Car Care Advice

To start of with, I think I should tell you what connollising is for: It is to restore leather to it’s original state, or as close to original you can get. This means to colour the leather with special leather paint, or dye, this should only be done by someone who knows what they are doing.
A little interesting point about the car, A Noble M12 is a handmade car that is manufactured in Leicestershire in England. The BBC’s Top Gear tested this car around the track a few series ago and it is still number twenty two on the list clocking a time of 1.25.00 which is still pretty quick.

So there I was, watching a master at work. Allan started of by cleaning the leather so that all dirt, oils and grease are removed so that the colour goes on even, and so that the dye had a good surface to bond to. Then he masked any part of the Noble M12 that was not supposed to get dye on it. You do not want dye on anything but the leather, it wont look good. This involves a lot of time and masking tape. And I mean a lot!

The masking means he covers everything that can be covered, doorframes, knobs, handles, stitching in other colours and of course, the seatbelts. These particular seats had some blue piping that wouldn’t need recolouring, Allan spent ages masking this piping with tiny bits of tape about 7mm wide by 20mm long, working his way along covering it bit by bit. I was begining to see that Connollising was 80% preparation and 10% watching paint dry! The last 10% of spraying on the dye was actually over very quickly.

After cleaning the leather and masking the bits and bobs Allan started mixing the dyes to a perfect colour match. Most car’s leather interior has a factory colour code, but everyday usage of the car changes the shade of the leather, for instance, if your car is parked in the street you might find it gets sun bleached, and smoking will stain it darker. Connollising only works on real leather, but most cars will contain a lot of vinyl and PVC which is used for the body and back of the seats, with only the faces of the seat being real leather. On many cars the leather colour may also be matched to carpets and headlining, all of which will change colour with age and use. So when leather is connollised it needs to be matched to the age of the car.

Mixing the exact colour dye isn’t as easy as you may think, it’s all done by eye with Allan relying on his many years of experience rather than a coded system such as those used to mix paint. For instance to get a beige colour that suits the car that has been used, there he will add black, red, orange, purple and blue, all added in tiny amounts, bit-by-bit, testing each time because you can’t tell what the colour will dry like untill it is actually dry - hense lots of time spent watching paint dry!

Allan also told me that testing the colour in shadow is best, natural light is also a must as artificial light is not accurate enough. Artificial light is often yellow or even blue, this would be bad when mixing a colour as this would then look bad in Daylight.

The seats upper surfaces had been treated with a self leveling filler to seal the really worn through areas and fill any minor creases. Then two coats of dye were applied by dabbing them on with a cloth, he constantly changed the cloth to avoid lint. The really worn bolster area on the drivers seat got extra attention, a few extra coats of dye. As we watched the paint dry, Allan showed me his spray gun which he uses to finish the work as the fine spray leaves a perfectly even surface. The spray nozzel can be ajusted so that an almost impossibly thin line, finer that an artist’s paintbrush.

The seats got an extra clear coat sealant when the dye had dried to protect against wear & tear, the inside doors don’t need this as they don’t receive as much wear or tear.
After the dyeing and drying Allan removed all the masking tape and tidied up in the car. As you can see, all the preparation and hard work is definitely worth it, the finished item is immaculate!

Update: This traditional form of connollising is no longer available from Clean Image as they have now swapped to more modern methods which are more suitable for modern cars with modern leather… they call this new service, Modern Connollising.

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