Anyone around who can quote me and (depending on the quote) order me a bottom front seat cover (black leatherette) for a 2001 1.8T?

I see in old posts there were some people in here who sell official parts but I'm not sure if they're still active.

 

Where are you? If you're in maryland there is a good chance you can score one in like new condition for like 20 bux.

Otherwise if you haven't tried ebay, then go to www.shokan.com for parts although they are a bit pricey.

 

Hmm ... I'm in California but as a matter of fact I have family in Maryland in the Rockville area. Where and how? (Feel free to PM me.)

Yeah, I had checked those already ... ebay doesn't have anything and Shokan will only sell the entire bottom seat.

 

I'm curious about the whole MD thing too. I live just outside of Baltimore and am in need of a new seat cover.

 

I'm looking for a leatherette one for my 97 driverside in ECRU. Any chance of finding one there too?

 

I have leather factory sport seats in my '98 A4q. The left thigh bolster on the driver's seats needs to be re-done. The foam as well as the leather. A complete (2 piece - seat bottom and seat back) cover is apparently available from GAHH, but for about $1,200.00. That's too much. Someone mentioned a Carson or a Carlson in previous threads, but I can't find out who that may be. Any suggestions?

Thank you.

 

Not sure if you're still looking, but I stumbled across this on craigslist in San Diego....

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/pts/1245514900.html

and

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/pts/1247450097.html

 

I purchased leather bottoms a few years ago from www.leatherseats.com

It seems like I paid about $250 for the pair in leather and they were great. I recall they were pretty helpful and even sent me color sample before I ordered. They also had the hog rings and pliers.

 

Original poster here, reporting back ...

I should point out that I am a complete newbie and prior to this had never done anything involving car upholstery in my life.

I ended up buying the seat cover from genuineaudiparts.com for a good price, I think it was slightly less than $200 plus shipping. I also decided to buy a VAS5094 airbag adapter from another site (can't remember where, around $20) just to be safe even though there are mixed reports about how important it is. I figured for $20 why risk ruining the whole plan if the airbag goes off.

When the cover arrived in the mail I appreciated the price a bit more ... it's a pretty finely tailored and sturdy piece of equipment, was much larger than I thought it would be, and I'm glad I got a brand new one. The leatherette color matched 100% exactly to my seat which had been manufactured in the year 2000. Impressive.

I will say that I now have a MUCH greater appreciation for why it costs so much to get this done at a service place or dealer. I'm sure that experienced upholsterers wouldn't have had as tough a time as I did but it's still got to be a very solid three to four hours of work for a seasoned professional. I ended up having the seat out of the car from Friday night to Monday morning, and probably worked on it for about seven or eight hours when all was said and done.

I won't go into the exact details but here were the biggest pitfalls and gotchas:

- To replace the bottom seat cover you have to remove the whole seat then take the back off. Just getting to that part takes a while. I lost 2 whole hours just getting off the darn plastic cap over the main seat back screws on the *inside* side of the seat. (Side further from the door.) For the life of me I can't imagine how it's possible to get that off without breaking it. I understand now how the invisible plastic plugs are "supposed" to be pushed in so the plastic barbs can pop off, but it's frigging impossible to do it perfectly. I'm convinced that stuff like this is designed to be snapped on once and then broken off and replaced with a new one next time it's put on. I did manage to get it off without breaking it, but the plugs got pretty worn down. Luckily it's on the inside and mostly covered by the seat belt clip anyway so you'd never notice.

- Don't throw the old cover away once you get it off! The new cover doesn't come with the metal rods that slip into the slots to be bound with rings to the matching rods on the padding side. You need to pry open the bent ends of the rods on the old cover and then slip the rods into the new cover and re-bend. I don't think it was just my particular cover, as the cover was in a sealed plastic package with a sticker from Germany, so it didn't seem like it could have been missing anything.

- I had no idea how involved the whole hog-ringing thing would be. I had prepared myself by reading up on replacing seat covers but none of it made any sense until I was in there doing it. I had bought a pair of hog-ring pliers but they were totally worthless as they were too large and bulky. Doing the real thing requires getting the rings into a REALLY tight spot. And those were the only pliers in the whole damn city, I called a million places! Since there was no way I was going to wait around to mail order another set of pliers, I googled around for a while (for seat cover replacement in general not Audi specific) and discovered that many people use plastic zip-ties instead. Luckily I had a bag of these lying aroung from Fry's, and they ended up working perfectly! I initially pulled a few of the ties too tight, and ended up cutting them and redoing. It also occurred to me later that the zip-ties could possibly fail if the seat ever got extremely hot and then someone jumped onto it, but I'll cross that bridge if I ever get there.

- Stretching the cover on also took a little while, it's a tight fit! Once it's on and settled in it fits perfectly but man I was stretching it for a while and had to have someone sit on it a few times, like closing a stuffed suitcase.

All in all it was far more grueling work than I ever imagined just to replace a darn seat cover. But I'm glad I saved the $300 bucks or so compared to bringing it to the dealer and now know a hell of a lot more about car seat upholstery.

 

Great work! After fighting that cover onto the cushion, I'm sure you can see how much stress it is under and why most repairs don't work.

Congrats on job well done. Kudos on not giving up.