Sagging driver's seat

[ekam]

I'm afraid the only fix to this is to re-upholster your seats, in which case you might as well get new leather too. Not cheap.

[Tandrup]

Originally Posted by ekam

I'm afraid the only fix to this is to re-upholster your seats, in which case you might as well get new leather too. Not cheap.

I've read posts by people in here that have changed seat covers themselves. Is it possible to remove parts of the cover and re-insert some foam and re-attach the cover?

Thanks,
Lars

[thstone]

You don't need to re-upholster your seats!

Just take the car to any competent upholstry shop and they will pull the cover off and re-do the seat foam padding. Then they will glue the existing seat cover back on and you're done. Should take about 4 hrs of labor and/or cost around $200.

This MIGHT be a DIY project but only if you know what you're doing and have easy access to the correct type of padding and know how to cut it and how to re-attach the seat covering so there aren't any wrinkles or buldges.

I had this same thing done at a local upholstry shop on my BMW X5 last month because the seat padding got old and had become "flatter" than original and it felt like I was a "low-rider" when I sat in the seat. Now its perfectly back to original.

[Tandrup]

Today, I took the seat out (thanks to the forum for the good instructions on how to do that) and checked the seat from underneath. It turned out that the seat foam is being held in place by some thin metal rods that are tucked under a black plastic piece on both sides of the seat. My seat cushion had been pushed out of the plastic holder on that side - which led to the sagging seat cushion.

It was pretty easy to push it back - took a little bit of force. In order for it to not happen again, I drilled a couple of small holes in each side of the plastic holders on each side and mounted some stainless steel wires to make sure that the seat cushion can't be pushed out again.

Next time I have the seats out, I will post some pics - I forgot to take pics when I was working on it. The pics might come in handy if anyone else experiences the same issue in the future.