Leather Care

When it comes to the leather on your motorcycle whether it be saddlebags, the seat, the trim piece on the dash, any other components leather you have on the motorcycle needs to be maintained and serviced just like your engine oil does. If you allow leather to actually degrade from being dirty, leather is very porous, if you allow the dirt to embed into the leather itself it's going to degrade quickly. It's going to become brittle. It's going to become dull. As with anything else out there, the best recommendation I can offer you is to do a little research. Always use common sense. Obviously, you're not going to use any type of component or product on the seat that is slippery. You need to maintain leather, but you don't want any product on your seat that's going to cause you to slide around possibly get injured. When it comes to saddlebags, I see a lot of people use true water, protectant products. Same products you would use on work boots. You typically don't want to use anything of that nature, anything with a real oil base or greasy. For the simple reason, if you happen to be dressed nicely and you're touching the saddlebags or the dash trim strip, again you'll never use mink oil or any type of waterproofing oil on your seat it's just too slippery, but if you put it on the bags it'll have a tendency to come off and get on your hands when you go to use the bags, or if you lean forward on the dash strip it'll get on your clothing. Again, there's a number of products. You need to find products that work. You need to find products that are readily available. And what you really need to bear in mind leather itself needs to be cleaned correctly. Now, when I say clean correctly you typically wash all your leather components when you wash the motorcycle correctly using the same high-quality soap you would use on your paint and chrome finishes. The saddlebag should be clean. You want to use something to just clean the leather the pore in the leather. And you can see it does take some dirt off of the leather which is what it should do. When leather is cleaned correctly it needs to be protected. And again, you'll use a product that you're familiar with. Do a bunch of research. And it's as simple as cleaning it and then protecting it. I, myself don't care for a real, real, shiny leather surface. This particular product, once it dries out or you wipe it out, returns leather almost back to the natural dyed condition when it was originally put together, sewn, assembled however you want to put it, but it leaves a nice smooth, nice protected leather surface. One thing that is still readily available, I do use it but I don't use it typically on the upper portion of the saddlebag is true leather oil. Now you can find it. It's out there most auto parts stores. The place I like to use leather oil is on the bottom of the saddlebags. These are the areas of the bags that are most susceptible to picking up road grime and road debris. Leather oil itself does have a shine to it. And typically it will leave a greasy residue. But what it does is offer great protection against anything that may get kicked up off the road and try to embed into the bottom of the saddle bag. Again, you never want to use any type of oil or cream or a Vaseline-type based cleaner product on your seat. Reason for that if you make the seat slippery you may just slide off it when you're riding.