Care and feeding of...

[geechie]

...leather.

Up 'till fairly recently, I've mostly been riding in crap, and I didn't much worry about taking proper care of it. But now I'm riding in a pretty decent jacket, a Cortech Magnum and I'd like to ensure that it lasts me a long time. In the last couple of miles of my commute home last week, I got caught in a somewhat heavy rain. When I got home I dried the jacket and hung it up. It's fine, but what sort of things should I be doing along and along to keep it up.

George

[arkline]

George,

Motorcycle Consumer News did an article on leather care products a while back. Here's a link to the archive of the article. Scroll down until you see the
leather care products links:

http://www.mcnews.com/mcn/model_eval.asp

MCN is usually pretty thorough in their evaluations and usually give you a good idea of what the criteria are for their opinions. :023:

[DarthRider]

George -
Good advice from Ron on MCN...great publication.
But here's my 2 cents...
Mink oil is an old standby that I've used for years on street & race leathers, boots, shoes, etc. Keeps the leather soft, supple, strong and very water resistant.
First Gear and others make various leather cleaners & treatments, I imagine all good and for sure all better than neglect! I now mainly use FG leather treatment...it works.
It took me a long time to get top notch gear too, so I know where you're coming from!
One of my road race/Bonneville buddies had a great way to apply mink oil (which is really a paste)...
He would put his leathers on, stand on a low stool and have his girlfriend give him a full mink oil rubdown with particular attention to uh...certain areas of high vulnerability!
Enjoy...

Dave

[DJ Down Under]

This stuff's the best...IMHO... http://www.renapur.com/balsam.htm :023: :023:

Check out the vid... http://www.renapur.com/videos/Renapur-balsam.WMV

DJ

[geechie]

Thanks. You guys are better (and more entertaining) than Google any day!

George