Finding OEM automotive cloth for Foreign Autos

[baileyuph]

This is a general question regarding availability of seat cloth for foreign autos. 

I have noticed they are not easy to obtain to bring seats back to originality.

Is this the experience most have, for example with Toyota?

Perhaps, since the covers are manufactured outside the us, it makes supplies tougher?

Doyle

[TimsTrim]

Bear in mind that for foreign cars made in the US, the Detroit and Lion books have samples

[chevman57]

Doyle my main supplier has told me that if the toyota covers are manufactured in the U.S. then they are available and are shown in the Detroit books. If the covers come from overseas then you can forget it.
Terry

[baileyuph]

Thanks Terry for the explanation, that is too bad for I have a Toyota customer wanting the real deal and yes this one was made in Japan.

I tried to buy or order the original covers from the parts department, first they thought the issue would die by saying, oh!  Those would cost around $800 bucks.  I said order and then they quickly learned that they were not available. 

This body cloth situation is changing, maybe to worse, in that I have a two year old American vehicle that nothing is available.  What goes, are the manufacturers just making enough to meet production requirement and that is it?  This would reduce capitalization.

Doyle

[coachtrim]

Try these guys http://www.westtrading.nl/
They have a lot in stock. They are in the Netherlands, but will ship here.
Johann
www.coachtrim.net

[seamsperfect]

Try these guys http://www.westtrading.nl/
They have a lot in stock. They are in the Netherlands, but will ship here.
Johann
www.coachtrim.net

They no longer ship to the states I used to buy from them.
Kevin

[TimsTrim]

The material we have available to us is just what is left from the production of the automakers. Say GM orders 10,000 yds of a material and uses just 8,000 for production and warranty service and parts department sales. We get the left over 2,000 yds. There has been rare instances where some company "remade" a material but few and far between. It really get annoying when you try to order something for a job on say , a 2008 and it's no longer available. (been there , done that ) But with just in time inventory and automakers cutting expenses where they can it will only get worse.Vinyls and leathers are fairly easy to replicate, cloth-- no. Remember, the automakers want to sell cars and will do very little to help us in the trim business make it easy to repair an old car.

[stitcher_guy]

i've run into that before with Toyota cloth. Matching the leather isn't a problem. Coast To Coast Leather just matched up some perfed leather for a Solara I'm repairing.

As for the cloth, depending on the type of damage, I did cheat once, and it worked: Had a Camry or some such, I couldn't get an exact match on the cloth. It was just a burn hole on one panel of the seat. So, I purchased a half yard of the closest match that WAS available (I've always gone with matched color over matched design to blend in better). Here's the cheat: The rear seat has a large center pulldown armrest. The damaged panel was up front. I took the rear cover off, and stripped out one of the panels INSIDE the armrest cave in the seat. Then I repatterned that panel using the close-match stuff. I used the OEM cloth that I took from the rear seat and made the repair to the front seat. That back armrest is likely never down, and if it is, the repair is up in the cave and very hard to notice. Pretty much you get two shots at doing a repair in a car (two side pieces that are large enough), but it worked.

This is a cheat way, sure. But the dealership had been told by three upholsterers up in Springfield, IL (I don't even consider those shops competition anymore) that it flatout couldn't be repaired. This car had been sold, with the agreement that the spot would be repaired. I just charged them normal rate, and told them not to even bother with the other shops andn remember to just come to me first. They do.