G35Driver - Infiniti G35 & G37 Forum Discussion - 5 Year Old Tan Leather Seats Before & After with Leatherique!

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5 Year Old Tan Leather Seats Before & After with Leatherique!

Hey All! This is my very first post since July 2005, crazy I know. Anyhow, my car is officially 5 years old and I've been getting back into the forum lately, so I figured a good write up should help me ease back into things.

My seats have started to crack (especially the driver seat) and show signs of wear for a few months now. I used Meguiar's Gold Class rich leather cleaner/conditioner with pretty decent results, but have always had my eye set on Leatherique (after thorough research). I decided to go ahead and buy it off DetailedImage and it just arrived today, a day early.

I have taken before pictures, and tomorrow I will get to work on the leather. Weather.com says 88 Degrees here in Miami tomorrow so I should get the "steamy" effect I need. I plan on following Todd Cooperiders guide, and use a leather shoe brush I never used.

Do any of you have some quick tips before I start tomorrow? Do I need to wash my brand new microfiber towels before using them for the first time, or do I only have to do that when using them on the exterior of the car?

Looking forward to showing you all my progress...

I wanna see the product.... Price?

New MF towels tend to leave too much lint behind. I'd rinse them and air dry them the night before.

I use a soft bristled nylon brush for cleaning and it's worked perfectly.

Okay, so just finished applying the Leatherique Rejuvenator Oil and all I can say so far is, this is pretty intense stuff.

Here were my steps before applying:

Used my leather shoe brush to remove dirt/debris from the cracks/crevices/and seams of the seats
Thoroughly vacuumed the seats
Cleaned off with a damp microfiber towel

Thoughts: The leather shoe brush made me realize how much small fine dirt was embedded in the seams and cracks of the seat. Leatherique says to heavily apply their product to those areas so I made sure to clean em good

I put on my plastic gloves, hooked up the spray nozzle to the Leatherique bottle, and went to work. I must say, using a spray bottle made the process go very quickly. I was able to target the seams easily and cover every area. The applying process was pretty easy, the oil is a good lubricant so there was barely any "elbow grease" used. The driver seat was the worst, so I started there, than did the driver door armrest, than the center console armrest, than the steering wheel and shift knob (and leather boot), and finished off with the front passenger seat.

The front section of the car took exactly 30 minutes. You can see the product working almost instantly. On some really bad areas of my driver seat, the oil literally dried up and soaked into the leather immediately, so I kept reapplying until I felt necessary.

I then took a 10 minute break, changed my gloves (looked like they were getting a little dirty) and started with the back seats. The back seats felt as if they took half the time, it was SIGNIFICANTLY easier probably because those are the cleanest seats in the car. I made sure to get the very top of the seats near the rear windows, as well as the sides and front of the bottoms of the seat.

Within almost 5-10 minutes after applying, you can start to see that dirty/hazy look you typically see from other peoples pictures, so you know it's working.

Usage: They say to apply 4 oz per seat. I wasn't exactly measuring, but I was definitely over spraying and made sure to soak every single area. Surprisingly when I finished, I was left with half the bottle (8 oz remaining out of 16) so I'll probably go back in an hour from now and reapply to the driver seat.

Ease of use: The back seats were so easy that when I finished the entire car I kept thinking, that can't be it. The entire process took a little over 1 hour. It almost seems too easy, so I'm a bit skeptical how this thing is going to turn out as we're all used to applying some serious muscle when going to work on our seats in the past.

Tip: Have a damp towel nearby to wipe off the oil from vinyl and other areas that got a little spray on them.

Now for the pictures, it was hard to get good shots because it was so damn sunny (90 degrees in Miami) and there were some shadows. But I tried my best:

http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...nation-1-1.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...ination-10.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...ination-11.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...ination-12.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...ination-13.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...vination-2.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...vination-3.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...vination-4.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...vination-5.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...vination-6.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...vination-7.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...vination-9.jpg http://gi145.photobucket.com/groups/...ination-14.jpg

Update: After 2 hours I quickly reapplied the rejuvinator oil on all my seats in less than 15 minutes using another 1/4 of the bottle which leaves me with 1/4 left. The leather already feels softer in some areas and my seats were on FIRE from the sun and 90 degree heater I left on.

