Car Care Advice

The next car I had the privilege of watching being connollised was a Rolls-Royce. The car is about twenty five years old and in great overall condition. But as happens with time, the leather has got old and worn, and needed some tender love and care.

When connollising leather there is a dye-code that was used to originally dye the leather. Allan has these codes so he can mix up the colour precisely.

Unfortunately, when the leather is as old as in this car, the original colour would look out of place because the leather will have gotten darker, (think old leather jacket) and bleached by the sun along with just ordinary wear and tear. Even if you could dye the seats back to its original, the other inside parts would then look out of place, such as the carpet and ceiling. These can not be dyed with leather dye, obviously and can only be cleaned.

Allan then started much in the same way as with the Noble M12, by cleaning and preparing the surface so that once again, the dye can bond to the surface and all dirt is removed. The seats can be taken out of this car which makes things easier when masking and cleaning.
As I have been saying, 80% preparation and 10% watching paint dry, and the last 10% dyeing it self being over rather quickly! The older the car thought the more watching paint dry there is! This is shown here by the first photo where the factory original colour is on, then there is a good five, six dye testers where we waited for it to dry to see what colour was most suited.(2pic seats tester)

Again there was masking tape to protect the handles and the wood paneling by the windows and as Allan took out the seats in this car, he used alot of dust sheets to cover the floor.

Although there is much more leather in this car, it was quicker to do than the Noble. This is because there was far less masking, and no piping on this particular car… although Rolls-Royce, Bentleys and Jaguars do sometimes have piping especially some of the older models.

All leather can be connollised, not just supercars or classics. In fact, the leather in a Mercedes, BMW, Renault or Ford, probably won’t be of such high quality as in a super car, so may be more prone to wear. Having your car re connollised isn’t cheap, however it does afford great value for money and is often worthwhile doing. Tired looking leather seriously devalues your car, which is why it’s worth feeding and conditioning your leather and taking care to avoid things that will damage it. But if your car does show signs of wear, usually having it connollised will pay for it’s self when you come to sell the car.

Gary at Clean Image told me that they introduced Connollising to their list of services after several unfortunate incidents with leather in cars. You see there are various kits available on places like ebay which suppose to be able to recolour leather, apart from the obvious problem of matching colours, they are little different to boot polish! Clean Image found that they were being asked to apply leather conditioners to interiors and the conditioner was washing away dyes on areas that had been repaired. Sometimes the repairs had been done by professional smart repair men, and still the acrylic inks they used wiped off. Clean Image obviously didn’t want to put the same kind of gear back on again, so instead sought out the help of Allan who uses the same connolly dyes which were used by Connolly Leather Company Ltd, who used to supply the leather to the likes of Jaguar, Rolls-Royce and Aston-Martin. So what you are getting is the same stuff as applied at the factory - in fact, Allan used to work at the Connolly Leather Company, so if your car is about 25 years old, it may have been Allan who did it originally!

Connollising is not a fix-all, there are things that can not be repaired. If there are great big holes, wear trough the leather big tears, deep cracks you will need to have a trimmer (upholsterer for car) replace the offending panel. I called Dave Wilkes of Anglia Car Trim and he told me that to replace a leather seat panel would typically cost £90-£110 for a single panel. After you have had this done it might still be worth having it re-connollised for the colour match.

As you can see, the finished car looks a million dollars!

Again I was very impressed with the work Allan does and the time and detail he puts into the work, and this service certainly made a difference to the appearance of the car, considerably increasing the value. The cost of having this done to your car varies according to the size, how much leather, piping etc., but typically a Rolls-Royce would cost £597.95, saloon car such as a BMW, Volvo or Ford Mondeo would cost £448.08 for the whole interior, excluding the steering wheel. You can have a single seat reconollised and Allan even has a special treatment for steering wheels which takes more wear that any other.

Connolising is available at
Clean Image in Chelmsford, Essex.

Anna

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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