On 8/23/00 I ordered a pair of leather seat skins for the Spyder from Japan, much to my delight they arrived on 9/9/00, or in just over 2 weeks.  (They told me between 2 and 3 weeks so I am very pleased with their delivery!)  The seats arrived in a cardboard box and were shipped EMS / US Postal Service.  The following pictures show the seats and the installation process.  I grabbed a neighbor to help me and it took us 30-45 minutes to do both seats.  The process is very easy, the quality of the seats is excellent.  I showed them to the Mt. Hamilton participants today and received several positive comments.  I also compared them to Koops leather seats that were installed by Stevens Creek Toyota and both appeared to be high quality seats. Enjoy!

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Here is the seat back, as you can see I went with black leather on the outside and a light gray leather in the center.  I thought this would go well with the Aluminum kit interior accents.

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Here is the top and the bottom of the seat, sorry no flash on this pic.

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The bottom of the seat with straps and the back of the top with the map pocket.

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Time to take out the factory seat.

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To take out the seat remove the 4 bolts that hold it in, one of the front bolts is shown here.

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One of the back bolts is hidden under a plastic piece that simply snaps off.  Flex it outward to snap it on and off.

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This bolt actually goes in horizontally, remove it.

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The factory cloth seat removed from the car.

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The driver's seat removed from the car, note the seat belt sensor cable, you can easily connect and disconnect this wire.

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The next step is to remove the plastic pieces from either side of the side.  The inside edges of these have places that they snap in, you can flex the plastic to snap these in and out.

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This side piece also snaps off, but has a single screw that must be removed as well.

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This plastic piece is a little harder to remove as you have to unsnap it and slide it at the same time.  The adjustment lever plastic piece has a catch that you pull back and the piece simply slides off.

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This is the seat back, I wanted to show the interior padding as well as that the bottom seals with velcro.  I suggest placing the seats in the sun to soften them up to stretch over the seat easier.

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There is a small clip that hold the seat adjustment knob on the side of the driver's seat.  When you remove the clip the knob pulls off.

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This picture shows the knob, and the clip and the post the knob is attached to that comes through a hole cut in the factory seat.

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Here you can see under the seat bottom, there are a total of 4 straps, 2 side to side and 2 front to back that clip together with plastic clips similar to those found on backpacks.

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Here is a picture of the finished seat bottom underside.  We did the seat bottoms first then the seat backs.

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The driver's seat requires that a small hole be cut in the leather where the post for the seat knob must come through.  Cut carefully and make sure you have the seat cover exactly where you want it before you cut the hole.

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Stretching the seat back down over the seat.  In case you hadn't noticed, these go right over your factory cloth seats.

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Seat back pocket, you can get the seats with or without.

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The back of this seat didn't want to go on far enough to match up the velcro at the bottom.  We set it in the sun while we worked on the second seat which we had been prepping the material in the sun to warm it up.  I suggest warming up the material before applying as it is easier to work with.  These patterns are very precise and fit like a glove!

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Here is the finished leather seat!  The seats smoothed out after we sat in them and after they sat in the sun.  1 down, 1 to go!

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We got the velcro sealed up as you can see from this back view because we had left the passenger seat pieces in the sun while we did the driver's seat.  Looks like we got a few greasy fingerprints on the seat too!  These cleaned off easily enough.

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We repeated the procedure for the passenger seat, although the passenger seat has no adjustment button on the side of the seat.

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Here is the drivers seat that we sat in the sun, we were easily able to seal up the velcro and smooth everything out once it had been in the sun for 10-15 minutes.

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Here are both seats in the car!

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Ahhhhh the feel and smell of leather!

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Here you can see the seats in the sun!

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Another view of the seats.

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Here I was mocking up what the side door panels will look like when covered with light gray leather.  I have some of the light gray leather coming in as well to cover these with.

For those interested in getting these I'll be arranging a group buy shortly, please use the form I will put up to start the order process, and likely you'll need PayPal to order the seats through me for a group purchase the same way many of you have done through Akira for badges, etc. If you are interested, please go post in the forum for the time being!  Thanks!

Leather Door Panel Information can be found here.