Duplicolor vinyl and fabric spray.

Zona

Jase
So I had picked up a can of this stuff about a year ago and decided to finally give it a test. I had been planning to make some new door cards eventually so I wouldn't have minded too much if it turned out bad but I'm really quite satisfied. It takes a lot of spraying to cover a little area though and I used the entire can on just one door card. It doesn't feel very good to the touch, quite rough, so I wouldn't suggest using it on your seats but it's a cheap, easy way to make your door cards look a little better.
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Vinyl spray

I had great results years ago when I did my spider seats and door panels. With the spray I was able to do a two tone red and black. It's a must to over prep what your spraying and fresh paint is the key.
 
I dunno what the rough stuff is...

I used it with GREAT results on my seats as well as the door panels.








The perforated vinyl, the smooth vinyl, and the stitching each took on the dye a bit differently as well... giving it a TRUE original look and not like they were PAINTED.

I have found a bit of wear after a year or so... and touched it up with a spritz!

BTW... Yours looks great as well!
 
SEM Paint brand

SEM is the perfect pain for that
finishing is só real you cannot tell if IT is the original (not tôo shinny) and last for ever.
The have several colors, I have been using them for 6 year with excellent results.
They also have a clearcoat you can aply on top.
 
I've used the duplicolor stuff on my Miata seats before... I really, really... laid it on thick the first time, because they were looking so awesome and black as I sprayed it on!

When I first sat on the seat after it had dried I thought I'd really screwed up!

The seat felt very very hard, dry, and crunchy! Luckily it loosened up over the next 2 or so days and seemed fine in short order... Looked great too. I used it on the floormats as well and it looked great down there too.

Jason (Millers Mule) dyed the carpet of his Lancia and covered it in his blog... pretty interesting read. He used 'Detail King' products...

http://www.millersmule.com/blog/projects/faded-interior-nothing-carpet-dye-cant-fix/
 
Duplicolor upholstery paint

I've been using this (gloss black) on my '77 seats for about the last year. My findings:
-- Sticks very well on the (non-seating area) vinyl portion of the seats.
-- Looks great at first on the fabric seating area of the seats, but...
-- Wears off the seating area after a few weeks.

So I re-spray every couple of months. All in all, it's not bad stuff but for me it's just a poor temporary substitute for a proper re-upholstering job, or decent seat covers if I can ever find any.
 
Well Dave...

You may need to have prepped the vinyl a bit better before spraying.

I used alcohol on mine and have had very minimal wear issues on the sides and the like, maybe where a seat belt might rub, but really not on any of the "seating" areas.

It's also possible that the material and the dye are just not the most compatible...

HTH...
 
Paint pre-prep

trying saying that fast three times! ;)

Tony, do you think paint pre-prep cleaner would be too harsh on vinyl?

We are really quite taken with the results you achieved.

Cheers,

Rob
 
Please read post more carefully

Uh, Tony, I wrote that the paint DOES stick well to the vinyl (which I simply cleaned without any alcohol) --- it's the FABRIC from which I find it wears off.
 
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So I decided to try the stuff out on my seats and I'd say the results speak for themselves, time will tell how durable it is.
 
EXCELLENT Jase!

I love the way the different materials take on the stain and actually look like they are "complimentary" fabrics!
 
Dave... I didn't catch the difference...

initially when you LITERALLY meant the fabric versus the vinyl.

That's interesting though as usually a fabric will absorb the dye into the fiber more readily. I wonder if yours has some kinda stain resistant treatment, or other substance already absorbed... or maybe its just a material that is just not conducive to this dye.
 
Rob... I'm sorry but I have no idea...

You surely can try it on an inconspicuous spot on the bottom of your seats and see what works best...
 
Everybody is going to think I'm nuts ...

... but I've found latex paint works pretty well.

I once bought some "upholstery dye" that wasn't quite the right color; but it worked pretty well to spruce up the door panels. I noticed that it smelled like latex paint, looked like latex paint, dried like latex paint, and cleaned up with water like latex paint.

It seemed to work fine; so when I did the seat reupholstery (1995), I took a piece of the vinyl to Home Depot and had them use their paint color matching computer to mix me up a quart of semigloss latex house paint.

I used it on the door panels and the firewall upholstery. I apply it with a piece of foam rubber.

It's easy to do and it looks great -I've never used it on the seats so I don't know how well it would hold up there- but on the door panels (cards) I find it seems to get dirty more easily than it should, and it doesn't come clean very well. But adhesion is no problem at all.

Fortunately, it's really easy to touch it up.

I had intended it only as a quick-fix; but ... that was nearly 20 years ago.

I am thinking that if I had bought a high grade of paint, or if I had bought "scrubbable" paint; that it might stay clean better and might clean easier.

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I have used Duplicolor before when I was doing rebuilders. Mostly I used it on headliners. I color-changed some seats once (the "basketweave" vinyl typical in aircooled VW's) and was pretty impressed that it worked successfully to change a black seat to red. I had to put it on pretty thick, and on a hot day some of it stuck together (where seat back and bottom pressed together) and came off. But that's a pretty tough application (much thicker coat than you'd normally apply) and it may be that it hadn't fully dried by that point.

Overall Duplicolor seems to be good stuff; but you are limited to the colors they offer.
 
Looks great

Seems this stuff works really well. I have a black interior that I want to change to a lighter tan or creamy tan color since the black burns the heck out of my tender legs at the races after the car has been sitting in the sun. Ya I wear shorts in the summer, got to show off. Question is will this stuff cover and hide the black color.

Charlie
 
Hey Charlie...

They probably won't let YOU wear shorts anyway... HA!

I have never tried a radical change but would think it would have problems and several coats would not be the best answer for a DYE.

You can certainly TRY for 10 bucks though... I would really prep the vinyl well though so the dye will bond and then use a WHITE color first, kinda like a PRIMER, then the TAN or BEIGE you wanna end up with.

You just could be the FIRST to achieve this!
 
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