Driven by the seat of your pants

A tale of whether to connollise or re-trim those jaded seats from Kevin Senior

There are no doubt many ways to skin the proverbial cat. However, many factors need to be taken into account before we go skinning anything.
For me personally the issues are time, cost, residuals, longevity, and overall impact. I would suggest you follow these rules too.
I began searching the usual way for means to spruce up my seats, I bought the car knowing it had had a well used interior but with good documentation on the mechanicals, all from OPC centres, any niceties I could have dealt with a later date. I also choose a light interior which I knew would show wear and tear more readily than a dark on, I did this because I find Black interiors on the 964 oppressive, that's just my viewpoint. So to cut to the chase, this is how I chose to refurbish my seats, hope you enjoy the write up, and gain some insight into the choices available to you.

Establishing Requirements

We all have differing requirements from our cars, As I want mine to both look good and perform well I have sought to make sure that the mechanicals are good, before I ventured into the bodywork and interior.

I wanted my seats to be repaired, no doubt in my mind, I asked various questions on my favourite forums, and went into some of the details available in Porsche Post. There are many firms offering services, some founded in blind faith and shrouded in mystery, others enveloped in Porsche talk, and accompanied by the oft over inflated price tag Porsche ownership attracts. This I wanted none of, why should I pay for this? I sought alternatives, quality finishes, but alternate to those being offered as solutions, many of which others had not tried, just "heard of".

As you can no doubt see, they are in need of attention, but they do look worse than they are in real life, due in the main to their light colour and the ability to look soiled, even when clean. The bolster above shows what can happen when you are mislead over claims of being able to spray panels, fill gaps, or generally disguise the scuffs you can see here. As obvious as it now sounds, none of this is a real viable solution to actually doing the work properly, though to be realistic I had to try them first, my advice if you are reading this is to avoid any half baked cheap alternatives.


The previous photo showed the extent of repair necessary for the drivers seat, this one shows how little the passenger seat had suffered, Obviously a drivers car ;-)) So my requirements don't extend to having two seats fully trimmed, but if I just re-trim one then the other one will look out of place, no matter how well matched leather is for colour, many years of cleaning, fading, chemicals and wear all take their toll.

Connollise or Re-Trim?

I had heard the term connollising before, but never knew what it meant, although being synonymous with Aston Martin I had no idea of the process it's pitfalls or benefits. I posted some questions around the forums I visit on a regular basis and eventually came to the conclusion that it could be worthwhile trying.

Connolly Leather no longer exists as a firm in it's own right, however some of the former employees have rights to the process Connolly started, these are still in use. My searches eventually led to two firms who can officially use the term connollising as trademarked by Connolly leather.

Leathercare in Warrington, and Benchmark Leather in Danbury Essex.

Being difficult to get to Warrington, well more so than Danbury as I live in Essex for my sins..... ;-) I decided to pay Mark of Benchmark a visit. We exchanged phone calls, emails, etc all with the view to discover what could be achieved, the life of the treatment, cost, finish and how long the process would take. After some consultation we decided that fro the benefit of having a uniform finish and to retain that finish for some while that the passenger seat could benefit from the connollising. The drivers seat he advised would be best finished with some new panels to the bolsters.

He described in detail the process of what connollising was, and how it couldn't cover serious cracks and blemishes, how it would in time come to look jaded compared to the passenger seat.  I took this onboard and decided to have the drivers seat re-trimmed in part, and both seats connollised to achieve a uniform finish across both seats.

These are the panels that were replaced, You can easily see the colour changes of where temporary colouring had been attempted before ;-o) This is why I knew some processes wouldn't work.

Getting the Work Done

A date was arranged for the work to be completed, I dropped my seats off to Mark, and before I left asked Mark if he could take some photographs of the process for me, I gave him one of my spare Smart media cards and sat back and waited. I won't bore any of you that might have strayed? stayed? this far, but let the photos do most of the talking.

These seats are not that clean, years of dirt etc......

The beginning of the spraying process.

finishing touches.

The Finished Article

Sat awaiting collection, the finished article. I collected the seats, and was told about how to care for them, this being basically how to clean them and how to avoid killing the surface preparation thereby making the finish last longer. Mark explained that Connollising is a surface finish, not a leather treatment as such, it does seal the surface, making such leather softness and the like unnecessary, the leather was once part of a supple cow, but that's long since past, any changes now are out of our hands, and due mainly to how the hide was finished in the tannery, not whether I choose to use a leather softening product on it.
 

Clean the seats every so often using the suds of a pure soap cleaning product, for example LUX. You cannot soften the leather further. However how you use the seats can make a difference, try to not slide across the bolsters, ease the seat backwards if you are having difficulty getting in and out. One of the main issues was in flexing the bolsters too radically, then expecting them to take this abuse for many years, they are not keen on this