Hey all, I'm a couple days away from buying a Vantage S. All looks good except a couple minor things that can be quickly solved. One issue stood out in the interior: the "ski slope" leather panel in front of the passenger seat is pulling off at the top as the leather is shrinking, and the gauge cluster leather is also shrinking and currently being held by a couple staples. From my research this is pretty common with these cars.

The solutions on this forum have usually been to just get replacement parts from AM directly but those answers were posted 10+ years ago when the car was still in production. What steps can I take to (cost efficiently) fix that problem today, and what should I expect in terms of pricing?

I live in Toronto so if anyone has dealt with this issue here and knows of a shop that can do it without charging me $3,000 that would be greatly appreciated. I also heard there were companies in the US you can ship the part to and they ship them back newly upholstered. Any names I can look up? And how much does a service like that usually cost? Does AM still provide these parts for a 10+ year old car?

 

I had the leather shrink on my gauge pod. I took it to an upholstery shop and they just put new leather on. Quick and easy.

 

Reassuring that it's this easy. How much was it and was the leather as high quality as the OEM one? Does it have to be an automotive upholstery shop or any upholstery place would generally do it?

 

I used an automotive upholstery shop to recover 5 or 6 pieces of the upper dash on my DB9, including the ones you're dealing with. The leather texture, quality, and colour were a good match to the original. Stitching was reproduced, but no "Airbag" embossing on the replacement, of course. I think the price was about $1K CAD a few years back. I removed all the parts myself and just took the loose pieces in to the shop -- saved labour charges and made sure nothing else was damaged in the process.

You can still order factory replacements, but they're pretty expensive: scuderiacarparts.com / part-finder/astonmartin/vantage/oe/156/809/24978 (prices in USD, significantly more expensive from an Aston dealer)

 

I think I paid $850 for the rework of the gauge pod + the panel on the passenger dash board (over the airbag). New leather + labor. I did remove the parts from the car myself.

 

If you find the leather you can do it yourself, I did mine in Alcantara for 100 and a few hours.

 

I had a similar issue. I tried two local leather repair/ rework places. Both expressed concern about matching the leather. The second shop just added extra leather nourishing cream to soften the existing leather and stretched it overnight before using ‘proper’ old school adhesive (extra VOCs). Apparently, part of the AM issue was moving to green adhesives at the factory that do not age as well. Good as new for $25 cash.

Philip

 

Thanks, will likely go the local upholstery shop route if I end up buying it next week. Looks like both parts from scuderia would set me back 2,300 USD + shipping and duties yikes.

 

Great work that looks very cool in the alcantara although I don’t trust myself nearly enough to do a proper wrapping job so will leave it to the pros.

 

Hoping the previous owner didn’t mess it up so much when stapling the leather that it’s beyond an easy fix like you had.

 

What color leather do you have? I have one (ski slope) in perfect condition that’s a dark gray leather.

 

Black with red stitching. That would've been a very timely coincidence. Hope you find someone who needs that color.

 

Your local AM dealer may have pieces of the color you want. My local dealer at times had remnants of hides purchased for one thing or another.

 

I had the leather shrinkage and unglue issue on the 2016 V12S I recently purchased. This is my 8th Vantage since 2007, and the first with any shrinkage issues, so it was pretty bothersome to look at. I thought I'd just buy some superglue and a precision applicator to do the work myself. After about 2 seconds I figured I'd need a plan "b" and taking the dash apart was not an option (that's plan 'c'). I hired CCI in Minneapolis on the refinishing of the interior on my 2002 SLK32, and on most of my Astons to fix the wear points on the seat bolsters. They came out this morning and carefully reglued the top area, smoothing it down by hand then regluing the edge. Total $150.00 - amazing. Below is the drying of the glue, the before and the after.

 

Well that turned out well….congrats…