Avoid Ruining Your Leather with These Cleaning Tips from a Mechanic in Minneapolis, MN

Leather is a luxurious feature in a vehicle that adds both comfort and aesthetic appeal. Unfortunately, many vehicle owners end up ruining their leather by using the wrong products to clean and maintain the material. Even products that are marketed for use on leather and popular leather remedies can damage the seats in your car. With all of the conflicting information out there about caring for leather, it’s difficult to know what’s right. Thankfully, the mechanics in Minneapolis, MN at Quality Coaches, Inc. have decades of experience with vehicles, including classic British models, and we can help you sort out the right strategy for leather care and give you advice about what to avoid:

• Glass cleaners: Window and glass cleaners seem mild enough, and lots of sources will suggest that they can work for leather in a pinch, but you should only use these kinds of cleaners for their intended purpose. Most window cleaning products on the market contain some amount of alcohol, which can do serious damage to your leather.
• Leather shoe polish: If it works for leather shoes, it should work for leather seats, right? Wrong. Shoe leather is treated differently than the leather used on your car’s interior. When you polish leather shoes, they absorb the polish effectively and are left with an attractive shine, but you can’t expect the same result from your seats. Using shoe polish may leave you with a messy film on your seats that will be transferred to your clothing the moment you sit down.
• Acetone: Believe it or not, lots of people use acetone-based nail polish remover to get stains out of leather. While you might be able to successfully get the stain out of your leather using acetone, you will inevitably strip it of its color at the same time. Instead of a stain, you’ll be left with a bleached patch of leather where you used the acetone.
• Wet wipes: Cleaning wipes that come in some kind of cleaning solution are too harsh to use on leather upholstery. The cleaning solutions that the wipes are packaged in contain alcohol, which will strip your leather and leave it looking faded. If you need to wipe something off of your leather, use wet wipes that are packaged in a mild, alcohol-free solution.
• Hairspray: You’ve probably seen some at-home leather remedy tips floating around online, and hairspray is one of the most commonly suggested products for removing leather surface stains. Not only is hairspray simply not a very effective solution for leather, but it also contains leather-damaging alcohol. What’s more, it leaves a film that can quickly accumulate dust and other debris.

Find out how to effectively care for and clean your leather with help from Quality Coaches, Inc. Since 1972, our trained team of mechanics in Minneapolis, MN has provided comprehensive auto repair and maintenance services. We specialize in the restoration of British car makes, including Jaguar, Austin Healey, Lotus, Triumph and MG. After decades of restoration and repair services, we have access to an expansive inventory of parts and are experts at acquiring the components necessary to get vehicles back into like-new condition. If you want to have your vehicle professionally restored, or if you have a simple maintenance concern, contact us to schedule an appointment.

Categorised in: Mechanic

This post was written by Sharon Morgan