Warning about Leatherique use!

[Todd Miller]

Johan Peterson and I spent last Monday exchanging emails with the owner of Leatherique.

All of the email exchanges, along with before and after photos can be seen on Johan's great w111 website at: http://www.220SEb.com/leather.htm

To bring you up to speed, I sold my '67 250SE Coupe back in April. A couple weeks ago the Buyer and I were exchanging emails when he casually mentioned that he had just started to treat the leather seats (original cognac interior in great shape) with Leatherique. I had already talked to Johan about the damage done to his Coupe's interior, so I advised the owner to stop and get that stuff off of there. Too late. Over the next hour or 2 the seats literally tore themselves apart as the Leatherique product took hold. It looked like someone had taken a razor blade and sliced through the little perforations in the pleated center sections and then pulled the leather apart with pliers! Infact, when the Buyer was attempting to use the Leatherique cleaner to get the product off, that started stripping the cognac color out of the leather!

Leatherique's response. It was my fault for not caring for the car's leather since it was new and for using Amorall on the leather. Both lies that the owner simply pulled out of his rear. I've only owned the car for 14 years and it's been stored 99% of that time. It was in storage for 10 years before that. And Armorall? It's probably been 20+ years since I used that product. Funny thing is, out of the other side of his neck he was telling us (and it says right on their website) that Leatherique is capable of restoring "cardboad hard leather" AND that the Smithsonian and other museums use Leathique in their restoration work.

So which is it? The product restores cardboard hard leather, or your leather was cardbaord hard because you didn't care for it for 40 years and then used Armorall on it?

Anyway, read for yourself and please use caution with this product.

[cth350]

Hmm. Having just read the long email exchange, there's a lot of emotion on both sides of the discussion. That's understandable. If the purpose of this thread is to educate people and diseminate information, let's do so.

To that end, what happened to that car is water under the bridge. There is nothing to do about what has already taken place here, nor can we objectively examine the prior state of the car or the process used to work on it. However, going forward, I would urge all pending users of leatherique (I am one) that they carefully document before and after images AND they also document the process they follow. At some point we'd have to share the experiences. This forum is a good place for that.

I have had a quart each of the cleaner and rejuvenator sitting on the counter since mid-July, and two complete interiors down in the basement waiting for me to work on. I believe that both are salvagable based on the first person experiences of several friends of mine that would bet money on leatherique. This thread was started by somebody that would sell them short, and I will take that as a good word of caution and will be careful.

This is what I intend to do:
- Photograph everything as it is now.
- Clean the heck out of my red sedan interior and photograph each round.
- Use the rejuvenator on the same, again photographing each round.
- Do it all over again, but on the black coupe interior.

What I would suggest of others, is that we
- Collect people's experiences into three groups (used leatherique, know somebody personally that used it, everybody else).
- Discard the last two catagories, as being hearsay at best. After all, everybody reading this thread knows somebody who has had a problem and everybody who subscribed to the www.mbz.org mailing list knows at least 5 people that had "wonderful success". Rather than post what you've heard, please encourage the people who actually had the successes & failures to speak up.
- Form a new section of the benz service manuals, group 90-something, based on the feedback people have.

-CTH

[leenart]

I have heard both sides of the leatherique arguement. I agree that a test needs to be conducted on the pros and cons of leatherique. I have never used it but am interested in the discussion about it as I have a leather interior.
I have seen the pictures showing the leather peeling away from the dash after using leatherique. I think the manufacturer needs to address these claims as they are enough to scare me aware from ever using their product.
This would be a good test case as a lot of older cars do have leather and many of the owners are looking at preservative chemicals.

I'm far from an expert in leather, but I would have to assume that if Leatherique rehydrates leather, the leather will stretch and expand, perhaps unevenly. That might account for the seats bursting along stitched seams and other forms of havoc. Ditto for surface finishes becoming unmoored from the leather base.

