swanicyouth
New member
- Mar 3, 2011
- 9,388
- 0
Some Background:
Leather is a PIA. Quite frankly, I don't really like it on seats. It looks and feels nice on a brand new car... But over time it shows wear, cracks, scuffs, and creases worse than any quality cloth seating does. Light color leather easily transfers dye from your jeans. All one has to do is compare the driver's seat of a used car with leather seats to the passenger seat of the same car to see how leather just shows wear and tear.
But, it seems Americans have this thing with associating leather with luxury. While you'd be hard pressed to find a luxury marque vehicle sold in the USA without leather seats, in other countries - it's not as popular. BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, etc... all PRIMARILY come with leather seating surfaces. Occasionally you will see alcantara on sportier models - which is basically just fancy ultrasuede made in Europe / Italy. Alcantara is just a synthetic suede-like microfiber fabric. Real suede comes from an animal. More popular than just alcantara is a mix of alcantara and leather to make up the seat, as can be seen in this Audi below:
Most (almost all) modern automobile leather is top coated / protected leather. It's skin from an animal that has been treated, processed, and coated with an acrylic type colorant and urethane type protective clear coat. Since there are no blue or red cows - if your seats are a color that you can't find a cow in - it's likely your leather is coated. The exception would be full aniline dyed leather (or NuBuck suede), which is leather that is dyed - without a bonded colorant layer on top. This type of leather shows all the natural pores, grains, scars, etc... from the animal from which it was taken. This type of leather is uncommon in automobiles. The only example I can think of is Ford King Ranch leather. Aniline leather will easily absorb a drop of water and create a "dark spot" on the leather until it dries. A drop of water will tend to form a bead and not absorb into top coated / protected leather. This is a reasonably conclusive test to tell the difference if your not sure what leather you have.
So, since most "leather" in a car is top coated / protected leather, it can't absorb conditioners - so they are a waste of time... Right? For the most part that is correct, however, as top coated / protected leather ages, some theorize it forms micro cracks in the coating that can absorb some conditioning agents, along with areas around the stitching. For the most part, I believe conditioners are pretty much a waste of time for coated leather. Most of them are sticky and greasy and tend to hold onto dirt. What is key is to keep the leather clean and protected. Protection will make the part you see (colorant) last longer and look better. Frequent cleaning will remove dirt (abrasive) and body soils from the leather which can eat away at the coating over time and give it that shiny and worn look.
Meguiars introduced this Leather Sealer Kit as part of their Gold Class line at SEMA 2013. It has interested me ever since. The reason being is that the kit provides cleaning and protection, along with a claim of containing conditioners. While I don't hold to much stake in the "conditioner" part, the protecting part interested me. Previous to this I was using CarPro's Fabric and Leather on my seats. While that product did seem to last a while, it did have some drawbacks. Mainly, I didn't really like the tactile feel of the coated seat (sticky) and the seat would get an uneven appearance after a little bit of use. So while that product wasn't perfect, I kept using it because it seemed to provide good protection.
I decided to pick up this OTC Meg's kit for $15 and give it a shot.
The kit:
What's inside:
6oz of Prep / Leather Cleaner
6oz of Leather Sealant
1 16x16" MF towel
1 Meg's Foam applicator
The sprayer is for the leather cleaner, which is a water like consistency and smells of Lemon Pledge.
The "sealer" is a white gel that has a faint smell of leather.
The "sealer":
What the two bottled products claim to do:
I decided I was going to use this kit on the driver's side of my BMW seat. The seat itself is in pretty good shape and not really dirty, so I have no 50/50 cleaning shots worth showing. Basically it's well maintained leather. This is the seat before I did anything:
I decided I was going to initially clean this seat with Leather Master's Strong Cleaner using a Swissvax Leather Brush. I decided to do this prior to the Meg's cleaner, as I knew this combo would remove all the CarPro Fabric and Leather from past experiences. While it may seem backwards to use another cleaner prior to the cleaner provided by the kit, F & L isn't that easy to remove and I knew this would do it. To anyone that has leather seats, I really recommend picking up the Swissvax Leather Cleaning Brush. It's the only thing I've found that is the perfect texture (bristles) to really clean leather and it seams well. It's just tough (stiff) enough to do a good job, but gentle enough to not damage the leather.
Here is a pic of the combo in action. The LM Strong Cleaner is pretty good, albeit a bit watery. While it doesn't come with a sprayer in the bottle, I recommend getting one. If not, you tend to pour out too much - just like it was water.
Brush getting into crevices / seams:
After scrubbing the leather gently, you simply remove the cleaner with a microfiber towel before it dries. Now I'm done cleaning the seat... It's time to clean the seat - with the Meg's cleaner. Right away I noticed something on the bottle of the Meg's cleaner that made me think it was going to be a bit more aggressive than the LM Strong Cleaner:
It contains metasilicates (sodium metasilicate). Metasilicates are used in a lot of cleaners. They are pretty good at removing grease and oil residue, fats, soil, etc... by emulsifying it. They also act to boost the performance of surfactants (detergents). One way they do his is by increasing alkalinity of the cleaner. Most cleaners with this ingredient will be on the basic side. Let's compare.
