I wanted to make a thread for anyone who's considering having their interior redone. Like most convertibles, my leather was sundried, cracked, split beyond repair and in general looked pretty bad. Years ago, my side bolsters were replaced with off-color vinyl and the interior dyed black so they would match. So my goal was to redo everything and start from a clean slate. I wanted to restore the car's original cardinal red but also wanted a cloth interior because it's easier to live with.
BMW never made this combination from the factory so I had to have it custom made. There are a few people on here and on the web who make kits and they vary in price from 600 on up depending on who makes it and which material you want. Since I wanted simple cloth and vinyl it wasn't going to be that expensive. The style I like is cloth centers with cloth inner bolsters, and vinyl outer bolsters. But the problem with the OEM BMW convertible rear seats is you can get cloth centers but there's no seam in the middle of the bolsters like there is on the fronts so from the factory the entirety of the rear bolsters are vinyl - ie. the rears don't match the front. So what's the point of spending all this money on redoing my interior if it's not going to flow right?
I saw John from Ninestitch on a thread here about a black alcantara interior and he'd come up with a custom-design seat cover which appeased my OCD and looks pretty good! He's a stand up guy and I wouldn't hesitate to do business again. He'd also made me a second set of headrests to add on the rear and a shifter/boot set so everything would match.
John was always quick to return my calls, txts, emails to talk about my kit. I felt much better doing business with him than some other people on this forum. In short, he's a stand up guy and goes by his word. I spent what I would consider to be a lot of money on this so I wanted to make this thread to show how his kit looks and what kind of experience I had as a customer.
I still have to dye the door cards and seat backs but the car looks a million times better than it did before. The fit was generally pretty good, though some of the corners are a bit wrinkled, which I would readily chalk up to my own inexperience with interior work. That being said, I was able to pick it up pretty easily based on the information readily available on the internet and a close look at how the old seat covers came off. I would say on the difficulty scale, installing this kit was easier than doing a timing belt, but that's not to say it wasn't hard work. Is it worth paying someone $1000 to do it for me? No way! At times the material required trimming to fit just right but John was just a phone call away to set me straight.
Yes I know my wheels are dirty - I just got back from vacation.
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