Porsche Sport Seats
When I bought my 951, the seats were pretty trashed. It was another reason I got him to drop the price on the car. I told him "hey man, the dash is cracked and the seats are trashed, that will cost thousands to replace!" Since he had no idea how to work on cars, and was used to paying for $95/hr Euro/Porsche service garages, he knew. Little did he know that I could replace them myself after locating cheap parts from eBay.
When it came to my seat replacement, I wasn't sure what I would do. Would I send my seats to www.928leathershop.com and have them recovered? But, then if I wanted to go with aftermarket seats to accept a 5-point harness, money would be lost. Did I just want to buy Corbeau, Sparco, aftermarket seats to begin with? Either way, it would cost nearly $1200 regardless of what I did.
During lunch time at work, often times I go to eBay and search "porsche 944" in the parts section. I will look at hundreds of listings to see what's out there. Often times I will buy spare parts if they are cheap, just to have on the shelf. During one of my searches, I found a set of 944 factory sport seats that had been recovered for $350. I was amazed! Normally worn out sport seats go for much more. The recovering was vinyl, and wasn't exactly perfect; but it will still a HUGE aesthetic upgrade from my current seats.
I remember bidding on them shortly after Hurricane Ike hit Houston. The power was down, but luckily I was able to use my iPhone to bid and pay for the item. Since Houston was a mess, the guy was cool about holding on to the seats for a few weeks until FedEx began shipping to Houston.
After installing the seats, I was amazed! The large bolsters on the seats gave tons of support. It may sound stupid, but it seemed like the seats improved the handling of the car just because I was one with the car. There is no sliding around in these seats. There are a few bad things about these seats. Since the bolsters are so high, getting in and out of the car will wear the edges down much faster than standard seats. They also are pretty tight. I have a 32" waist that occasionally balloons out to 34". I can't imagine having much larger waist.
Here are the sport seats in the bed of my truck after I unwrapped them from the shipping box. These are the seats as they came with my 944. Notice the ultra posh t-shirt covering the worn back rests. Here's another view of my original seats, taken from the passenger side. Unbolting the seats is a simple process. They are held in place with four hex-head bolts. To remove the seats, slide the seats forward as far as they will go and remove the rear two bolts. Then slide the seats back and remove the front two bolts. If you have power seats, unplug the harness. Lift the seats out of the car. When you remove the seats, you will now find 20 years worth of junk that accumulated. I found an old greasy comb, change from the 80s and 90s, random screws, old leaves, etc. It was pretty nasty. One thing cool about Porsche, is that they tend to have all the factory options already wired in the harness. For example, my original passenger seat was not a power seat. However, my new passenger seat was. I lifted up the carpet, and found that the harness to supply the passenger seat motors was laying there. Here's a comparison photo of the sport seat versus the regular seat. Notice the huge bolsters. Here is another comparison photo, however taken at a better angle to show the bolster difference. Driver seat mounted with original passenger seat still in place. I would have liked the seats to have been much darker, but for $350 I will live with the more gray colour. Driver door view of both sport seats installed. Passenger door view of both sport seats installed.
