[Shadow]

My dad is finally handing me down his precious MKII Supra, there are some changes im going to do on it before it gets on the road, and i'm going to ask for help from you guys when the times come up....1st up, the leather seats, they show the WEAR an TEAR of being around for over 20 years, they look sort of faded at parts (some parts are a blueish color), cracked in many place and large open tears on the drivers seat that my dad had covered with a seat cover...what can i do to fix these problems and make them look a lot better? is it possible? A friend of mine told me to try that "Liquid Leather" stuff they advertise in T.V. but i'm not to sure it will work...what do you guys think I should do? -Thanx

 

[SilverMk2]

Take it to and upholstery shop and prepare to bend over . You are in for a shock if you want it actually done in real leather. If you are on a budget you can subsitute vinyl. Most vinyls today are a really good knockoff of leather. Besides good sized chunks of the Mk2 factory leather are vinyl anyway.

Another option is to find good used sections and use them to fix your existing seats. You can use passenger side pieces to repair you driver side as well, useful because the passenger side tends to be in better shape. Good leather section are near impossible to find though. You could always switch over to cloth interior also, which tends to have held up better.

 

[Borlax]

I made the upholstery my self, i have never used a sewing machine before, but it was not that difficult to do. All the leather i used came from old sofa´s found on the scrap yard, i only cut out the nice parts and colours i had to use. I then recoloured it and sewed it all together.

You can see the result on this link, when i finished the first seat, dont mind the wrinkles, they are straightened out when its used for some time.

http://borlax.homepage.dk/seat2.jpg

 

[Usagisama 83']

I just had to say that seat you made is really cool considering it was made out of sofas. great job! How long did it take make it?

 

[Borlax]

The preparation job is really the longest, ripping up the old cloth and using it as guides, to cut out the leather, and then recoloring it, the sewing and finishing, is about 1/3 of the time, its hard to say how many hours i used, but i guess its about 40-50 hours including door and rear panels.

Here´s another pic which shows you some of the work progressing.

http://borlax.homepage.dk/seats.jpg

 

[CelicaDale]

F#@$ Yea that looks great. Where did you ever find a scrap yard with leather sofa's?

 

[Borlax]

Well, where i live people throw everything away, despite the fact that we have a newspaper where you can advertise your used things for free. I recently found a 17" Sony triniton monitor 1yr old not even a scratch and functioning!!!!. every time i find chairs or sofas with leather i cut it of, because the it cost about 6$ per sq foot. My entire interior project is financed by collecting old aluminium rims on the scrap yard, and selling them on the metal yard for about 1½$ a pound. Im laughing my ass of seeing people driving in their small Geo, polo or whatever and throwing their things away. I live in Denmark and the taxes on new cars, is like New zealand you buy 1 car and pay for 3. So im really taking good care of my beloved old MK2 84 supra.

 

[wallcrawlr]

Very resourceful.

Good job.

 

[majjam1954]

hey borlax,

great work! i don't suppose you made patterns of the seat pieces that you would be willing to share? the funny thing is, i was just about to dispose of 2 leather sofas. the're sitting in my garage taking up space, and my wife hasn't gotten tired of them yet. i think i'll be stripping a lot of leather in the next couple oif weeks.

anyway, i'm really interested in how you dyed the leather. my sofas are beige.

if there is enough interest, would you consider posting a tutorial on how you did the work? my '82 has the same blue striped interior as yours.

thanks!!

 

[LTypeSupra]

On the main page....in the FAQ there is a nice thing about decent seat covers...im looking into that cause my seats r having the same problems and being 20 college student...i dont have the money to get mine redone....but go to FAQ download the .doc and check it out

 

[atdsupra]

borla :can you share with us detailed procedure for this ?

 

[atdsupra]

borla :can you share with us detailed procedure for this ?