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Hey all. I am in the process of negotiating a group buy for leather seat skins for ANY p type mk2 seats with a local Vancouver company called Northwest Automotive Leather http://www.nwautoleather.com. This is a big local company that is very well staffed and has great turn around time. Any new car dealer option leather interiors offered in town are done by these guys, they are that good. Some of you may know me, some may not. My name is Seamus (pronounced Shay-mus, like Sean) and I organized the group buy for the Carbon Fiber FX hoods. I'm just giving you all a heads up here so you have some time to save up and to find out what kind of color choices will be most popular. Pricing will not be finalized till the pattern is made and the first prototype finished, but I have approx figures for now. All prices are in Canadian dollars, multiply by .72 to get USD but it will be a few weeks before I start collecting names and placing orders. Hopefully the USD will rebound a bit by then but the prices will still be very, very reasonable regardless and shipping for just skins is very cheap (20 to 40 bucks).
This buy will have a few options. The base package will be just leather skins for the front seats. This will cost around $700 (500ish US, give or take 50 bucks). The first and most important option is the installation kit, which is essentially a special set of pliers to crimp little wire rings to hold the skins down. I have completely disassembled multiple ptype seats and resembled them with the use of this tool and this job is defiantly within the scope of the DIYer. But if you don't trust yourself with this nice leather you can pass on the installation kit and take the skins to any car upholstery shop and get them to do the install for a couple hours labour.
Other options will include skins for the rear seats (around $350), color choices (Black, Grey, Maroon, Blue or custom), and bolster foam repair (20 to 30 bucks). These guys can not sell us new foam for our seats, they can only repair the old stuff. For the bolsters, if your foam is worn and you can’t get a good one from the wrecker you can send me your bolster and I will deliver it to the company to be remanufactured. If your seat bottom foam is well worn or has holes in it (as many of the higher milage ones do) I would recommend you pick up a passenger seat in good condition from the wrecker and switch the foam when you do the re-skinning. At least here Supra seats are dirt cheap (50 bucks) and easy to come by in good shape with good foam(passenger ones are anyways).
The pattern for these skins is being made from the cloth skins as leather shrinks too much with age. BUT the pattern is being patterned after the leather seats. Curtsey of me, NAL currently has complete examples of both to work from right now. NOTE: These skins will not be 100 percent perfect reproductions of the factory leather for a couple important reasons. 1. The texture will not be exactly the same partially because all the old leather we have now is worn very smooth and shrunk from age. Even factory original leather will not look like what’s in your car now. Also NAL is unwilling to order in hard to get, rare leather stock for these skins as the relatively small qualities they’d order would more then double the price of the leather. But don’t worry, I will see to it that these skins are a decent enough match that re-skinned front seats will match your original leather rear ones (if like me you just do the fronts). 2. NAL does not want to 100% duplicate the factory leather pattern as it’s a little on the excessive side. Take a look at a mk2 leather seat, there’s 16 different strips of leather in the lumbar back piece alone. For the sections that use those strips NAL will double their size, so there will be 8 strips in the lumbar section instead of 16. This practice will be done consistently on all sections that use those strips.
I need samples for the blue and maroon leather. For those of you that are in for sure, if you could send me a worn bolster or other sample you have, that would be much appreciated (PM or email me). If you send me a bolster I’ll return it re-skinned with your order. The other stock colors I have samples for. Here are a couple nice bonuses to get your imaginations going. Any custom colors besides the stockies, two tone combinations, and different colored stitching are done at no charge. Also the leather skins fit cloth skin seats no problem, perforated leather can be substituted for an additional charge (around $100) and custom embroidery can be done for a minimal charge as well.
Please answer the poll above if you think you’ll be able to afford this within the next couple months. These skins will be available for mail order through their site after the Group Buy but of course it will not be quite as cheap and you will have to deal directly with the company. To give you an idea of costs, if you were to bring your car to these guys to have your front and rear seats redone, the bill would be around $2 grand. This is about all of the info I have right now, please don’t email me about any of this yet but feel free to ask questions here. I’ll be making a big post again with pics once the first set of skins are done and installed and we are ready to start taking orders.
This buy will have a few options. The base package will be just leather skins for the front seats. This will cost around $700 (500ish US, give or take 50 bucks). The first and most important option is the installation kit, which is essentially a special set of pliers to crimp little wire rings to hold the skins down. I have completely disassembled multiple ptype seats and resembled them with the use of this tool and this job is defiantly within the scope of the DIYer. But if you don't trust yourself with this nice leather you can pass on the installation kit and take the skins to any car upholstery shop and get them to do the install for a couple hours labour.
Other options will include skins for the rear seats (around $350), color choices (Black, Grey, Maroon, Blue or custom), and bolster foam repair (20 to 30 bucks). These guys can not sell us new foam for our seats, they can only repair the old stuff. For the bolsters, if your foam is worn and you can’t get a good one from the wrecker you can send me your bolster and I will deliver it to the company to be remanufactured. If your seat bottom foam is well worn or has holes in it (as many of the higher milage ones do) I would recommend you pick up a passenger seat in good condition from the wrecker and switch the foam when you do the re-skinning. At least here Supra seats are dirt cheap (50 bucks) and easy to come by in good shape with good foam(passenger ones are anyways).
The pattern for these skins is being made from the cloth skins as leather shrinks too much with age. BUT the pattern is being patterned after the leather seats. Curtsey of me, NAL currently has complete examples of both to work from right now. NOTE: These skins will not be 100 percent perfect reproductions of the factory leather for a couple important reasons. 1. The texture will not be exactly the same partially because all the old leather we have now is worn very smooth and shrunk from age. Even factory original leather will not look like what’s in your car now. Also NAL is unwilling to order in hard to get, rare leather stock for these skins as the relatively small qualities they’d order would more then double the price of the leather. But don’t worry, I will see to it that these skins are a decent enough match that re-skinned front seats will match your original leather rear ones (if like me you just do the fronts). 2. NAL does not want to 100% duplicate the factory leather pattern as it’s a little on the excessive side. Take a look at a mk2 leather seat, there’s 16 different strips of leather in the lumbar back piece alone. For the sections that use those strips NAL will double their size, so there will be 8 strips in the lumbar section instead of 16. This practice will be done consistently on all sections that use those strips.
I need samples for the blue and maroon leather. For those of you that are in for sure, if you could send me a worn bolster or other sample you have, that would be much appreciated (PM or email me). If you send me a bolster I’ll return it re-skinned with your order. The other stock colors I have samples for. Here are a couple nice bonuses to get your imaginations going. Any custom colors besides the stockies, two tone combinations, and different colored stitching are done at no charge. Also the leather skins fit cloth skin seats no problem, perforated leather can be substituted for an additional charge (around $100) and custom embroidery can be done for a minimal charge as well.
Please answer the poll above if you think you’ll be able to afford this within the next couple months. These skins will be available for mail order through their site after the Group Buy but of course it will not be quite as cheap and you will have to deal directly with the company. To give you an idea of costs, if you were to bring your car to these guys to have your front and rear seats redone, the bill would be around $2 grand. This is about all of the info I have right now, please don’t email me about any of this yet but feel free to ask questions here. I’ll be making a big post again with pics once the first set of skins are done and installed and we are ready to start taking orders.
. THIS IS AN OPTION, it will cost a little more then skins with the 2 inch bars. Pricing is not determined yet but it will be nowhere near 200, something more like 50 to 100.
