Car Seat Leather Repair

by John

It is about 3 weeks since I had my gall bladder removed and I am not yet 100% recovered. Pain free, so I presume that the pancreatitis has settled, but not feeling very energetic. Improving a bit every day. And helped by the readers and friends who sent me their best wishes. Thank you guys.

My car is a 12 year old BMW which I bought new. 200,000 km, twin turbo diesel X5. Very comfortable, versatile, economical, safe (5 star rating in Oz). I drive it carefully, regularly serviced, and it has been very reliable. I have considered changing it for a hybrid, smaller vehicle, but so far nothing has tempted me enough, so I am just hanging on to it.

But one irritating problem is that the driver’s seat leather upholstery had worn through where the squab is rubbed when entering and leaving the vehicle, and the stuffing was starting to protrude and come out. 

Now, let me state that when I bought the car, I did not have the level of vegetarian, anti animal cruelty opinions, that I now have. For the past decade I would not be responsible for killing and suffering of cattle for meat, or leather for upholstery. However, I do regret not having made that change much earlier in my life. But neither am I going to waste the resources which went into the shoes and vehicles purchased prior to having my eyes opened.

Back to the BMW seat. I spotted this advertisement recently for a self adhesive leather repair material. The material itself is not leather, but the video attached to the ad looked fairly promising so I bought a sheet 1.36m x 600mm and some other items which were all delivered in good condition about 3 weeks later. So far, my experiences with Temu.com have been very good, including this order.

The material cuts easily with scissors and is slightly stretchy. The backing peels off easily. A practice run with a small piece demonstrated that the glue grips immediately, and is quite tenacious. There is a small window of time to position the piece accurately, as long as the area of contact is still small.

I quickly realised that the seat squab repair was going to be difficult, because the seat has curves in multiple directions, and I wanted the repair edges hidden within the existing leather joins. I initially tried to use a single piece for the entire repair, but that proved to be beyond my capabilities. Probably an expert repairer would have managed, but I decided to use 3 smaller pieces, and hope that the joins would not be too obvious.

Part way through the job I starting taking some photos. Unfortunately I don’t have any shots of the “before” situation.

The first piece of patch. Looking at the seat from above. One edge of the patch is tucked into the outside join in the worn leather, and the patch is progressively smoothed down while slowly removing the backing paper. Thorough initial cleaning of the leather with a damp cloth. This patch covers the worst split in the leather. The second edge is cut carefully, allowing about 2-3mm extra material to be pushed into the leather join. I bent a piece of copper wire (just seen) to do the pushing, to avoid cutting the seat leather or existing leather stitching.
I used a Sharpie to mark the cutting lines, but extra trimming was needed as the repair piece was fixed into position. This is the final patch. It was the most difficult.
Copper wire pushing tool. The repair pattern is not identical to the original, but it passes cursory inspection.
The final result, with the tools used. The tool with the white plastic handle came from my wife’s sewing kit. The ruby ball was also a good pushing tool. The scissors top were from my microsurgery kit, but they were a bit too delicate for the job.

I will remove the Sharpie lines. Time will tell how well the repair lasts.  At least it has stopped the seat stuffing coming out.