I have noticed that my driverside seat has a noticable amount of "cracking" in the left portion of the leather closer to the door. The passenger seats all seem fine, but the drivers side seat in that section seems to be "cracking" a lot. I wonder if anyone else has this issue.

 

Yup..

 

i think that's a common thing that people face, even my dad's 2005 X5 had noticable cracking after a year of use.

 

yeah, my car is like that too. it's weird..i think it's because the driver's seat is used more than the others..i don't carry many passengers.

 

Is it cracking or is it just wrinkled. If you condition your seats they should last very long.

I had an '93 Acura Vigor that I drove up until 111K miles. Aside from some wrinkles, there was not one single crack in that seat. The leather was perfect.

Same goes with my '01 Acura TL and the two Land Cruisers I've owned. The first had 90K miles.

If you condition your seat at least once month I would be surprised to see any cracking.

 

My driver's seat is not cracking, but I've got a wear issue. The advice to apply conditioner to the seats as part of a general cleaning/maintenance is probably a good idea.

I'm at about 40,000 miles with delivery June, 2005. My driver's seat developed a ridge on the left seat back bolster, and I've worn the leather off along that ridge for about 3 or 4 inches and almost 3/8 inch in width. This ridge is about at the level of my belt and the wear area apparently developed by my turning in the seat when getting in and out of the car.

The leather wore off down to a layer of shiny material...sort of gold in color.

I've never had leather seats and am of the opinion that the wear is premature, but the dealer declined to submit the issue for warranty. Instead, the dealer directed me to a fellow who is doing leather/vinyl work for several dealerships in the area, and last Thursday, he worked on the area so that it's barely noticeable on close inspection. He first applied some kind of material over the worn area and some surrounding leather and then colored it.

BTW, if you have a belt that, when rubbed, comes off on a cloth, don't wear it in the car...you'll get a "belt stain"...I had one of those also, which the guy covered up well enough. I had a new belt from a well known upscale outdoor supplier...the current ranger model. Belt stains are apparently fairly common on all leather seats.

I'm thinking about ordering a leather kit from Leatherique in SC http://www.leatherique.com/. Anyone have any experience with them? The only reason I haven't is because I don't have a sample leather patch to send in with the order.

I was prepared to purchase new leather covering for the seat back at about $800, but for the $60 this guy charged, I'm fairly well satisfied for the time being with the repair.

 

Which cleaner and/or conditioner do you use?

 

I've used Lexol cleaner and Lexol conditioner on all of my cars and I've had great success with it. Back in 1990 I learned the hard way about conditioning seats with a quality conditioner - I had an e30 M3 and all the seats began cracking and tearing at the seams after 3 years

 

In the past I used Meguiar's Medallion for Leather. Meguiar's no longer carries the Medallion line. I use the replacement (can't remember the name). It's a white cream that I rub in with my hands and wipe off with a terry cloth towel.

With that said, I've heard good things about Lexol as well.

 

got any pictures of the "cracked" seat?