Tip: Temporary interior patching with tape

[Michiel van Wessem <jmvw@xxxxxxxxx>]

SUMMARY: 

If you have a hole in your seat, forget duct tape and use a good packaging
tape.

DETAILS:

Hi, 

I don't know if this is common knowledge, but I've discovered significant
differences between the use of different kinds of tape to patch holes or
weak spots in your leather interior. 

Warning: this may not be very interesting to owners of late model 740i's
and turbocharged M3's and such. This is for those of us with cars that
still need some work. Cars that have seats with bad leather or vinyl in
particular.

My 87 325es has a leather interior and there is a hole in the left bolster
(?) of the driver's seat and another one in the left bolster (?) of the
driver's seat's back (??). The day after I took the car home, I covered
this with duct tape, to prevent further deterioration. For people outside
the US, duct tape is a grey stretching kind of tape with aluminum in it
that is used to seal air ducts in an air heating/cooling system and also to
keep the world from falling apart. 

After a week or so, I noticed my jeans were getting sticky. No, I hadn't
been wearing the same jeans all the time! It had nothing to do with me, it
was from the duct tape peeling off and exposing its sticky backing. Also,
the tape was pretty torn in places. I removed the duct tape, thereby
peeling off some of the paint and replaced it with new. Same problem after
another week or so. So I replaced it again, which lasted another week.

I got fed up with this so I tried transparent packaging tape (tape is
"Highland Brand \"3710\" 3M", bought in "SuperFresh" food store). It's at
least two months now and the same tape is still in place. It doesn't peel
and it doesn't wear like duct tape did. I suspect it won't pull the paint
off when I try to remove it either. It also looks a lot better then the
duct tape, because it's transparent and shows the color of the seat.

So, if you have a hole in your seat, forget duct tape and use a good
packaging tape. At least until you get the seat repaired.

Thank you for your attention,

Michiel (87 325es http://www.vramp.net/cars/BMW/ )
 

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