Clc Leather Restoration Kit
CLC LEATHER RESTORATION KIT
CW EVALUATION
Leathers to dye for
THERE IS, HIDDEN AWAY IN THE ANNALS of comic-strip history, a “Peanuts” in which Snoopy, masquerading as Joe Motocross, extols the virtues of new riding gear. “You seem very confident. Is it because you have a new bike or is it something else?” asks Charlie Brown. “New leathers,” Snoopy replies.
Trouble is, leathers don’t stay new for long. Sun, wind, rain and crash damage combine to age them. No one knows this better than roadracers, who have devised numerous ways of getting another season out of their old skins. And now, thanks to a company called Competition Leather Colors (1643 Juniper Lane, Lewisville, TX 75067; 800/397-1992), that process has been made a lot simpler. CLC not only repairs leathers, boots and gloves; the company also offers a leather-restoration kit that we recently sampled.
The kit, which sells for $30 (plus $5.50 postage and handling), includes five 1-ounce bottles of dye in your choice of colors, plus a 4-ounce bottle of cleaner, a 4-ounce bottle of leather balm and a sponge applicator brush. Renewing your leathers is a three-step process: The cleaner/solvent gets rid of dirt and stains, the dye is brushed on, then the balm is applied as a protectant. No buffing is required.
Before we could see how CLC’s leather-repair kit worked, we needed to find a suitably worn garment. CW Shop Foreman Pat Tracy had one, a Vetter leather jacket that had suffered through four years of daily duty and was looking decidedly ratty.
We gave Tracy the CLC kit, he gave us four hours of hard work, and afterwards, the jacket looked nearly brand-new.
Our verdict? This stuff is for real. We’ve since used it on everything from crash-damaged roadracing leathers to faded motocross boots, and the results have been spectacular. If we have a complaint, it’s that the dye-white in particular-works so well that touching up damaged areas makes the rest of the garment look shabby; best results are obtained when the entire color is retouched.
Maybe if we sent some to Charles Schultz he’d bring Joe Motocross back....
