biggiefl

It is amazing what leather shops can actually do and pretty cheap. I had the rear upper on a 325 BMW Conv done a coupleyeas bk for about $100, looked OEM.

I need my dash fixed and my driver's seat has the backrest pad pulling out a tad but bolsters are great so who knows. If you have a car paint supplier in your area, take the car to them and have them make up a couple aerosol cans of SEM interior dye for you. It makes good or OK seats look awesome but is not the holy grail by any means. My interior is nice but from 25yrs of FL sun and no window tint, the seats turned a little rose colored....$34($17/can) and she looks great.

Champagne

Shipping seats is not that big of a deal.

For those who want a complete re-cover, I will be offering a group buy on my Traditional seat leather covers and also on my new French seam covers as well as a sport seat conversion service.

To those who want to install the covers themselves, I will offer full instructions from taking the old covers off to properly installing the new ones.

Paul

Mike Frye

Paul,

Shipping the seats isn't really an option for me. My car is my DD, so any work I do has to be limited to what I can do over the course of a weekend or at least put back together enough to drive by Sunday night .

Any idea when the group-buy is going to materialize? I guess the prices will be determined by the number of people interested?

I'm probably not going to be ready for any interior work for at least 3 months, but I have been gathering parts that I know I'm going to be needing and new leather for my seats is definitely on that list.

Champagne

Hey Mike,

I was planning on offering the group buy before Christmas, but my current work load won't permit it

It will be early next year, sometime in January.

I have seen seat covers completely butchered by professional shops. The reason is simply lack of knowledge on these particular seats.
928 seats are a bit peculiar, but once you understand how they go together, it's not hard at all to install the covers correctly.
With my help, anyone with a basic hand tool experience will be able to do a fantastic job.

I will also have complete sets of seats, converted to sport and freshly re-covered. I plan to offer an exchange program, where I will ship you new converted seats and you ship me yours back.

I am putting together some shipping costs and will have that covered by the time the group buy starts.

Paul

Mike Frye

Thanks Paul,

I'll watch for more details on this.


Harvey,
Sorry for the (partial) hijack, I can't bring myself to post pix of my interior until I can put the word 'before' next to it and there's also an 'after'.

You guys have had some really nice work done with awesome results.
I can't wait 'till I'm not embarassed to open my doors in public !

0utlier

He left the dash in the car. He's repaired the cracks and he's working on matching the grain now. I'm sure it won't look perfect, and I don't expect it to. I'm trying to stay realistic. It will definitely look better than cracks though even if the repair is noticeable.

The way I figure it my other option is to have it recovered in leather, which I may do down the road anyway. In the meantime, I'll live with his dash repair (good or bad). I'll start a dash repaired thread when it's done so everyone can critique it.

Ron_H

Mine is perfect. It is perfect because nothing causes it to wear. Nothing causes it to wear because it is protected by a sacrificial covering:

danglerb

Depending on where you live, maybe someone has a "spare" seat you could borrow while yours is out being repaired?

RichS 1986928

Outlier, I will look forward to the after pictures of your dash. I'm not looking for perfection but
the cracks in mine are really bad, (typical but bad). Please include info on how the guy did the
repair in the car, I'm very curious. I assume it's with the fiberglass epoxy that's described in the
other links, it seems like sandiing it would make a big mess.

Mike, last winter I pulled my seats out and recovered them myself.

I did only the front seats, the rear were fine as they never get used.
The leather cost $850, I also had to replace all of the small foam sections. Materials including foam
were around $100.

The results are great, but I will say it was quite a lot of work... The second seat took half as long as
the first but it still took an entire day. When compared to the $3K estimate I got to recover them
I'm glad I did it. One other feature I added was seat heaters. Very nice, I must recommend them.
They were $85 each on ebay. Now my seats look and smell nice.. comfortable as hell too.

I'm including some pictures of before.. The real problem was that somebody
replaced the bottom cushion foam with cheap stuff.. They were pretty bad
but the problem was they looked fine in the pictures on ebay when I bought
it. I got kinda screwed there.

Mike Frye

Rich,

Thanks for the info, I'll look for the heaters too, that sounds like a good idea. Your seats used to look like mine do now, except mine are ripped as well (padding showing, and even a spring).

I'm going to try some dash repair in the next few weeks, just to fill them until I can get it recovered or replaced next year. If it's not too bad looking I'll post the pix.

Gary Knox

In support of what Roger indicated about the leather shop he used for the red piping. I shipped a set of 12 way power, heated silver grey seats to Roger last winter. He took them to the shope he used, and Brian's guys removed all the leather from the front seats and the rear back rests, replaced the OE silver grey piping with black (black car). He also replaced the right side bolster on the driver's seat with new leather (perfectly matched in color etc.), as it had worn through. He then replaced all of the driver's seat leather etc. on the passenger side, using the original seat cushion "skirt" (the thing around the bottom of the seat that has the switches in it) for the seat bottom, and vice versa. Thus, the seating surfaces were essentially swapped, so the driver's seat is now the nearly unused leather and upholstery from the passenger seat - makes the driver's seating essentially like new.
I had stripped the "old" dye/paint off these seats and thoroughly treated them with Soffener, then re-dyed them with ColorPlus silver grey dye before sending them to Roger.
As I recall, upholstery shop charges were about $350. I shipped the front seats in wardrobe boxes from Budget Rent a Truck (~$15 each), and the rear seat backrests in a separate box. As I recall, round trip shipping via FedEx from southeast PA to Texas was around $100.
I'm delighted with the results. Changed the interior of the black/black '94 GTS I bought in January from all black to black with silver grey seats.

THANKS again, Roger.

Gary Knox
West Chester, PA

danglerb

Getting the leather on and off the seat has to be something you get more skill at, so its something I would leave to an expert, be they local or remote.

How much of an issue the shipping is might be a function of whats being done, a $200 repair or $1400 restore.

jpitman2

I just had my full leather interior 'restored' - it was pretty well lived in, with some major surface damage to the rear quarter front edge, where the driver released the seat belt tang to fly back. The seats had been separately recovered a couple of years ago in new leather. The guy was able to fill the damaged surfaces on all panels, with both rear quarters out of the car, repaint the surfaces, and now you would have to know where to look, get up close with the light right to find any traces of damage. The only panel not removed was the roof lining.
Only issue left now is something inside the sun roof is scratching the inside lining when retracted....We wont talk about cost, in case SWMBO sees this.
jp 83 Euro S AT 50k, white/white

Ispeed

My 944 seats.

ROG100

Carl,
Sweet - now I need a set of Competition package sports seats for my 82 5 speed.
Roger