Inbox7

I'm just curious how other's leather seats look after a few months (or years) of ownership. I just bought my 05 in late August. The passenger seat seems a little 'over worn' -- lots of wrinkles -- but then again maybe that's normal?

neuronbob

Click on "2 year review" in my signature to see pictures of my two-year-old seats. The leather in these seats does have a tendency of wrinkling easily.

JoganJani

What Bob said is right, they wrinkle a lot. Taken a regular care they can hold up real good. This is after 23 months on my 04;

Front


Back

triggle

Your seats look great. What are you doing to the seats to protect them ?

The backing material and the way the leather was cut to save material has much to do with how well the seat will hold up. A leather expert told me the grain was running the wrong way on my seats and that contributed to the wrinkling.

I realize the perforated leather stretches much easier than non perf leather but if they had used a different backing material it would not have been nearly as bad. Here are some pics I took of both sides of the seat covers when they replaced it. It is terrible compared to yours.

Here is the Original Topside of the drivers seat



Original underside
Notice the severe wrinkling of the backing material



New underside
Notice how there are no wrinkles in it yet.



New seat cover after 6 months
Bolster looks terrible - conditioned every 2 months

triggle

Funny.. I just noticed in one of the pictures that I took there is a Made in Mexico tag ! Now the reports of crappy Mexican made VWs all make sence.

JoganJani

I condition it every quarter with Zaino's "Leather in a Bottle" and every other quarter I clean before conditioning. To clean I use Zaino's "Leather Cleaner" and soft brush to get the body salts out and wipe dry with clean towel, then condition as usual. I think it helps a lot. Cleaning often to get the body salts out is a very important step in conditioning as I've gathered.

About Butt prints I think I got lucky with a good backing material I'd say.

Neorick

need4spd

I won't even post the photos of my 3month old leather in a 04 TL, I am glad others had better luck than I did!

JetJock

I had my "04TL seats replaced with "05 style covers. It was very complicated because of the extra seam and required new seat botton cushions to accomodate the seam and the seat heater. Needless to say, the '05 covers have held up much better than the '04. They still look new after 6months of use. The dealer covered the leather and labor, but I had to pay for one of the cushions, they let me slide on the other one. They also replaced the leather on the back of the seat just to make sure it all matched properly. Yes, I've got a great dealership, and thanks to the service managers help with the warranty, I am one happy camper now.