Project Bentley

Nope, not us mate! The car has had no drivers seat in place since Friday afternoon :D
 
So.....an update.

First off, the courtesy car mentioned in post #28 turned out to be a bit poor, both for my friend's needs and as a tool for getting around Burton. A BMW 318d M Sport - bloody uncomfortable if you're used to a Jaguar XJ8 as your daily hack. This has now been replaced with a 520d estate, which is orders of magnitude better.

Second off, the seats have been worked on. Just a bit.

Remember how bad the drivers seat looked in my opening post? It went from that to this:

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Here the cushion is being worked on:

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Here it is mostly finished:

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The seatback for the passenger side:

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The rear seats before a finishing touch was applied:

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Now, about that finishing touch....

At some point, it was decided that different coloured piping would be a rather good idea. So here's how that worked out:

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Got to give a shout-out to James Bartley @ Perfection Group who did the work. Very professional, very friendly, very talented. I'd recommend the firm to anyone.

***edit***

Tell you what, we got bloody well soaked putting the seats back in. And as soon as we were done, the clouds parted and the sun came out. Bleedin' typical. Still, they're in now and looking a damned sight better than they did.
 
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That's a good looking seat restoration job there. I like the piping too, was the old piping removed and the red one added or was the old just dyed red. I'm guessing the later.
 
That seat restoration is INCREDIBLE! I honestly didn't think such things could be achieved without an actual re-trim? What's actually involved?
 
Chris1712 said:
That seat restoration is INCREDIBLE! I honestly didn't think such things could be achieved without an actual re-trim? What's actually involved?
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gord said:
Just a hairdryer by the looks! :p Did they divulge any of their leather restoration secrets JRS? They do look mighty fine now.
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In the case of the Bentley seats here, they started out with a bad previous rattle-can paintjob on them (courtesy of a previous owner I guess) that had deteriorated pretty badly. The remaining paint from that job had to be taken off and the leather cleaned up. The worst cracks were filled in with a flexible filler, and then the seat could be re-coloured.

That's obviously massively simplified - there's a reason why these guys are good at their job, they know the ins and outs of restoring leather in this condition. I can't claim to have picked much up, beyond the fact that it's bloody difficult!
 
Fantastic seat restoration and good to see another project coming along.

I can picture FOX having a 'crisis' after seeing those pics!
 
Looking so much better than the before shot now. Piping colour works really well.

There must be a better steering wheel that that though? Looks utterly manky compared to the rest of the interior.

*google time....*
Ouch! Plus the wood wouldn't match now.
 
Flibster said:
Looking so much better than the before shot now. Piping colour works really well.

There must be a better steering wheel that that though? Looks utterly manky compared to the rest of the interior.

*google time....*
Ouch! Plus the wood wouldn't match now.
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Steering wheels are a real bugbear for these cars. An expensive bugbear as well.
 
Chris1712 said:
That seat restoration is INCREDIBLE! I honestly didn't think such things could be achieved without an actual re-trim? What's actually involved?
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essentially they are "painted" with a special flexible paint that is designed to go over leather.

It flexes with heat / cold etc.. so it doesnt crack and its cellulose based or something like that i seem to recall.

I've seen it done on wheeler dealers and its great stuff.
 
That looks well.

Dont want to be a wet blanket but remember all seat restorations look good at first, time is the test.

One question, did he do the piping by hand with a brush? Or mask and spray it?
 
DiamondMark said:
That looks well.

Dont want to be a wet blanket but remember all seat restorations look good at first, time is the test.
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Oh, absolutely. But the level of prep and care that went into this job give me confidence that it'll last well.

DiamondMark said:
One question, did he do the piping by hand with a brush? Or mask and spray it?
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Mask and spray.
 
DiamondMark said:
That gives me less confidence to its longevity, but still it looks to have come out well.
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Well, we'll have to wait and see obviously. As I say, the amount of trouble he went to during the cleaning and prep'ing stage gives me a lot of confidence about it lasting, and lasting well.

And it can't do any worse than the rattle-can job that it was wearing when we picked the car up....
 
JRS said:
Well, we'll have to wait and see obviously. As I say, the amount of trouble he went to during the cleaning and prep'ing stage gives me a lot of confidence about it lasting, and lasting well.

And it can't do any worse than the rattle-can job that it was wearing when we picked the car up....
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Like i said i wasnt trying to be a wet blanket, iv just had a few cars done over the years and seen different results.

He's got a nice even colour on it anyway.

How much did he charge you?
 
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