Seat Heater Install/Seat Leather Swap

[KevinH1990]

I'm almost finished with my seat heater installation using Dennis Vogel's instructions:
Dennis Vogel: Projects - Boxster Heated Seats

Fortunately, I was able to find a good set of seats from a Carrera and saved quite a bit of money and a lot of work compared to doing the project from scratch like Dennis did. Here's a picture of the car during the installation:

http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n161/KevinH1990/IMG_4551_zpsa9824aea.jpg

I now have 4 seats and of course 4 sets of seat covers on those seats. The conditions of the covers are:

1. Original Boxster passenger seat - 9 out of 10
2. Carrera passenger seat - 8 out of 10
3. Carrera driver seat - 7 out of 10
4. Original Boxster driver seat - 6 out of 10 (Due to wear on bolster)

It occurred to me that if I put the cover from my original passenger seat on the heated Carrera driver seat, that I would have best combination of seat leather in the car. I talked to a guy at an upholstery shop and he said he was willing to do the work for $100.

It appears that the seat cushions for the passenger and driver seats have the same part number and I assume the leather covers are identical for both the passenger and the driver seat.

Has anyone done this? Does my plan make sense?

I'm planning to sell the original seats when I'm done. The major flaw in the current driver's seat is some wear on the bolster, and I was planning to have that repaired when I do the swap. What would be a fair price to ask for the seats?

[evan9eleven]

Makes sense to me, if you can end up with two nice (heated) seats in the box, and a couple left over to sell, then it sounds like you're ahead. Is the leather identical?

As far as pricing, I'm no help, however. Post pics when you get done!

[KevinH1990]

Thanks for the reply. Here's an update.

I left work a little early today and dropped the seats off. According to the write up I used for the seat heater installation, the part numbers for the seat foam are the same for both the driver and passenger seats. So I am assuming that the leather is too. It looked the same to me and to the upholsterer while we were discussing the work. I guess I'll know for sure when I pick them up on Saturday.

The only difference I can see is that the cut out for the seat motor control switches would be on different sides. While I was at the shop, the upholsterer removed the panels and there is a fairly large hole there. He is going to sew in some vinyl to cover it. The repair will be next to the center hump when it is installed, so it should not be visible.

I'm planning to ask $500 for the seats. I'll probably have the worn part of the bolster repaired before I list them for sale. I checked with Greyhound and it would be about $140 to ship them with insurance. So even if I had to ship them, someone could get a nice set of seats for around $600. I may try a local sale first through Craigslist to save the inconvenience of packing and shipping.

[KevinH1990]

I picked up my driver seat today. The swap worked, but the upholsterer said that there were some differences in the attachment methods. Here's a picture of the finished product:




Here's a picture showing the patch where the upholsterer had to cover the hole for the controls:



Here's a picture of the seat in the car. You can just make out the top of the patch above the center console. It's more obvious in the photo taken with flash than it is in person:



Here are a couple of pictures of the finished interior:




Note that the patch is not obvious from this angle.



The driver seat feels much firmer than it did and overall the conditions of the interior is better. If you are in a similar situation, I recommend doing this if you have a good, reasonably priced upholsterer. The one who worked with me indicated that this was not a straight swap and some modification was required. I'm not sure whether it is the difference in model year (my car is a 2000 and the seats were from a 2004) or because one set of covers was from a car with heaters and the other wasn't.