Pain in the seat

You spend all your driving time surrounded by it. It’s under your feet, over your head and you look past it to see the road. With all types of different materials, from painted surfaces, metal, chrome, plastic, vinyl and leather, it also presents a significant challenge when it comes to care and repair.

Collin Hoyt doesn’t consider himself the be all and end all of vehicle-interior gurus. He’s actually quite modest despite some of his interior creations. His hands show the wear and tear that comes with cutting, refoaming and stitching, just a few of the tasks that come with a career as an automotive upholsterer. There’s even a fresh welding burn on his thumb, a byproduct of building a full-length floor console, from scratch, for a vehicle that never came with one.

He’s a rare breed of automotive enthusiast who sees all the little things that most of us would look past: crooked seams, puckered edges, inferior finish and attention to fit.

He’s not shy to tell it the way it is.

“The factory your car came from is just that, so that’s the kind of interior you’re going to get. That’s not a knock, but they have to produce thousands of interiors where I work on just one.”

Hoyt installs interior kits for classic cars, although he prefers to make seat covers and carpet himself. Again, for quality sake.

“An interior makes the car. Would you redo your home and forget about the furniture inside?”

He also performs full-on custom work and even tricky jobs such as blending modern features with old cars to make it appear as though the vehicle came that way from the factory. It just depends what the customer is looking for.

But, what does the man with the needle, thread and welding burns get the most calls for?

“Repairs.”

In fact, Hoyt says that repair work is a whole other subfield of the automotive upholstery trade. What kind of customer calls?

“I accidentally tore a hole in the seat of my new car with a screwdriver. Now what?”

That, and worn out panels that show the age of the vehicle even when the exterior looks brand new. And of course there are the usual seam repairs.

There are no real miracle fixes, here, according to Hoyt, you just have to take the seat apart and replace the offending pieces.

“Not everyone knows this can be done. They just live with it or think it’s too much of a pain to bother.”

Sometimes they just don’t know where to turn.

“There’s a body shop on every corner, but you usually have to dig around to find not just an upholsterer, but an automotive upholsterer, an enthusiast who respects their craft.”

That will mean a quality repair that begins with the right materials.

“We can get matching cloth or leather from the manufacturer. The more exotic, the harder it is to get and the more expensive it is.” Sometimes the material can cost more than the repair itself.

In terms of time, Hoyt says that that screwdriver hole will take about two to four hours and you’re back on the road in a day.

“And it’s done right.”

The labor part includes taking apart the seat, removing the damaged piece, sewing the new piece back in and reassembling the seat.

And what about those side bolsters that become cracked and worn out over time?

“You’ll want to replace as many panels as necessary to get the seat looking like the new areas match the old ones. Count on about six hours of work.”

Of course, taking better care of your interior surfaces is one way of altogether avoiding a visit with a pro like Hoyt. But there’s nothing fancy when it comes to cleaning and “feeding” your interior. “I would recommend nothing harsher that what you would use on yourself. If you wouldn’t put it on your face, I wouldn’t put it on leather.”

Hoyt suggests looking for products with more natural ingredients such as mink oil and lanolin.

The number one protection for your interior, he says, is to block out the sun, either with tinted windows, portable windscreen shades or by regularly parking the vehicle in a garage.

“The sun is the killer, whether it’s cooking the interior with heat or from the ultraviolet rays.”

One of the areas most affected is the dashpad, which is often made of plastic and spends the most time in direct sunlight. Hoyt recommends using mild soap and water to clean and then suggests to sparingly apply a high-quality UV protectant such as products from Mother’s.

“The stuff just works.”

Fixing cracks depends on what the dash is made of, but that’s up to the shop you take the vehicle to to figure out.

“Dashtop replacement is usually the best option for the best results, but a repair, which is less expensive and not always perfect, might hold you over.”

But no matter how good the interior looks, sometimes there’s a musty smell that just won’t seem to go away.

“Ninety percent of smells are coming from the carpet or underlay, which gets wet and moldy. Besides stripping the interior and replacing the underlay, if there are any spills, don’t park the car and leave the windows up. You need airflow to dry it out.”

You can use spot cleaner to take care of stains on carpet and cloth surfaces but because of harshness Hoyt suggests limiting the use of chemicals to the affected area. Basically, take care of the spot and that’s it.

Unfortunately, that’s all the time Hoyt has for us today. He’s anxious to get back to stitching, foaming . . . and burning his fingers with the welder.

“That one’s pretty deep. It still stings, but just wait until you see the car when it’s finished. It’s gonna be awesome.”

Jeff Melnychuk is Wheelbase Communications’ managing editor. You can drop him a note on the Web at www.wheelbase.ws/mailbag.html. Wheelbase Communications supplies automotive news and features to newspapers across North America.