How to waste two days!

[Barney Paull-Edwards]

My car arrived back from Canada on friday, all ready for a leather interior transplant. Its my third E34 so you would expect an engineer to make short work of this job-wrong. Door cards, piece of cake, oh sh#t the wood on the dash does not run to the cards and looks cr#p, no problem leave old cards and die black, job done. Next the seats,could I get the seat belt bolt off, no? Spent Saturday either looking up threads or puzzling how.Eventually cut the belts on the old car and sat the seats down on the bench to look,alcohol did not help,surely BM did not mean me to take the seats apart? Sunday and friends gathered to laugh at bare car, finally daughter walked over, pushed the recline lever DOWN and muttered something about senility.Took an hour to then get all seats out,clean up and fit leather ones to 525TDS, and one into 535 to drive to yard.At about this time daughter wandered over with laptop and bruno`s site with photo( where was birth control in `86),moral of this saga,get a child to look it up before touching a spanner!!! There is a 5 valve Apfelbeck motor in the shed that I am going to get her to build, not me but will she get to drive it, no chance!!

[GJPinAU]

Yeah but can she iron a shirt?:D

[e34.535i.sport]

I done a similar transplant recently - went from grey cloth to black leather. Bought the seats, door cards, glove box, centre console, and all other interior peices in black. I didn't anticiapate it to be a mammoth job... but oh my god it took a long time! The seats went in easy, the door cards gave a little more resistance. Then it came to the centre console. Not good. Lets just say that at the end of it i had the patience of a menopausal wombat! And to top it all off the glove box is a slightly different shape in the car i bought it off so i had to spray that and the gear surround and gaiter too!

Despite the annoyance it looks great now and totally transformed the car!

[Barney Paull-Edwards]

Glad it was`nt just me who had a saga.Had same problem with glove box shape but swapped fronts,next time spec leather,that said my 270k seats look as new, would leather? Forget expensive treatments,good soak in neatsfoot oil, old fashioned boot wax and elbow grease, as new.