When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Hi all, new to the club. Just bought a beautiful diamond pearl/ivory 2001 ES with low miles for the age. But of course, the seats are fairly worn. Looking for ideas on replacing the leather, especially in the front - I've seen the Iggee option, but wondering if there are any other options you've tried? There's some very old posts on here from ~2008 when it looks like full sets were available on eBay, but I haven't seen anything for the seat backs on there, just the bottoms.
Best bet is looking for junk/parts car with good condition seats. It’s rare but that will be the cheapest and easiest way to replace your cover. (Just replace the entire seats )
Afaik, Lexus stopped selling the covers and even if they did it costs an arm and a leg.
I recently replaced my 2000es front bottom seats, driver and passenger. I bought full front seats from a donor car for 100. Only the passenger had no rips. But my original driver seat had slack, you feel it when accelerating/ deceleration.. you know what it is if you have it. Upon research, to fix it is either weld or spend around 1500 to buy new bottom seat assembly. Or buy used seats for cheap like I did. Anyways..
for the driver seat cover I opted to buy from eBay for about 180ish shipped. It’s pretty good and I think is softer (thinner) than oem.
If you look at YouTube on how to replace the bottom seat cover, the one I watched was for a 4th gen i believe.. and the guy says you can do it while the seat is inside the car.
for the 3es.. not in my experience.
Reason being you have to separate the top and the bottom portion.. unless you make cuts on the new seat covers you just bought, where the seatbelt hole and hinge holes are.
assembly and reassembly is pretty straightforward. the one I bought had heated seats while my es didn’t. So all I did was not hook up the plug. Also the side airbag connector was different on the donor seats so I just reused the top portion of my old seats (didn’t have rips anyways). It was either that or switch the original connector to the donor, which would mean cutting wires and splicing. The driver side, I had to cut and splice the main wire.. I forget if it was because it was faster that way or if there was no other way..
Careful with your hands. You can easily get slices / cuts from sharp metal edges.
Also the YouTube video I watched he was using trim removal pieces and I bought the ones he was using... it’s useless. It’s completely unnecessary, I ended up using flat head screwdriver.
so yeah, all you need are Philips (+) and flathead. Metric socket set, 10, 12, 14 if I remember right. And tools to cut and splice wires together (for the driver side)... and pliers for removing/install the seat “rings” under the covers
photos:
disconnect the battery when working on it, just in case
and be careful when removing / installing the seats from the car. I managed to scratch the door armrest... speaking of which, I also bought new center console armrest cover on eBay for 20bucks. Best investment ever.
Not bad- been looking at junkyards, but I’m in AZ and everything is pretty dried out and worn. I’m hesitant to replace with 20 year old OEM seats that will likely just suffer the same demise, eventually. This leather isn’t known for durability.
Do you have the link for the center armrest cover?
(if link doesn’t work just search for something like “2000 es300 center console cover”)
You will need philips (+) and flathead screwdriver. The philip for removing 4 screws (I believe it’s 2 on “outside” and another 2 inside the cover.. you will need a skinny screwdriver for the “inside”. Flathead for removing the staples and prying/separating the top portion.
The leather is stapled on the inside. I bought an upholstery stapler on Amazon for like 30 bucks... that was a mistake because it wasn’t strong enough. It worked but I think I could just used epoxy or gorilla glue or something.
As for the seats.. yeah I was debating hard whether i should replace it... the thing is when I bought this 3es, the previous owner replaced a bunch of parts on it like starter, alternator, etc. (the engine bay is really clean) and replaced the timing belt as well.. so it’s pretty much ready for another 10 years at least. Overall the car is in pretty good shape inside and out, you could mistake the condition as 5 year old at first glance.
I even thought about using slip on cover seats but those will slide around and you’ll still feel the rips. So I figured I’ll just pony up the extra money. There’s also vinyl version and those go for like 130ish per cover.