Need Advice - 89 M3 Leather Restoration and Body Undercoating Decision

[CurrusDei]

Hey Guys,

Some of you have seen my M3 build thread, which is now in its third year.

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=319121

I completely disassembled the car and put it on a chassis dolly. It has been at a high end body shop since November 2015 getting the body perfect and doing a full respray.

Here's how she looks now:






I'm now at the point where the body is painted, mostly polished, and I'm having to decide on two major items, so I thought I'd ask for input. Tomorrow I'm going to the body shop to decide on what to do about undercoating. It looks like its in good shape (pics below are pre-respray).






















The car is rust free now. And i mean rust FREE - zero rust. The car has been all the way apart and the small areas of surface rust (about a dime sized spot on the cowl and some areas where paint had rubbed off in the engine bay) have been dealt with. Also, the car is not going to be a daily driver. This will be a garage kept - nice day/pleasure driver. No winter or rain driving. The car has been in Southern California and Georgia its whole life.

So, keep the underside original or be overprotective? What say you?


My other question is on restoring the seats. They arent in that bad a shape, but they are worn, and have loose stitching. I've read a lot about leather restoration and I'm not going to do a Leatherique kit - I'm not interested in a leather coating that can peel off. If I refinish them I'm thinking about using a Furniture Doctors kit - have seen great results with that before on E30s. I'll be keeping the seats black (want to stay as original as possible). There is a small tear on one of the seats - would you try to fix it or just recover? Any other suggestions?

[Todd Black 88]

Buy these,

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=390448

And then sell yours to recoup cost.
I did that with my torn seats and made money.

[Javier h]

If it were me

I would dye them if you can get the stitching tighten. The trick is to let them cure/bake...as in months.

You should be happy with them for a 7-8 years before you get them reupholstered. Nothing beats fresh new leather but you can definitely prolong their life.

Should cost like $100 or so and worth trying once.

http://www.m3forum.net/m3forum/showthread.php?t=442315

Before:




During:

After:


Javier

[flyboyx]

i would either buy what todd suggests or get your seats totally recovered. you have done such a nice job on the body, why cheap out now?

there is a guy on the forum here that goes by ninestitched(i believe) i have seen his work. its pretty awesome. he has a few threads about recovering steering wheels and such.

[CurrusDei]

Need Advice - 89 M3 Leather Restoration and Body Undercoating Decision

Thanks. It's a balance between originality and condition. The paint was beyond reconditioning. I don't think the leather is - so long as I can get it looking amazing. If not I'll re-cover.



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[CurrusDei]

No thoughts on undercoating?

[dnguyen1963]

I used PlastiDip for undercoating, but your car deserves something better. Have you talked to the paint shop about undercoating? They might have better suggestions.

[jhaurimn]

At this point, Id go ahead and re-do the undercoating. The undercoating from factory looks to be in decent shape but youve come this far refinishing everything, Id do the underside too.

I used this kit http://www.leatherworldtech.com/Leat...its-s/1817.htm and my seats ended up coming out very nicely. I think its worth a shot if your seats arent too dried out. the key to the kit is to use as little filler as needed

my results: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/show...er#post4045827

[CurrusDei]

Need Advice - 89 M3 Leather Restoration and Body Undercoating Decision

Nice seat repair! I ordered this kit from Furniture Clinic. We'll see how it turns out...



As for undercoating, I told the shop to clean the underside thoroughly, remove any damaged undercoating, respray damaged areas with factory color tan undercoating, then respray the underside red as it came from the factory, also to spray the wheel wells black as they did at the factory. Using the bubble car as reference pics.


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[1843lamp]

I would not touch the undercoating,no good reason to .just carefully clean off the grime and leave the original patchy painted look,it makes your car appear rust free and solid underneath since you did not cover up the original finish .I have a number of undercarriage photos of low mile original cars they look just like that ,save yourself some unneeded work ,and you might not do as good a job as the factory did ,in particular if you use a substandard product.

[CurrusDei]

I'm not doing any of the underbody or body work. The guys I'm using are really high end body/paint guys (most of their work is on exotics). There are only a couple areas where the undercoating is in bad shape and should be repaired.


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[M-technik-3]

As far as under coating goes I would suggest you contact VSR in Bow NH they have done so mild to extreme restorations for owners. They would be able to give you the positive and negatives of your choices.

http://www.vsr1.com/

[jeffnhiscars]

Obviously no kit is going to fix a tear but after having redyed an interior I'd never do it again. On the black Cabrio I just rescued the seat looked very similar to yours and I went over them with Doc Baileys. It's cheap, easy to apply, does not rub off once it's thoroughly dry and improved the appearance immeasurably.

Worth the $13

[CurrusDei]

The kit arrived. Looks serious.



The "tear" I mentioned. It's really 3 intersecting cracks.



We shall see




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[jhaurimn]

I like that this kit comes with a "spray gun" of sorts. Hopefully it works well.