LM Strong Cleaner (pH neutral):
Meg's Cleaner / Prep / Step 1 (pH 11):
Even though the Meg's product was harsher than what I needed and usually recommend using, I figured I had it so I might as well just use it. The Meg's cleaner was also a water like consistency, but sprayed well out of the sprayer. It smelled pretty nice, and foamed up a bit better than the cleaner from LM. The directions recommend just spraying the seat with the cleaner and then wiping it down with the supplied towel, but I decided to agitate the cleaner using the Swissvax brush as before - since I knew what a good job that brush does.
Meg's Cleaner:
It was hard to judge the performance of the Meg's cleaner since the seats were pretty much clean at this point, but it seems like it would work fairly well to remove most normal dirt/soil on leather seats based on the foaming action and the pH. But, due to the high pH - I'm thinking its a bit overkill for well maintained seats.
Lighting plays a huge part on how the sheen of black leather appears in pictures. Light reflects and can make the leather look "shiny" or "glossy". But, I can assure you these seats looked clean and matte once the cleaning steps were done.
After cleaning / before applying sealer:
The directions tell you to remove the cleaner with the supplied towel and then apply the sealer. I used an old MF towel, as I wanted to save the supplied towel to buff down the sealer and not have it contaminated with cleaner. They also tell you to buff down the sealer before it dries.
Sealer on applicator:
Basically, you just rub the sealer into the leather and it starts to dry. A little goes a fairly long way. That dollop in the picture did about 1/3 the seat. Then, it started to dry and I buffed it down using the supplied towel. The sealer dries without streaking and leaves a nice satin like - but not sticky - feel. It seemed to add a little bit of gloss, but not much.
Here are the after pics:
Lighting can play a big difference how the leather appears. These pics were taken at the same time, one with a flash - one without:
The kit comes with this little chart on the box to show you what the sealer can protect leather against:
So far - so good. The kit says the sealer fully cures in 24 hours - so I'm going to give it about a day before driving this car. I will have to report back on how I feel the sealer holds up, but even if it's not long, re-application is not difficult. It says on the kit to apply 2-3x a year. I'd be happy if it lasts a month and a half. The product feels pretty nice on the leather and doesn't leave a streaky or fake shiny finish. It's not sticky. It's cheap - $15. The thread will definitely get updates as time goes on how I feel about this product.
Leather is a PIA. Quite frankly, I don't really like it on seats. It looks and feels nice on a brand new car... But over time it shows wear, cracks, scuffs, and creases worse than any quality cloth seating does. Light color leather easily transfers dye from your jeans. All one has to do is compare the driver's seat of a used car with leather seats to the passenger seat of the same car to see how leather just shows wear and tear.
But, it seems Americans have this thing with associating leather with luxury. While you'd be hard pressed to find a luxury marque vehicle sold in the USA without leather seats, in other countries - it's not as popular. BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, etc... all PRIMARILY come with leather seating surfaces. Occasionally you will see alcantara on sportier models - which is basically just fancy ultrasuede made in Europe / Italy. Alcantara is just a synthetic suede-like microfiber fabric. Real suede comes from an animal. More popular than just alcantara is a mix of alcantara and leather to make up the seat, as can be seen in this Audi below:
Most (almost all) modern automobile leather is top coated / protected leather. It's skin from an animal that has been treated, processed, and coated with an acrylic type colorant and urethane type protective clear coat. Since there are no blue or red cows - if your seats are a color that you can't find a cow in - it's likely your leather is coated. The exception would be full aniline dyed leather (or NuBuck suede), which is leather that is dyed - without a bonded colorant layer on top. This type of leather shows all the natural pores, grains, scars, etc... from the animal from which it was taken. This type of leather is uncommon in automobiles. The only example I can think of is Ford King Ranch leather. Aniline leather will easily absorb a drop of water and create a "dark spot" on the leather until it dries. A drop of water will tend to form a bead and not absorb into top coated / protected leather. This is a reasonably conclusive test to tell the difference if your not sure what leather you have.
So, since most "leather" in a car is top coated / protected leather, it can't absorb conditioners - so they are a waste of time... Right? For the most part that is correct, however, as top coated / protected leather ages, some theorize it forms micro cracks in the coating that can absorb some conditioning agents, along with areas around the stitching. For the most part, I believe conditioners are pretty much a waste of time for coated leather. Most of them are sticky and greasy and tend to hold onto dirt. What is key is to keep the leather clean and protected. Protection will make the part you see (colorant) last longer and look better. Frequent cleaning will remove dirt (abrasive) and body soils from the leather which can eat away at the coating over time and give it that shiny and worn look.
