Dyeing To KNow

[Chacheska]

Anyone have any experience trying to dye a car seat? I have an all original '37 Cad. I had a large desicant bag sitting on the front seat and over a period of 3 months the fluid it absorbed somehow soaked into the seat and stained the seat about one foot long by 6" wide. I made the mistake of using a Prestone upholstery cleaner which faded the area pretty badly. The seat is somewhat beat up anyway but it's original and I didn't want to re-upholster it. I was wondering if it could be dyed. I know RIT makes a liquid dye. A local paint supplier suggested using the liquid RIT in a spray bottle on the seat but I doubt the result would be very uniform. Any suggestions would be appreciated. E-mail address is Chacheska@webtv.net or a post on the site would be fine. Thanks in advance!

Karl

[HarryJ]

Chacheska.....I do not have any experience in redying textiles; however, I am a textile engineer. The first question I would ask is, what type of fiber are we dealing with. I would be willing to bet it is wool. It sounds from your description the chemical composition of the fabric has been changed from that of the raw fiber. If you try a dye that was designed to treat the raw fiber you might get a bizzare shade considering the recent history, or the combination of chemical treatments might destroy the fabric. If you try a dye test I would limit it to an extremely small area. The desicant may have pulled dye out of the fabric rather than adding fluid it absorbed, resulting in the "stain". A picture of the "stain" and the chemical make up of the desicant and Prestone cleaner might give an insight into why the situation you have exsists.

[Uncle Remus!]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> A local paint supplier suggested using the liquid RIT in a spray bottle on the seat but I doubt the result would be very uniform. Any suggestions would be appreciated. E-mail address is Chacheska@webtv.net or a post on the site would be fine. Thanks in advance!

Karl </div></div>

Hi Karl,

I'm no authority, but have done some and I agree with your supplier - the way to approach it is with a spray bottle and a lot of patience. With several LIGHT applications - {hopefully after you've found a spot underneath or elsewhere to practice and test on} you may be able to "feather In" the dye, as in touching up paint, and "blend" the dyed area into the seat {tough to do on pristine fabric, so count your blessings yous is worn!}. You can also experiment with a small - as in modeling size, very DRY brush with just a hint of dye on it. This I have done, but it takes practice - Thing is to go slow -

You may want to start with a dilute dye mixture first until you see how it acts/reacts with your fabric.

There are auto specific dyes, but they may be too strong and unforgiving for your case, though i haven't used an auto based dye since the days of our last great president!

I suspect Harry is correct in that the desicant, especially once "activated" by moisture, pulled your color out. Pics would help.

Good Luck!

[ex98thdrill]

Hi Karl,

I've had two interiors dyed. One that I hired, and one that we did in our shop. In our case, we are in good with the local collision shop owner. We bought our paint through him. This stuff was put in a spary gun and painted just like you would paint a car. You can use it on headliners, seats, dashboards, plastic, carpets, etc. The only thing is make sure that before you apply it, get the surface real clean. What worked good for us is using straight Simple Green.

Understanding if your car was newer, you couldn't change the color of the carpeting, but as for the other stuff, it will work. Being that your seats are cloth, understand that the probability of your seats having a rough feeling does exist. Even on vinyl, our seats were the same way, but they do soften up after time. Understand that I have used it on a cloth headliner, but never on fabric seat covering, so the effect might be different. You're best bet would be to talk to a paint specialist. Dying interior is common practice among used car dealers. This practice has been around for 20+ years, but most of the people who do it, deal strictly with car dealers.

My advice to you, is to use this as a last resort. Being that the car is a 1937, and the fact is a Cadillac, I would recommend the cheaper methods of correcting the problem and only use this as a last resort. If everyone else's methods fail, then you still have this option. If your car had leather or vinyl upholstery, I wouldn't hesitate to point you in the direction of dying the seats, but because it is cloth, I'm a little skeptical only because I've never seen or done it.

Steve M., did you ever deal with vendors who came in and dolled up your used cars interiors during your years as an Oldsmobile Dealer?

[Guest bkazmer]

be very careful using Simple Green - it can discolor some automotive plastics. This has come up in new cars where parts suppliers were using it in their factories. The blue version of it is no better.

[ex98thdrill]

I never knew that. We used it before we sprayed the die on it, so I never gave it any further thought.