seat material - leather, vinyl, or what?

[crewboy04]

how can i tell what my car seats are made of? i know the middle sections of the seat and seatback are upholstery, but what about the side trim sections? what kind of conditioner should i use on it if it's leather, or vinyl, or...what? lexol, vinylex, mothers, armor all, etc.?

[bimmerboi318]

the conditioners i've seen work on both leather and vinyl. i've used armor all and it works fine.

[Travis]

It sounds like you've got leather seats. If you can't tell whether they are vinyl or leather, then they are probably in good shape.

There are lots and lots of opinions out there for taking care of leather, the thing to remember is to stay away from unnatural ingredients or things labeled for multiple uses "works on leather, vinyl, wood, china..."

The lexol folks make some easy wipes that will keep you up if you don't have problems. If you have some drying, flaking, cracking, etc, then you're in a different ball park & that's where the arguments start.

[chadder007]

The stuff I use is 3M vinyl and leather cleaner conditioner. It has worked out the best for me. Also the seats that have the cloth down the middle and leather looking material on the sides is actually Vinyl.

[Travis]

Mine is a '95 with sport seats (cloth middle, leather periphery, extendable thigh support)

Not vinyl. Don't know about the regular seats.

[tastade]

Zymol makes a good leather conditioner. Look for something that specifically says no solevents, and is coligen (sp?) based. Those are the best for the leather. Solevent can dry out the leather and make it age even faster. Use oil based mild soap to wash the leather first, something like Murphy's Oil Soap works well, and then apply the condition as per the directions.

[Travis]

On Zymol: I agree that the conditioner works well. I have also had good luck with their leather cleaner (both are available at Target, by the way). 3M makes some good vinyl cleaner, available at NAPPA (Vinylex by Lexol is supposed to be good also).

I don't recomend this because it seems like an awful thing to do, but I used to periodically clean the leather steering wheel in my old Nissan with Goop hand cleaner. I never used conditioner on it, and after 6 years, it looked fairly new (definately better than the wheel on my 318ti which was trashed when I got it, and no amount of conditioning can save it now).

Travis

[rated///M]

throw away all your leather/vinyl cleaning/conditioning products and go to this website....

www.leatherique.com

...this is the FINEST leather/vinyl cleaning - condition -repairing product on the market PERIOD.

I highly recommend this stuff if you cant already tell.

[tastade]

Go to target (or some other store) and buy some Zymol leather conditioner. It won't dry out the leather like some conditioners do. There are other great products that will work, but make sure it has collagen and doesn't have a lot of solevants. If you also get Zymol leather cleaner, apply that first then apply the conditioner.

I also like the smell of the Zymol conditioner, it will make your whole car smell better after you apply it, especially if there are any odors in the leather from smoke or something similar. I had an acura legend that I bought and smelled faintly of smoke and air fresheners, used the cleaner and conditioner and it smelled great.

[1985mercurylynx]

I don't know if this fits exactly with this thread, but...

just about the only things that were really showing wear on my car were the drivers side seat bolster and parts of the steering wheel where the sheen had rubbed off ('97 sport pkg w/black bolsters/grey inserts). After I treated the leather with Zymol, I used a $2 bottle of black shoe dye that I bought at Walgreens, and it did a great job of covering the wear on the bolster and also matched the worn parts of the steering wheel to the unworn parts. The difference is night and day.

It helps if you apply the dye and let it sit overnight before you buff it. Also, be careful, because the dye tends to run out of the applicator pretty fast, so cover the inserts and anything else you don't want dyed.