Meguiars introduced this Leather Sealer Kit as part of their Gold Class line at SEMA 2013. It has interested me ever since. The reason being is that the kit provides cleaning and protection, along with a claim of containing conditioners. While I don't hold to much stake in the "conditioner" part, the protecting part interested me. Previous to this I was using CarPro's Fabric and Leather on my seats. While that product did seem to last a while, it did have some drawbacks. Mainly, I didn't really like the tactile feel of the coated seat (sticky) and the seat would get an uneven appearance after a little bit of use. So while that product wasn't perfect, I kept using it because it seemed to provide good protection.
I decided to pick up this OTC Meg's kit for $15 and give it a shot.
The kit:
What's inside:
6oz of Prep / Leather Cleaner
6oz of Leather Sealant
1 16x16" MF towel
1 Meg's Foam applicator
The sprayer is for the leather cleaner, which is a water like consistency and smells of Lemon Pledge.
The "sealer" is a white gel that has a faint smell of leather.
The "sealer":
What the two bottled products claim to do:
I decided I was going to use this kit on the driver's side of my BMW seat. The seat itself is in pretty good shape and not really dirty, so I have no 50/50 cleaning shots worth showing. Basically it's well maintained leather. This is the seat before I did anything:
I decided I was going to initially clean this seat with Leather Master's Strong Cleaner using a Swissvax Leather Brush. I decided to do this prior to the Meg's cleaner, as I knew this combo would remove all the CarPro Fabric and Leather from past experiences. While it may seem backwards to use another cleaner prior to the cleaner provided by the kit, F & L isn't that easy to remove and I knew this would do it. To anyone that has leather seats, I really recommend picking up the Swissvax Leather Cleaning Brush. It's the only thing I've found that is the perfect texture (bristles) to really clean leather and it seams well. It's just tough (stiff) enough to do a good job, but gentle enough to not damage the leather.
Here is a pic of the combo in action. The LM Strong Cleaner is pretty good, albeit a bit watery. While it doesn't come with a sprayer in the bottle, I recommend getting one. If not, you tend to pour out too much - just like it was water.
Brush getting into crevices / seams:
After scrubbing the leather gently, you simply remove the cleaner with a microfiber towel before it dries. Now I'm done cleaning the seat... It's time to clean the seat - with the Meg's cleaner. Right away I noticed something on the bottle of the Meg's cleaner that made me think it was going to be a bit more aggressive than the LM Strong Cleaner:
It contains metasilicates (sodium metasilicate). Metasilicates are used in a lot of cleaners. They are pretty good at removing grease and oil residue, fats, soil, etc... by emulsifying it. They also act to boost the performance of surfactants (detergents). One way they do his is by increasing alkalinity of the cleaner. Most cleaners with this ingredient will be on the basic side. Let's compare.
LM Strong Cleaner (pH neutral):
Meg's Cleaner / Prep / Step 1 (pH 11):
Even though the Meg's product was harsher than what I needed and usually recommend using, I figured I had it so I might as well just use it. The Meg's cleaner was also a water like consistency, but sprayed well out of the sprayer. It smelled pretty nice, and foamed up a bit better than the cleaner from LM. The directions recommend just spraying the seat with the cleaner and then wiping it down with the supplied towel, but I decided to agitate the cleaner using the Swissvax brush as before - since I knew what a good job that brush does.
Meg's Cleaner:
It was hard to judge the performance of the Meg's cleaner since the seats were pretty much clean at this point, but it seems like it would work fairly well to remove most normal dirt/soil on leather seats based on the foaming action and the pH. But, due to the high pH - I'm thinking its a bit overkill for well maintained seats.
Lighting plays a huge part on how the sheen of black leather appears in pictures. Light reflects and can make the leather look "shiny" or "glossy". But, I can assure you these seats looked clean and matte once the cleaning steps were done.
After cleaning / before applying sealer:
The directions tell you to remove the cleaner with the supplied towel and then apply the sealer. I used an old MF towel, as I wanted to save the supplied towel to buff down the sealer and not have it contaminated with cleaner. They also tell you to buff down the sealer before it dries.
Sealer on applicator:
Basically, you just rub the sealer into the leather and it starts to dry. A little goes a fairly long way. That dollop in the picture did about 1/3 the seat. Then, it started to dry and I buffed it down using the supplied towel. The sealer dries without streaking and leaves a nice satin like - but not sticky - feel. It seemed to add a little bit of gloss, but not much.
Here are the after pics:
Lighting can play a big difference how the leather appears. These pics were taken at the same time, one with a flash - one without:
The kit comes with this little chart on the box to show you what the sealer can protect leather against:
So far - so good. The kit says the sealer fully cures in 24 hours - so I'm going to give it about a day before driving this car. I will have to report back on how I feel the sealer holds up, but even if it's not long, re-application is not difficult. It says on the kit to apply 2-3x a year. I'd be happy if it lasts a month and a half. The product feels pretty nice on the leather and doesn't leave a streaky or fake shiny finish. It's not sticky. It's cheap - $15. The thread will definitely get updates as time goes on how I feel about this product.
Oh, and being able to get it at 30% off from Advance with a coupon is a HUGE BONUS! 
