I have an e30. quite a few of you have also owned one in the past. as such, you know my pain; crappy bmw seats.
all the used ones are torn, cut, or worn. refurbished ones are literally 1200$.
Is there any chance of a auto upholstery shop having reasonable pricing? take a car seat to a home upholstery place? do the work myself? how hard is the work?
should I just buy different seats and make them fit in the car?
I'd look into getting a reupholstery kit, maybe from ebay? It's not that hard to replace the seat covers on most cars, plan a day or two in the garage if you've never done it before. You should only need hog ring pilers and some hog rings. It gets a decent bit harder if you have to cut and sew the material, but I would think that an E30 has them easily availible..
I think it was Dean that knew of a great leather seat site.. I can't pull it up right now..
Now's a great time to add seat heaters, too. Let me know if you want a recommendation on the brand I've used on a few cars :)
lseat.com . I've used them. Very reasonable and reasonable quality. For the money, you cannot go wrong.
Not exactly what you're asking, but I mail ordered some custom seat covers from these guys and the fit was just about perfect. Granted cheap seat covers for a fraction of the cost do almost the same thing. Maybe you have some good places local. Upholstery work ain't easy.
I dunno. I would not say upholstery work is hard, just time consuming. I've done some starting with a whole cow hide and ending with 2 seats, or starting with 2 goats and ending with a motorcycle seat. I use my grandmother's hand crank Singer. However, if LSeat.com has a set available, do that. That's what I put in the ZAV. I couldn't buy the leather today for what they charge for the whole set already put together.
Dr. Hess said:lseat.com . I've used them. Very reasonable and reasonable quality. For the money, you cannot go wrong.
Maybe that's what I was thinking.. Sorry Dr.. I think I had you confused with Dean..
lseat.com isn't going to work for me.
they only offer a leather version and I want cloth.
Take the car to an upholstery place, let them tell you what they'd charge. Or find a way to bolt in something else. We have a 2002 here with a set of Miata seats in it.
I am pretty sure i could fit another set of seats in there. a welder and a drill press should adapt just about anything.
any specific cars that have nice seats that sell for decent prices?
Look on eBay for seats. Figure out what you are looking for and then hit up car-part.com to find some local because shipping sucks.
I recovered mine front and rear. Went with vinyl since the tan houndstooth fabric is NLA. It was a PITA! Hog rings suck and cleaning the horsehair backing in an e30 seat is quite frankly disgusting. Took a week to get the smell off my hands. On the other hand I LOVE the feel of new seats and am very happy I don't go back with cloth.
And plus 1 on adding seat warmers!
Do you have sport seats that look like Recaros, or the regular comfort seats? Are you looking for an OEM style complete reupholstery job, or just a set of seat covers you can slip on over the originals?
I looked at recommendations on the mye28.com board since seats in e28 5 series cars are pretty similar. I found https://seatsavers.com as a source for slipover seat covers with a couple good recommendations.
Jim's Auto Upholstery in San Diego, CA (I couldn't find a website for them but if you Google their name you can get an address and phone number) has made good quality OEM-style seat covers for a number of people who installed the covers themselves, and I think they will ship them to people not in the area. However, I didn't find any recent posts about them so I can ony assume they are still providing that service.
If you want to source some OEM fabric and have it sewn up by a local shop, try http://www.worlduph.com
For a very high quality (and not cheap) complete reupholstery job, this place in Minnesota got high marks: http://www.marksautoupholstery.com
Ive used many sets of lebaron-bonney seat covers. American made, inexpensive, and high quality. Would reccomend to anyone.
I have comfort seats but am looking for sport seats or the like.
leather and vinyl don't work well down here in the south. I have seen actual burns from how hot they get during the summer. they also dry out and crack within a few years without constant attention. so cloth for me. I would love an Mtech style seat but those are $$$$. I might just go search out the local junkyard for some nice ones I can adapt to fit.
are there any comfortable Sparco-like seats that fit real people?
A lot of people have adapted seats out of newer e36 and e46 BMWs, I think it's pretty straightforward with some home built adapter plates on the mounting brackets.
I have been looking at the e36 and e46 seats. one would think BMW makes their seats out of toilet tissue, with how easily they tear. junkyards never have any nice ones.
ebay has E36 M3 seats for over 6000$
regular ones are like 1500$.......................... no thanks.
Currently in the process of hand-sewing a secondhand leather jacket as replacement parts for the driver's seat in my Buick. It's been slow going as the sewing machine I have wasn't up to handling leather and I needed to do everything with a needle and thimble.
I found a couple of really good upholstery books on Amazon. One of them goes through a whole process for recovering seats. One of the photo examples is a set of BMW sport seats - which is considered one of the more advanced projects in the book. Like anything, it's a skill that needs to be learned and the book is written like that: it starts you out making a simple cushion and you go to more complicated projects from there.
If available, kits aren't too hard to install. I helped my ex install a recovering kit for her Spitfire. Wasn't too hard. If you have the tools, hog-rings are pretty easy to work with. It's also not uncommon to simply replace them with zip-ties.
I have a set of E30 sport seats, but I haven't decided what I want to do with them yet. They may get adapted into my GT6 or Spitfire.
Ian F said:I found a couple of really good upholstery books on Amazon. One of them goes through a whole process for recovering seats. One of the photo examples is a set of BMW sport seats - which is considered one of the more advanced projects in the book. Like anything, it's a skill that needs to be learned and the book is written like that: it starts you out making a simple cushion and you go to more complicated projects from there.
I probably have that book too - somebody by the name of Taylor, wasn't it? Appropriate enough name...
In reply to MadScientistMatt :
Yep. Automotive Upholstery Handbook and Custom Auto Interiors both by Don Taylor.
Both are pretty good at demystifying the subjects and giving you a good, "I can do that" impression, although I have been around long enough to know it'll take practice to look good. Like bodywork, equal parts skill and art.
This is a useful thread. I'd love to recover the seats in the ZJ but I don't know how far the budget will stretch. I've looked at a bunch of options. It seems like there's nothing between the $30 walmart seat covers the suck, and $300 per row for something "custom fit" that I have doubts would fit anyway. Lseats had leather for $300 (a bargain) for later model GCs but nothing for my ZJ. I had thought about trying to sew my own utility covers - maybe I'll pick up a copy of those books.
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