I recently purchssed an 04g35 coupe. It has very low miles but the seat is ripped. Its making me think my odometer was tampered with. At what mileage did your seat start tearing? Thanks for any help i appreciateit.

 

I doubt your odometer was messed with. The tear is very common and really affected almost all 03-07 coupes unfortunately some earlier than others. Major flaw Infiniti should have caught back in the day. Just curious as to the mileage on your car...........

 

Only 40k

 

If someone was lazy about sliding in and out of the car it could fail that early, sure.

 

Previous owner was probably "LARGE".

 

Are you guys talking about the side of the seat bottom where the seat recline lever is?

Because that's not leather -- rather vinyl, on my 03 G35C it is anyway.

No other rips / tears... mostly like new and over 100k.

 

142k on mine and the leather hasn't torn yet.

 

Yeah, there is very little real leather in the 03/04 G.

Mine probably tore around 125k. Replacement oem seat covers were 1200$....no joke. Foam was $400. Couldn't ante up for that. I have a piece of black gorilla tape on it until ispring when I'll have the foam bolster rebuilt and the vinyl redone by an upholstery shop.

For reference, I bought a brand new oem heated Alcantara seat cover AND foam for my ISF for $500 on sale last December! WTF???

 

As BlueDream mentioned, it's not a factor of mileage at all. The earlier model G35 seat design made them prone to tearing on the outer edges of the seat, particularly when regularly occupied by larger and heavier bodies. Regular leather conditioning and using a sun shade on the windshield in the summer can help parlay this to some degree but it still seems to inevitably happen, possibly in less severe magnitudes despite strong efforts of conscious-minded owners regularly tending to the seat upkeep.

I've been extremely vigilant about keeping up with the conditioning of my seats since I bought the car in '04 and I don't have any rips in the seat (55K miles on the car if you're wondering), but I do have an area on the outer edge of my drivers seat near the back where the leather surface kind of started to "flake" off. The leather quality is pretty cheap in the '03-'04 coupes compared to many of the other luxury brands out there. I condition my seats with Lexol usually once a year, despite only usually doing about 2K miles per year lately but I used to do it twice or 3 times a year for the first few years I had it when I was putting more miles on it.

 

^^^^ If you've been leather conditioning the area where the rip occurs, then you've been conditioning vinyl...

The only leather is on the seating surfaces and seat backs in the middles of the seats.

 

Not the head rest? Leather cleaner works great for those vinyl pieces.

 

Mine is all torn up too on my sedan. I have been trying to find a used seat cover on eBay but couldn't. Might have to go to an upholstery shop and see what they can do.

 

Nope, headrest isn't leather either. At least not on the 03/04. Lexol Vinylx will work even better.

And yes, it is ridiculous that they were looking for 1200$ for the seat cover. Good luck finding one--I've searched fairly extensively and the used ones I come across are in far worse shape then mine! You might have more luck with the sedan.

Sucks too that the foam was discontinued...I would've paid the 400$ for the foam, since that disintegrates a bit every day as well.

 

idk if sedans had the same issue as the coupes. but my coupe it was torn already at 38k when i bought it used

 

From day one I spent hours keeping my coupe seats clean, using the best leather cleaner/treatment available. The tear is created by the plastic cover on the left had side of the drivers chair! Should have grounded that part of the cover off had I realized it was going to cause a tear at 30K miles!
Gary