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Mini Restoration Project

Yarwood Leather products feature across the seating world, in the home, office, bars and restaurants. You can also see Yarwood Leather products in the skies, on the seas and on the road.

This home based project focuses on Mike Ingleson, who wanted to bring life and individuality to this Zcars Mini Vtec.

Mike’s goal was to complete the restoration of the Mini and “create the best Honda engine Mini on the road. The inspiration for the design was the custom ‘hot rods’ that are commonly seen on American TV shows, Mike wanted to take this and bring it to the iconic British Mini.

Creating the design on post it notes and paper before starting, Mike explained the reason for using our Pendle rub off leather, “I chose the rub off leather as I wanted the leather to slowly age just like the mini will hopefully ending up looking all cool like a Chesterfield sofa.”

 

Along with VW Campervan restorer friend Jay, Mike fitted the exterior, roof lining, seating and rewired the majority of the car. Next up was the framework, wanting to ensure there were no visible edges or staples, Mike hand glued and stapled pieces of the rub off leather to the wood, creating a layered effect throughout the car. Around 1500 staples are hidden within the leatherwork!

YarwoodLeather_MiniRestoration

The hardest part of working with the leather was creating small straps, only 7cm wide, which were then wrapped around two lengths of climbing cord which was then super glued with the chrome strip. Luckily, Mike had the help of friends Jay, Ellie and dad Bob.

You can see the progress of the project

Mike doesn’t have plans to take on another restoration just yet, but would love to create his own sofa and leather panelled wall in his home! You can see more of the mini restoration over on his Instagram

 

Are you working on your own leather project? Get in touch

Bringing life back into this Mini using Yarwood Leather rub-off leather

Posted by Yarwood Admin