Hello all. What products would you recommend for cleaning and reviving aged/dried/wrinkled seats?

 

What color are the seats? If they are black, this is much easier. The seats in my car weren't horrific but there were some scratches and a couple worn areas that really popped in the sunlight and I wanted to fix them. I also had the typical driver's side flattened bolster. Here is what I did:

Remove the seat; remove the round metal clips on the side near the worn bolster, peel back the leather to expose the damaged foam underneath. Cut/glue foam pieces in place to rebuild the bolster and get it back into shape. Fit the leather back over the seat pad and re-attach using the clips or zip ties. Then hit the whole thing with a steamer with a microfiber cleaning pad attached. The steamer helps to clean and tighten up the leather in the area you worked on and also can help with the rest of the seat at removing old grease, gunk, etc.

Last thing to do is get some liquid black shoe polish (like this: https://www.target.com/p/kiwi-instan...B&gclsrc=aw.ds)

Apply to the seat on any worn areas, scratches, cracks, etc. It helps hide them and amazingly this stuff blends in with the black color of the seat extremely well. In my case I applied to the entire base of my passenger seat to cover some scratches and it looks great. Even in full sun, you can't tell that the dye was ever applied. It just looks right.

 

Good advice above.

Here is a write-up that I did a while back if your bolster needs a refresh. I am no expert and there are people here far better than me, but my seats turned out nice.
Repairing driver’s side seat bolster - Cedarcrest Speedlab

Steam cleaning is a must. If you are in need of some crack filling and dye, the best kit out there, in my opinion, is leathertouchupdye.com. I was skeptical about filling cracks with putty, but it works a treat. The dye matches perfectly and is quite easy to apply as long as you are patient.

 

Thank you very much to the both of you. The seats are red. Yesterday after creating this thread I spent an hour cleaning them with an all purpose cleaner. Although they look presentable in the picture, but up close there are still many stains, grease, discolored areas and what not. The cleaning also made the wrinkles on the driver side bottom more noticeable.




I'm going to source a steam cleaner and go over it once again. After its all cleaned up, is it recommended to apply some sort of a conditioner(voodoo per IA-Steve or another brand) or should I leave it alone after cleaning and re-dyeing the white areas on the driver side?

 

Wow those actually look much better than most seats you will see in these cars. Consider yourself lucky! If you get a dye kit I am sure you can get those seats back to looking 90% of new.

 

I would really consider using crack filler on that driver's side bolster if you want the best results. Crack filler is really amazing stuff and it will fill in those imperfections. It would require a dye afterward (see picture below) so I'd just do both seats so everything matches but you might get lucky and just need to dye the bolster itself. I guess it just depends on your budget and your comfort level working with leather. It's nothing to be scared of. The picture below makes it look terrible but all of the imperfections are filled and sanded smooth. The dye is what makes the result shine.

 

Here is a link to my adventures in seat repair: Seat Repair 2000 S2000

The product I used is also a water-based urethane. I can tell you that after 5 years, my repairs are no longer as impressive as when new. I have re-applied the dye a few times, but at this point I think I'm ready for new covers from Katzkin. Clazzios in red are so expensive, I might as well just replace the original covers.

One of the more attractive offerings is from AutoSeatSkins.com, an authorized Katzkin dealer. The package they provide includes door cards, which was something I noticed after I repaired my seats. It would be nice if I could convince them to do the console cover, too. I would have to email them.

 

I would try the steamer as suggested above, but the truth about ap1 seats is that they are a heavily vinyl coated seat. The leather is buried under there somewhere, and typical leather moisturizers don't penetrate well into our seats. Once you get wrinkles and dried out seats it is nearly impossible to make that go away, you can keep them from getting worse but reversing the wear is difficult. I have never tried any repairs to areas missing colour and coating, but I've seen it done reasonably well for some S2000 owners by companies that specialize in leather seat repairs.

 

I also steamed mine but went a bit further and stripped the leather with mineral spirits,that was just filled with oils and gunk. The leather went from hard as a box of rocks to soft and plush. Then it was All redyed and resealed. @zeroptzero mentioned it's nearly impossible to get wrinkles out from moisture shrinking. Leather will tighten up with heat. Anyway it's nearly impossible for wrinkle shrink correction. But hard leather just needs a good chemical like mineral spirits. Which is not for the faint of heart.
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here's some from that time


















Here's today three years later, I've gotta fix a small scratch in the driver side from sitting with a zipper on my back pocket.. ooops






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Awesome work on those seats. Very nice.

Wrinkles are quite normal and okay, cracking is not.