Dash leather shrinkage

[Rock Studly]

Hi Guys,
The leather has shrunk on the instrument bezel of my 2011 California.
Does anyone know of a way to fix this or recommend a restorer without having to get the whole thing recovered.
Thanks

[Roof down]

I dont know of anyone, but It is not good enough on a car like that especially being 2011 and a UK car, might have expected it in Dubai or some such place, you will be able to get it done though I am sure. Mike

[willy wombat]

Claire at Kent High Performance Cars (formerly The Ferrari Centre) could probably sort it. Quite a few dealer cars suffered from this problem last summer due to being parked on forecourts in the unusual, for the UK, blazing sun.

[Taffy66]

As leather is a natural product it will dry out when exposed to a lot of hot sunshine..The collagen within the natural fifers contains moisture exactly like skin and needs to be maintained to keep the softness and elasticity.Loss of this moisture causes it to shrink and the only way to reverse this shrinkage is to reverse the drying out.Leather which has shrunk cannot be reversed only made softer by using special oils..Most car leather has been pre-shrunk prior to fitting through heat treatment to maintain a tight fit on surfaces..The adhesives needs to stronger than the forces of the shrunk leather..
An expert leather restorer might be able to help however when the collagen releases moisture its irreversible AFAIK.

[tberg]

Leather dash shrinkage is the single most commented on topic in the XK/XKR forum at jaguarforums.com. And the comments about it happening in warmer climates or happening because the leather isn't conditioned properly or often enough is just hogwash. The reason leather dashes "shrink" is because the car maker took a shortcut and did not staple the leather to the frame, expecting an adhesive to do the job all by itself. I had this problem on my 2010 Jaguar XKR and was having some work done on my car and had my mechanic remove the dash. I had already arranged with an auto upholsterer to recover the dash with new leather for $1300 which was far better than Jaguar who charges $4800 to replace the dash. Once my dash was pulled, it was so obvious, that I grabbed the dash, ran it over to my normal furniture upholsterer (I'm in the design trade), and within an hour or so, he had restretched the leather, stapled it around the frame that butts up to the windshield, and stapled around the center dash speaker. He also put a high temperature adhesive to glue the leather on the center surfaces. It's been seven years since I had it done, and it looks just as good as it did on the first day we did it. And that is on a car that is not garaged and is in the San Fernando Valley part of Los Angeles that is typically in the 100-110*F temperature range from June through the end of October. It's no different for any other manufacturers as all three of my close friend's Ferraris suffered from the same malady.

[Speculatore]

Rock Studly said:

Hi Guys,
The leather has shrunk on the instrument bezel of my 2011 California.
Does anyone know of a way to fix this or recommend a restorer without having to get the whole thing recovered.
Thanks

Mine has bubbled around the edges of the center air vents. I was thinking of getting carbon covers to hide it.