Trader220

The rear inner quarter panels are both shrunken. Its as if the leather on them just shrunk up pulling the backing in towards the car.

I am douse the leather in good leather oil but the panels are pretty deformed at this point.

I am sure I am not the first with this issue.

Any help on what to do?

leperboy

I'm not sure there is much you can do with the leather other than replace it.

I was able to reshape my sun-warped rear quarter panels on an 86.5 by using a heat gun to soften the fiberboard where it was warped, and then clamping the softened portions between flat metal plates to straighten it. It took a lot of repetition; the panels do not straighten out completely after one heating and pressing. I'd estimate it took a couple of weekends. I bought flat iron and cut it into different lengths for different sections of the panels and worked small sections at a time. Once small sections were straighter, I expanded to heating a pressing longer sections to align them. I used high tension clamps to clamp the flatiron on either side of the just heated panel. I was also really careful to not try to straighten too much at once for fear of cracking the fiberboard.

For the leather, I replaced it with a pre-cut and stitched kit. (they're available on eBay or from Classic9) I scraped all the old foam off the panels and applied new 1/8 inch thick foam. For the new leather, I used a good contact cement to attach the edge of the leather to the backside of the panel. The replacement process was also slow work and takes a lot of fitting and testing before using any glue to find the best fit that minimizes wrinkling or bunching. I found it worked best to first fit the leather to the complex curves, such as around the window, and then work outward. This minimized the wrinkles. Also, I needed to trim the leather and cut it where it would attach to the back of the panel to prevent bunching.

It's a really slow process, but can be done.

Matt

Trader220

Thanks for some of the tips. I was envisioning a process very similar to what you did.

Zirconocene

For the panels, you can wet them a little bit, get them to the shape you want/need, then let them dry in that shape as they are clamped. It can help to get them back to the original shape, in some cases.

Good luck