The Porsche Boxster S I purchased had a torn driver’s seat in the left bolster (Figure 1) and on the seating area (Figure 2). After spending a lot of days looking at used seats and sports/racing seats online, I decided to save money and buy leather tape from Amazon.
The previous owner had used cloth covers on top of these seats originally, but I removed them as they looked ugly. I thought of buying a used leather seat but they are going for $300-$900 depending on condition, and I do not want to buy another torn seat to replace my own. I considered installing racing seats but then, that brings on more problems.
- Do I install a 5-point harness or use the existing seat belts ?
- Did I want to take this car to the track at all ? Or did I want this to be my daily driver instead ?
- Are the racing seats uncomfortable ? The factory seats are very comfortable, despite the wear and tear.
- Are the racing seats safer in a crash ?
- Cheaper racing seats could be purchased on eBay for $500 and look great, but they needed custom bracket work which I was unwilling to do at this point.
After thinking about all this, I decided to just buy $12 leather tape from Amazon and tape up the tears and use the seats as is.
Figure 1. Left bolster was torn on the driver’s seat
Figure 2. Base on the seat had a tear on the driver’s side
The patching process was easy, I cleaned up the seat first with a wet towel and let it dry. Then I cut out all the remnants of the torn leather portion from the original seat.
I then cut the leather tape into a large rectange with rounded corners to prevent stress on the corners from opening up the tape in the future, and taped up the tears as shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4.
Figure 3. Base on the seat now patched with leather tape
Figure 4. Left bolster now patched with leather tape
So far this has been working satisfactorily, and I do not need another new seat for my beater Porsche for a while. This car will also be my daily driver for the next few months, and I will focus now on making the Miata as my main autocross car, and for the track if I ever get there. Still got to install that roll bar on it.
