"JMC" Grey Prolong 'S' Ti saddle restoration/renovation

[Peachy!]

Had a little play with the spare cromo, the one with the faded graphics.
Gave it a deep clean, re-attached some of the leather underneath, cleaned the rust off of the rails and gave them a whiff of acid etch black primer and a satin clear coat to finish. Dressed the black plastic with UV protector, mixed up some grey flexible leather filler, freshened up the grey, touched up the graphics and gave it 5 coats of leather protect lacquer.
Looks good.

 

[Dr Dremel]

Good match on the grey refresh and great detail work on the logos!

 

[Joe*Pro]

Had a little play with the spare cromo, the one with the faded graphics.
Gave it a deep clean, re-attached some of the leather underneath, cleaned the rust off of the rails and gave them a whiff of acid etch black primer and a satin clear coat to finish. Dressed the black plastic with UV protector, mixed up some grey flexible leather filler, freshened up the grey, touched up the graphics and gave it 5 coats of leather protect lacquer.
Looks good.

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Naaahhh your pulling our leg. You’ve got some bloke in the factory sending you NOS or something

Amazing job. Just amazing.

Feel free to put a hidden ‘Restored by Peachy’ sticker or something underneath it.

 

[Peachy!]

Ok, so you’ve seen the nice one
Now for the maybe not so good one
The Ti has come out ok, it’s clean, it’s tidy and you can ride it but it’s not perfect.
Unfortunately the two saddle shapes are just too different, I really struggled to apply the cromo version onto the Ti body, it was just too big. The worst area is the sides near the graphic, if I pulled/stretched it into a position that would remove most of the creases then logo would be half under the saddle. So here’s my best compromise;

I don’t think this a great solution to the problem of there being few grey Ti prolongs around. (If you want something super tidy)



Options?
Well Joes one could have been restored like the previous cromo but would have only been fit for show mounting not riding, this was because the amount of edge splits (front, both sides & rear)
One split I could probably deal with and it might be ok to ride but not four.
Refreshing graphics to a reasonable/good standard isn’t a problem, but the more of a ghost the better.
Another option could be re-colouring a black one although that would loose any graphics in the colour strip, but if you want to ride a super tidy grey it’s at least an option.

 

[Joe*Pro]

Brilliant job and an experiment well worth doing. I’ve watched with more fascination than building the rest of the bike.

Agree this was worth the attempt as the original Ti saddle leather was way too far gone or completely missing from most of the edges and at just £23 for the Ti saddle we had nothing to loose and everything to gain.

So I guess it all just depends on how cheap and how trashed the original is and the doner is. (The two chromo doner options were still £60 or £100 I think off memory)

The last NOS Ti perforated I saw went for BIN of £130 pretty quickly.

3 pieces of coal given, for 2 diamonds in return I’d say.

 

[Peachy!]

Brilliant job and an experiment well worth doing. I’ve watched with more fascination than building the rest of the bike.

Agree this was worth the attempt as the original Ti saddle leather was way too far gone or completely missing from most of the edges and at just £23 for the Ti saddle we had nothing to loose and everything to gain.

So I guess it all just depends on how cheap and how trashed the original is and the doner is. (The two chromo doner options were still £60 or £100 I think off memory)

The last NOS Ti perforated I saw went for BIN of £130 pretty quickly.

3 pieces of coal given, for 3 diamonds in return I’d say.

3? This is what’s coming home Joe.

 

[ishaw]

Silly question, but it's only the rails that are ti so possible to swap these over onto the base that the skin came from?

 

[Peachy!]

Silly question, but it's only the rails that are ti so possible to swap these over onto the base that the skin came from?

Not really. These aren’t made like Flites where you can unscrew the nose plate and remove the rails, these are heat welded into the plastic.
Also in this instance they wouldn’t fit as they really are very different shapes/saddles

 

[Once A Hero]

Had a little play with the spare cromo, the one with the faded graphics.
Gave it a deep clean, re-attached some of the leather underneath, cleaned the rust off of the rails and gave them a whiff of acid etch black primer and a satin clear coat to finish. Dressed the black plastic with UV protector, mixed up some grey flexible leather filler, freshened up the grey, touched up the graphics and gave it 5 coats of leather protect lacquer.
Looks good.

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Bloody hell, what a great job!

 

[Peachy!]

Bloody hell, what a great job!

Are you gonna send me some photos of your perforated Pro-long then?