WhiteDSM520

Alright, I'm sure about 99.99% of you have at one time or another had a hole in your driver side seat. I've read that people swapped seat back padding and cloth but never saw a how to on it. So I tackled it myself today and had great results. I took a lot of pictures so here's how you do it.



1. Take your seats out. I'm not going to tell you how to do this but it's easy.



2. Pick a seat to start with. I picked the drivers since the foam was already messed up and if I did anything more to it I wouldn't be pissed. I flipped the seat on it's side and found little rings that need to be removed. Just clip 5 of them and discard them.


3. Once you clip the rings you should be able to pull the back of the upholstery up a little bit and see some of the spring backs. On either side of the seat theres a little rubber cable that is hooked to the springs. Use pliers and unhook that rubber.


4. With that off, you can pull up the upholster over the bolsters, then stop, don't tug anymore


5. Now there is a little seam in the middle of the seat with more rings you're going to have to clip. Just two of them. Clip them, and pull up the upholstery a little bit more


6. Now there are two top rings in another seam you gotta clip before you can pull the upholstery completely off.


7. Now that you can almost take off the upholstery, you have to get the headrest off. You can do this earlier, but this is the point in the process where I did it. To take off the headrest you have to dig down from the front of the seat and find a little clip. When you see the clip, push on it with a flathead or anything you can fit in there. Then from the back of the seat, pull the fabric down and you should see the clip sticking out a little bit. From there you can use needle nose pliers to just grab it and yank it out. Once both sides are done the headrest just slips out.

Here are the clips once out.


8. With the headrest out there are two peices of plastic that you have to get out now. You have to get them out from under the seat back. Here's a crappy picture from the bottom. You have to reach your arm up there and squeeze and push them out.



9. With both pieces of plastic out you can totally take off the upholstery. Now is a hard part. If you car is anything like mine the foam is somewhat stuck to the metal frame. There's not too many tips I can give you on getting the foam off. You're going to want to unstick any parts with you hands. Reach up in the seat and see if parts of the foam are still stuck to the metal. Be careful though, there is some sharp **** in there that can cut you. With a little care and some wiggling the foam should free itself from the metal cage. Then you do all this for the passenger side.




10. Putting everthing back together. I started with the driver side, since I couldn't wait to get it back in the car. The passenger foam (which looks great!) should slide over the driver side rail with no problem.


11. The upholstery install is basically the reverse of the removal. When you get to each seam where you clipped a ring, use zip ties to hold seam to the seat.
this is the top seam

Before you do the bottom seam, don't forget to attach the rubber cable to the seat back again!
and this is the bottom of the seat where the 5 rings were

If you don't like the idea of using zip ties, or you run out like I did, you can use bailing wire to hold the seams together. Here's a pic on the bottom passenger seat.


12. With the Upholstery back on you have to put the headrests back on. You can see in the picture above that I put the metal clips back into the plastic things that slide into the seat. So when you slide them back into the seat, all you have to do is slide the headrest in as well.

13. This will change for some people. Here you can either get another passenger seat so you don't have to reuse your driver foam and upholstery, but I don't have money to spend so I just sewed up the upholstery by hand. I used some duct tape to hold that split in the bolster foam together and slipped the stitched upholstery back on. This is what the passenger seat looked like afterwards

and a close up of my stitching job. I don't know how it will hold up, but now that its on the middle passengers bolster I don't think it'll get too much strain


And Finally some pics of the driver's seat in the car



Let me add something. I've read that some people say that they trim the foam on the side where the recline lever is to make room for it. You can choose to do this or not. I didn't and everything reclines fine. The plastic on the recliner mechanism takes a little more coaxing than usual to get it back on, but it gets back on w/o a hitch.

Any questions, comments, etc will be well accepted
I hope this helps a lot of you. It would have helped me

Custom Rex

good write up...

is that a white eclipse, in one of those pics?

WhiteDSM520

ty. Yeah, that's my always imobile dsm in my avatar.

WhiteDSM520

No one else is interested in this?

MR5sARECOOL

excellent write up

turbohappy

Great write-up! I tried to do a similar thing with a set of del Sol seats years ago and they are NOT the same! The fabric is very seriously glued to the foam. Glad it works for EF seats

cursED

Very nice!

skittyscott

good stuff

SouLaQuaRiuS

good info!

31flavorscivic

I have been waiting to do this for so long. Thank you so much for the writeup. I know what I'm doing this christmas break. TY FOR THE INFO!!!

doublethink

well done!!

i just said the hell with it and bought s2000 seats but i miss my si seats, they were softer and more gen correct.

eHoward

I think your write up may have inspired me to pick up an extra passenger seat and try that out!

b16_madman

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by eHoward &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I think your write up may have inspired me to pick up an extra passenger seat and try that out!</TD></TR></TABLE>

cough cough, check sig, cough cough


Dude, nice lil writeup there. I think you responded to my thread with your new thread. I may have a problem with mine though, b/c my pass side has the adj. back support pillow. It's adjuster **** would somehow need to be fitted to the left seats frame, but I'm sure it can be done, now to find time to do this.

About how long did it take you to do this?

WhiteDSM520

It took me about 3 hours from taking out the seats to completing the first seat. Then about 20 minutes to stitch the second seat and about 45 minutes to get it together. Most of the time was taken figuring out how to get the cloth off without destroying it and figuring out how to get the damn headrests off. But once **** is figured out everything else goes smoothly.

NONVTECSI

Nice write up!!! My padding hasn't gone yet jus a rip in cloth. I was ironin a piece of cloth on there for like 6 months till i got tired of doin it so I jus put a black shirt on it. haha Maybe i'll do this write up.

WhiteDSM520

I miss my crx

661rex89si

sweet write up i have the same rip on the side and the foam is worn out also on the seat. im going to try this cuz man my seats would be mint if i do this.

VRD^don

cool write up!!

civhatch90

good write up i did the same thing a while ago and it comes out nice

SVOboy

Did you just get the foam off some other seat? My problem is the other way around,

HackeN

I will be doing this soon enough, I want to put back in some stock si seats and get rid of my del sol ones, my drivers seat is mint, I just need a passanger full back support that isnt all torn up hehe.

WhiteDSM520

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SVOboy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Did you just get the foam off some other seat? My problem is the other way around, </TD></TR></TABLE>

I used my passenger side foam.

RSZero1

I was contemplating this very thing myself. So this was perfect timing. I actually have a friend that could get me a brand new passenger seat upper and lower pieces, so now i can get those, and just swap them onto the driver side.

b16civster

awesome work

pandarex

iTrader: (1)

thats awesome, cheaper than buying em new