Looking forward to hearing how everything turns out as well as the after pictures.

i love the look of freshly treated leather :)

Hey All! So I have really exciting news for all of you - the product worked, and it worked REALLY REALLY well. The seats look unreal, almost like new (with the exception of a few areas). I took a lot of photos during the cleaning process which I'll be posting sometime this week.

So here was the process:
I waited 26 hours and let the sun bake in during the next day until 4:30 PM. I left the heater in the car on for probably 3-4 hours total over the course of the 26 hours to create a sauna effect inside the car as instructed.

After 26 hours, the seats had a really sticky and tacky feel to them as others have described. At this point, it looked as if nothing happened. I got to work, starting off with a leather brush (as posted above), and a spray bottle of Leatherique Cleaner. Almost as soon as I started brushing, I could see the dirt literally come right off. Make sure to spray a decent amount of cleaner (not as much needed as the rejuvinator oil) and really brush inside the cracks and seams of the seats. I than sprayed down the entire seat once more with the cleaner and let it sit for 5 minutes or so (some ppl say to do longer, I had better results leaving it on for shorter). I came back, got two buckets filled with warm to hot water, grabbed a cotton towel, and started cleaning the dirt off the seats. As a tip - work on a section at a time and clean the towel in your bucket as frequently as possible as a lot of dirt builds up. I used a pretty good amount of pressure to clean the seats off, and kept repeating a certain area until it looked clean again. On some parts of the driver seat, there was stubborn dirt marks or cracks that simply wouldn't go away, so I just let them be. When you take a step back to look at the overall seat, you're left with a nice smile across your face.

I then let the seat dry and started working on the passenger seat. The process was the same, except I used my hands to apply the cleaner and used the brush for really bad spots (like deep cracks). The brushing was a really vigorous and tiring process so I just switched to my hands for the rest of the car (except for deep cracks). After I finished with the passenger seat, I changed the buckets of water because they started getting murky.

* Tip - Don't forget to clean the driver and passenger door armrests, the center console (which looks completely brand new now), and the stick shift.

The passenger door armrests and the center console look BRAND NEW. The sides of the seats, headrest, and back of the seats also look brand new. The steering wheel was left with a nice matte finish but now that I've been driving around for a day, I wish I hadn't done the top of the wheel where my hands go. It's a sticky/tacky feeling as another user reported so in my opinion, I would've left the wheel alone all together.

The back seats took really quick and look brand new as well. After the car was completely done, I took 2 microfiber towels and buffed the seats off for the finishing touches (which actually helped a lot). When I stepped back to look at everything, I can't even explain how happy I was.

All in all, the cleaning process took about double the time as the rejuvination, and I was working REALLY fast for the cleaning bc I had to go somewhere. So, working my a** off, it took about 2 hours to clean, and I wish I had spent more time.

There's definitely not another product that I have ever used that comes even close to this stuff. Really excited to show you all the before and after photos. For anyone out there that has seats looking as bad as mine were (5 years old), this is a MUST.

Here are some tips:
Definitely use a brush if you have cracks in your seats. When you brush in between the cracks, a lot of dirt gets lifted (as opposed to using your hands) and the cracks look a lot better because there's less dirt lodged inside.
Don't let the rejuvinator cleaner sit for too long on the seats (not more than 15 minutes) or it will start to dry up and you'll need to spray more
Use two buckets filled with warm to hot water - the first bucket is for cleaning the dirt off, and the second is for re-wetting the towel again.
Use a spray bottle to apply the cleaner with a spray nozzle (NOT the direct stream)
Don't apply rejuvinator oil to the steering wheel

Will be posting photos soon...

Anyone has any review for a black interior?

Excellent write up! I am looking into this for sure! Looks AMAZING!