I've been looking at options to replace the leather on my driver's seat (probably passenger seat, too). The condition I got the leather in is simply too far gone for me to restore, even with some of the untorn material.

There's a recovered pair of seats on ebay for around 700 plus shipping (170), but the plastic bits are cracked, and the red seatbelt receptacle has faded to a pink-ish color. I'm pretty sure recovering my own seats would cost (much) more than 870. Could I swap over my decent plastic bits and seatbelt receptacle to the ebay seats?

 

Check the topsonline.com price for replacement covers. Very high quality and excellent color match. Not too difficult, especially if you have a helper.

 

Don't see any reason why not, but the plastic bits are fragile so go gently.

TopsOnLine seems to be the go-to US company from the reviews on here. They're showing new leather for the front seats with the armrest and cup holder covers thrown in for $649:

https://www.topsonline.com/model/Sea...pe_Models.html

May be an option if you're comfortable doing the re-trim yourself.

 

Hmmm...I am always looking for an excuse to fiddle with things. I'll do some snooping on other threads to learn about installation. If I can do it myself (with a friend maybe), then I'd prefer to.

 

Second for topsonline, not terribly hard, great value and outstanding quality.

 

And with new custom cut seat covers, the cost of having them professionally installed is typically a few hundred dollars. Worth a call to your local car upholstery company just to check on prices. I had a set of Recaro's completely recovered in high quality leather with custom stitching and it was far cheaper than I thought it would be.

 

I went with Topsonline and am very happy. I got quotes to install the new leather and they were anywhere from $160 to almost $500. I went with the $160.

 

Well, folks, looks like TopsOnline it'll be! Thanks for all the feedback. I'll try to update you guys in the coming months with pics. Currently busy trying to sort actual mechanical issues...

 

Best of luck!

 

you don't need to be a car mechanic to replace leather cover. It takes a few hours. I repair leather seats pretty often. show picture of your seat. I usually replace 1-2 pieces of leather.
1.Remove cover.
2.replace damaged pieces.

 

My 98 XK8 front seats have been replaced with vinyl covers, probably the ones on Ebay for 400 dollars. When I bought the car I was amazed how good the original seats were, didn't realize until later that they were redone in vinyl. Perfect match and probably more durable than the lousy Jaguar leather.

 

I got my order from topsonline today and there are no holes for the headrests, no cutouts for the tilt lever, and stitching and thread color is different.
Waiting for comment from them

 

 

I have a 2001 and the headrests are separate.
TOPS say they do not put holes in the cover because the holes were in different position over the years that separate headrests were used. I am not sure that is correct

I suspect it is more that they cannot source the metal eyelets for the headrest shafts.

 

While I didn't use TOPS for my XKE the same thing occurred, even though my car does have headrests the covers shipped without the hole. I decided to just leave the headrests off but the installer would have had to cut the hole and reuse the hardware had I wanted the headrest. (Long term plan is to go to different seats all-to-gether).