Leather replacement seat cover options for factory cloth seats.
 

I just picked up a set of aftermarket leather seat covers that go over your cloth seats and tried installing the on just the head rest and seat base, while they may look good while in place, once you sit on them on even move your butt or hand over the top left side of the seat, the edge of the seat cover would come off. Also the clip and groove attachment for securing the bottom of the head rests, snapped loose every 5-10 minutes. Overall they are not really that good and I would not recommend them. I ended up returning them 1 day after I got them.

My 2012 sports 370z came with the factory cloth and I'll tell while I prefer leather to stock, the cloth seats are finished really nice and fit and feel very comfortable.

I researched the leather seat option quite extensively for the last 2 weeks and here what is available, if your Z didn't come with factory leather seats.

Forget aftermarket or racing seats, with the side seat airbags , you need a dummy load connector or you will get an air bag fault on the car. Nissan makes them for the 350z, but not the 370z. One may be available aftermarket.

With dealer installed leather replacement seat covers, they use a few aftermarket shops, that either install Katskins or lower level brand.
Prices from the dealer will run $750- $1500, dealer marks up install 30%.
From my research Katskins seemed to have the best review, the other companies got mixed reviews, most of the problems were with poor install by the local installers or cheap leather quality.

Most of these leather kits are really do it yourself kits and most mechanics or do it yourselfers can install them on there own with simple tools. Everything is precut and simply replaces or covers the old factory material, only tools required are pliers , screw drivers etc. and a friend to help you stretch things.

Also these leather seat kits are only 40% leather , seat and back only leather, the rest in pleather or man made. I found out that you can up grade most kits to 100% leather for only a $100-$150. One other note is to stay away from perforated leather as it tend to tear or wear easy, this is well known fact on early corvettes and it you want the seats to last the longest then get solid full grain leather its the best.

What really turned me off to these aftermarket seat installers is when I toured their shops and you will see that most of them look like filthy window tint shops with a bunch of hacks, butchering ppls cars. So most of these guys are simple installers, with little or no training.

If you have one of these kits installed make sure you tour their facility before letting them touch your car, and its better off for you to remove the seats yourself and take them down to them. Rather than have these guys use power tools and hammers and screw drivers to hack up your new car. Most of these installers don't give a dam, as they are not the shop owners and paid very little.

Also make sure the shop that you use is an actual upholstery shop with sewing machines and a lot of different rolls of leather material on hand, stay away from the lower level installers.

In the end I decided to keep the stock cloth seats as they are really nice looking and to protect them I got a pair of ballistic nylon custom seat covers to protect them from Coverking for only $139 shipped in any color and they are washable, from anythingauto.com. Considering that I will only keep the 370Z for only 5-6 yrs. it makes better sense than dropping $750-$1400 on questionable afermarket leather seat covers.

Note there is a place on ebay that sells OEM leather seat kit covers for only $500 if you want to install them yourselves

I had good luck with Clazzio

I had my cloth seats professionally replaced by the dealer's installer in Allentown, PA. I choose the Katzkins Limited Edition. The guy did a great job and the leather is really soft. No problems since I owned the car!

I did Katzskins (black) through the Costco auto purchase program when I purchased the car. The seating surfaces are all leather instead of the leather and fabric combination of the OEM seats, they have the OEM stitch pattern and white top stitching. Very happy with the fit and look.

The leather and synthetic material seat covers I tried were one of the names brands in the bussiness and I didn't like them, their attachment wasn't much better than convention auto store cheap seat covers, even though they are designed for your car. For what they sell for online $350-$500 depending where you get them from, your better off with a set of Katzskins for around a $1000.

The main problem I had with the leather covers were on the head rests coming loose on their own and the other serious issue is the left side or door side of the seat cushions , they only provide you with about 3/4" - 1 " of material to simply tuck into the side with a plastic pick, the only thing holding the small edge of this material is the 3/4" piece of material being tucked in and a little pressure from the factory seats hard plastic side rails. Once attached you can easily pull the corner away with your heavy butt or hand with only 2 fingers.

One thing I noticed is upon removing the lower seat cover is that the synthetic material sides that they tell you to insert with the plastic pick become very gouged up and almost have holes poking through. The side material is not very thick.

Bottom line is you get what you pay for .

I am considering seat covers too, do you have any pics of the coverking ones?

Sounds like you could pick up some good condition touring seats for around the same price. Then you could prob wire in the power/heat options. Thatd be my move.

Just my opinion. Id rather have base seats and save weight than power. Seen some pretty nice aftermarket custom leather seating that basically looks stock. Seen others that look crappy. Just do your research.

:iagree:

Lots of Z's being wrote off or so it seems. Check out online scrap yards who have nation wide part search capability.

Too cold in the winter with no seat warmer is keeping me away. Other than that in would love leather covers ...


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