crazy reason you haven't already and most importantly, have an awesome day i'll catch. All of you in the next video you.


By Alex

12 thoughts on “How to restore totally destroyed leather seats for under $100! 2 diy methods anyone can do!”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars BD Studios says:

    Alex what can I say… WOW those seats were horrible but they legit look brand new!
    That was an amazing transformation and I'm shocked it only took 100 in materials.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars pkt1213 says:

    M39s are some of the best looking cars. 2000 germany had it locked with midsized sedans, C5 A6, E39 5-series, W210 E-class.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars chevymec says:

    I wouldn't say destroyed. I was expecting leather that was ripped and looked like a GM truck or SUV. Nice referb on the seats. Made a big difference.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars arcadeuk says:

    You can see the overspray in the interior. Some dumbass literally spray painted your seats

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Hola! Ron Hudson says:

    Would another option be to purchase an aftermarket leather package? Is that a thing?

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Mark Britton says:

    Wow! Just another very helpful tutorial!
    VERY Satisfying!
    You are awesome!

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Thatbodyguy73 says:

    My gs 350 seats are literally shredded, I was hoping this would help lol.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Samcrac says:

    There's a spray product for interior vinyl trims, it's not really meant for leather, but it looks like that's what they might've used on those light colored seats. That stuff looked really bad from the start, now that car looks mint! Great score.

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Yea Nah says:

    I was like "he's gonna teach me to save my seats", then instantly felt better once I saw the before on those monsters. The old guy that owned my car before didn't know how to keep leather nice, but those are bad, like really bad

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Chibu says:

    This really is a straight-up legit flip. Haven't come across a more accurate name for something lol.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Arie Bastiaanse says:

    It's amazing Mike. If you pay by creditcard, you get the second bottle for free!

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Marko Polo says:

    Good Legit Saturday Morning folks!
    Hey Alex I'm finding out that this V8 Northstar engine has a big flaw due to the head bolts. I'm going to have to rebore it with some coarse threaded head bolts. There's a kit.

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