What did you use for the interior? My interior has a few scratches on the door panels from fingernails presumably.. I'd love to get those fixed.

 

Acrylic paint, that's supposed to be what's used to make sealed leather like on cars. It's similar to PVA glue in composition, so it'll basically fix scratches that haven't resulted in material coming off. Isopropanol will strip it off, use a little (70% is good enough) to clean up the spot (it's okay to remove some color from the original leather, as it's laid on pretty thick, and leather conditioner will make it blend back in).

Then it's a matter of mixing paint together and brushing it on with a fine tip brush or toothpick. You can only get so much to stick onto the leather at a time, but you can build layers to fill big cracks. On my G35, I filled gaping holes with "leather filler" (that as far as I can tell is just overpriced black paint...) by doing so and it looks pretty good. You don't have to be super precise, you can sort of smear it with your fingers and then wipe off the excess around the spot you wanted to repair with alcohol.

While I was doing the touchup, I noticed someone had already patched a hole in the driver's seat, but using the wrong color...grrrrr....

The more I listen to the exhaust, the more I like it the way it is tbh. Out of the things that can't be modified, I have to say the steering feel is rather disappointing. Maybe the two Vantages I drove both had issues, but I doubt it... I'm going to do the CHF-11S with Lubrizol additive to see if it's any better, but I oiled the U joint just in case it was sticking and my steering is still pretty unresponsive.

 

Do you mind linking me to the paint you used? I assume you had to have it color matched to your interior... Thanks in advance!

 

Can check this vendor out too : https://www.colourlock.com/aston_mar...a?___store=usa

 

Good find! That looks like a thinner dye though, for holes you want something more like glue (which is basically what leather filler is). Ideally, you use leather filler to level out the hole, then apply the dye over. Acrylic paint is 1 step since it's sticky, but mixing the color is some work. You could buy a paint or filler that sort of matches your leather color, then dye over it to get the color exactly right.

I just bought a generic set with a full palette of colors off Amazon , which you can get at any crafts store or Walmart or something.

 

This is what some other Aston owners I know have used. Gliptone makes one too, but it's hard to find in the US if at all.

 

Just thought I would note, under certain lighting conditions I can tell that my acrylic filler isn't exactly perfect, so at some point I'll probably buy the dye. Applying dye over leather filler is the correct way to do leather repair AFAIK.

In the quest of de-rattling my nav screen, I managed to break the nav screen gears and then chip a corner of the mahogany panel

Since I don't want to wait around, I epoxy to put the gear back together and it works fine (I mean, the original parts aren't exactly strong...), but that slight imperfection in the dash really shows since I polished the satin finish glosssy. I'll probably get replacement gears and redo everything, spraying a new satin finish onto the wood :/ At some point, I want to switch the mahogany to burl walnut, because mahogany is boring, but I can't really justify that on a panel in decent condition.

 

This is a good site for Aston parts https://www.redpants.lol/ along with https://www.scuderiacarparts.com

I have ordered from both. On my Vantage, the screen went up and down pretty slow and on the Rapide it's much better. Rapide has the Garmin nav, not the Volvo nav.

 

I have the piano black ski slope and it was cracked when I bought the car. A friend of a friend who does body work was able to fix it perfectly. I think he did it for a couple hundred, compared to the cost of a new/used panel... yikes.

I've used astonmartinbits.com as well. Good experience there.