Perhaps a less ambitious method of rehydrating leather might be safer, even if it requires several product applications (of what, I don't know) to achieve the desired result.

[Todd Miller]

The big red flag for me in this situation is that in my initial email to the owner of Leatherique I was trying to encourage him to turn this into a positive experience. Maybe study what happened, improve the product, issue a standing warning about using it on Mercedes leather from the 60's, or all of the above.

Instead of it becoming a discourse in learning and improvement, it immediately became festival lying and make-believe. I'm dumbfounded by the guy's responses and his whole fall back position about how the leather should have been cared for since it was 6mos old is just ridiculous.

In my mind, anybody backpedaling that hard is doing so for a reason.

[markus765]

I was planning on using this product to help the interior on my 64 300SE, but based upon the statements made by George, the company owner, I think I'll pass. I've heard good things about some of the Meguiars products, and that's what we use on our Porsche show car, so I'll stick with that. George has made his position very clear in his statements. Thanks, Todd, for bringing this to my attention before I possibly destroyed my interior. Mark

[PagodaLover]

like anything, maybe test a small portion of the item to be refurbished with the product. it's less problematic.

[fema]

I just finished using all parts of the Leatherique system on my 1970 6.3, and here's my opinion:

* Rejeuvenator & Pristine Clean worked to clean my leather and vinyl well.
* The sanding with Preping Agent followed by the dye was very satisfactory.
NOTE: 1 - it's difficult to get a consistent coloring, i.e., brush marks, air bubbles, spots that don't take the dye as well - these are not easily avoidable so a brand new look is not achievable. But it takes very close inspection and the right light for anyone to notice the inconsistency.
2 - The dye color looked "separated" after mixing (like oil & water), but still came out OK. Leatherique had no explanation.
* Because of this, I was sent a free bottle of dye - unfortunately it was still "separated" after mixing and the WRONG color! So now part of my car is Porsche blue. They've sent me another bottle of dye, so I have to re-dye most of what I did - very frustrating, and no apology even though I met them face to face and they saw my car - I thought that would have been good customer service, just, "hey, I'm sorry you spent all that time..."
* The crack filler is a waste of time, except on surfaces that will not be sat upon, i.e., firm areas like armrests, consoles, door caps.
* Cardboard leather that's cracking like cardboard should just be replaced. I can't see anything "rejeuvenating" leather to like new condition.

Overall, I would, and plan to use it again. Been told by many in the M100 Club that it's the best stuff out there.

[gerryvz]

Another recent experience by a fellow E500E enthusiast with Leatherique, though not the product itself:

http://www.500e.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1932

Not good karma.

Cheers,
Gerry

[Kevin Johnson]

I used to sell specialty chemicals and often to chemical compounders who made car care products.

One bit of trivia I ran across in the midst of this employment is that neatsfoot oil commercially sold for treating leather is often cut with mineral spirits. It has been a very long time and I honestly cannot remember if the bottled products I saw for consumers mentioned this under the hidden guise of volatile components or some such.

Pure neatsfoot oil is available (contact Pfau in Indiana).

[PagodaLover]

It sounds like people complaining about the company and not the product. I foudn that thread distasteful as it shows people wanting to spread rumors about their product when they admitted they thought the product worked well. Does this seem unethical to anyone else??

[billrei]

I used Leatherique on the interior of my 250SE which had the textured pleated panels and it worked fine. There were a couple of heavily creased areas in the drivers seat that split slightly but I suspect that the damage was done long before I used the oil. The leather was much softer after the application and I treated it at least 2 more times before selling it this past summer with no more ill effects.

I also applied dye from another manufacturer Colorplus: http://www.colorplus.com/

I used an airbrush to apply it and it came out great with very even finish.

[Tony H]

I have used Leatherique products on my 3.5 coupe for years and am VERY satisfied. My leather is as soft and supple as new and the products really remove the dirt and oils.
Tony
71 3.5 Coupe