SMART Repairs, what are they I hear you ask?

SMART repair techniques have been developed to help maintain a vehicle in pristine condition without traditional expensive time consuming body shop repairs. It lends itself well to repairing scuffs, chips and scratches that affect the look and value of a vehicle. SMART repair techniques use state of the art techniques and products technicians ensure the highest standards of work, preserving the integrity of the original trim. These techniques have been used by garages for many years, but are still relatively unknown with car owners in Dinas .

Carpet Repair 

Carpet repair is quite common as a lot of modern vehicles have fairly thin carpets that get damaged quite easily. Our carpet repair technician is the most experienced in the area. Car manufacturers are having to save weight in an effort to improve fuel efficiency and to make the car environmentally friendly. This results in some parts of the vehicle being less robust. It has become noticeable over the last few years that a lot of vehicle carpets are now much lighter and thinner. The end result is carpets are being damaged more often. It is quite common to see vehicles that are only a few years old with holes or rips in them often just from normal use.

Cloth Seat Repair 

Cloth, fabric & suede car seat repairs are carried out using a fibre replacement repair system. If you have a car with a damaged seat don’t despair get a repair! We use carefully matched fibres to give an invisible repair. LVV Trim and Technical are proud to say “our best work goes unnoticed”. All car seat repairs are carried out by our fully mobile technician at the customers home or work address! Before repair cloth or fabric seats must be clean and dry.

Car seats are expensive and time consuming to replace. Car seat repairs are a cost effective solution offering you expert repairs for all types of typical vehicle seat damage. Most car seat damage can be easily repaired, including cigarette burns, holes from wear and tear or accidental damage. Some patterned seats present a problem – we could not invisibly repair a check or chequered pattern for example. A few modern seat designs seem to include a mesh or net effect over the top of the basic fabric & are very prone to being easily caught by zips etc. This type of car seat repair is also hard to repair.

Plastic Trim Repair

Plastic trim damage doesn’t only look bad, but can also negatively affect your cars resale value. Replacing a part is expensive. Our plastic trim repair service can now restore your bumper back to pristine condition by our mobile technicians and at your convenience. Most repairs normally take less than two hours carried out at your home or place of work. Our convenient and cost effective service will save you time and money.

Leather Seat Repair 

Leather seats are easily scratched but don’t worry a leather seat repair can help, we have a specialised leather repair technique that allows for invisible repairs to leather car seats. The same system can also be used on vinyl seats, however we can not fix vinyl/leatherette that is breaking up or cracking, a common fault on some modern cars.  It is not impossible to tidy them up but it would not be a long lasting solution – so for this type of repair we would highly recommend using a specialised car upholsterer to replace the damaged panel. We can repair discoloured seats or worn seats, small holes and cigarette burns in both leather and vinyl.

Dinas  Get Your Car’s Interior Looking Great – Leave it to an expert!

How Auto Reconditioning Will Help Your Vehicle

Weather change is here and the cracked padded dashes are rolling in. With every weather change I get the phone calls. "My dash is cracked and what can be done to fix it."

Due to the exposer to old mother nature, these materials become dried out and crack over time leaving you with a crack in your dash. Left unattended this small crack can and will get larger.

There are measures that can be taken to prevent the dash from getting cracked in the first place. Now I know your dash is already cracked and your wanting to know how to fix it, but this will prevent further cracks and keep your car cooler and looking nicer, and well.... for further reference.

One way to prevent this is to use a sunshade. This will not only protect your automotive dash from the sun but also keep your vehicle cooler keeping the plastic pieces cooler and less likely to warp and then crack.

Another way to prevent the materials from drying on your dash is to condition them with a good vinyl conditioner-protectant. Now I know I've always said to not put the slimy stuff on your interior pieces and parts ... But if your vehicle is exposed to the sun on a constant basis, then I would recommend you use a vinyl conditioner. Now I'm not going to say that any old vinyl conditioner will work, because it won't. Tire shine is not vinyl conditioner! This is probably one of the biggest mistakes made, and I do a lot of repair because of it. Tire shine contains solvents, which as you know from previous articles, it doesn't mix well with the water based dyes being used on today's cars. What it does is lifts the dye from the surface, causing it to peel. So no tire shine...What I recommend to my customers is a product made from a leather conditioning producer that I feel from some of the research I've done is safe and should work very well, it's made by Lexol and it's called Vinylex. Designed by the guys that really know their stuff when it comes to interior conditioning and protecting.

The last and final tip to keeping your automotive interior, including your dash, looking it's best and lasting longer is window tint. Now in some states you need to be careful with the tinting laws to make sure you don't get it too dark, plus you need to think of your safety too. I have tint on our family Tahoe and I kinda wish I would have gone a little lighter, at night it's really hard to see, my Tahoe stays nice and cool, but it's a pain in the butt at night. I have to roll the window down sometimes just to see. So keep it light and you will be impressed with the results, plus it looks cool.

Apply your compound liberally over the repair area, don't worry about getting your first coat really smooth, all you need is to get it covered, you'll be sanding it smooth later. Let it set up for a while, depending on the weather will depend on how long this stuff takes. You can speed it up a little with a heat gun but don't melt it just give it a little boost.

Once hardened start sanding, I usually start with a 180 grit to knock off the big chunks then progressively move my way up to a finer grit like 240 and then to 400.

One coat won't be sufficient, I promise, this is another layer thing. Sanding between coats. Each coat you apply you will need to make smoother. Again what your trying to achieve is a smooth level repair.

After all is smooth and level, grain with a spray grain then dye.

As far as texture goes, I use two types of spray grain. One is a water based spray grain and the other is Sems Texture Coat. In fact the Sems Texture Coat almost matches the some of the Pontiac dashes to a tee. Now the Sems Texture coat is a solvent based, but I haven't had a problem with it peeling up against the water based dyes on the dash, so kudos to Sems.

One other trick I have found with the the Sems Texture Coat is after sprayed if you let it flash out a little but not dry completely, you can take your grain pad and imprint your grain into the texture coat, pretty cool huh.

Dash repair is an art and a craft, just like all automotive interior repairs. If the steps are followed right and patience is used in your repairs you success will be good.

Hope this helps in your dash repair adventure. One thing to always keep in mind is to keep your repair as level as possible, this is your best hide.

Dinas

Advice and Tips on Repairing Your Car's Upholstery

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