Ouch! My arse hurts! My driver's seat went POP!

[tweetdriver63]

Well, today I was driving to, of all places, a local customizing shop to get some references for upholsterers, so I could get some quotes for re-trimming my seats, to compare with what's been quoted here. A couple of minutes into the trip, my seat went pop, and my butt dropped about 2 inches maybe, into a very uncomfortable place that used to be a pretty comfortable one. Some spring or something.

I reached underneath, after I stopped, to see if maybe I could wedge something under it temporarily. Theres a big flap of material (vinyl I guess) hanging down on the floor under there, and I can feel the foam.

How hard is it to remove the seat in order to try to fix the spring?
Anybody have some good instructions, preferable with pictures?
I see there's nothing like that on the Wiki.

[Doug]

check my old seat warmer write-up for pics of the seat (if you can find it) and it may help

[jello]

I had this happen much less dramatically. It's not tough to fix, or to take out the seats. Seats with brackets are removed by taking out 4 bolts. You may have to move the seat forward or backward to get access to all four, but it's not hard.

To repair the broken part, you can call around and get new seat webbing material. If you are good with measuring and sewing, you can just go to a fabric store, buy some burlap uphulstry strapping and sew some straps together to act as webbing......that's what I did. I sewed it by hand, and it took me aobut 3 hours to do the entire job.

Phil Bates

[tweetdriver63]

I'm going to pull the seat out tomorrow and take a look.

[inkitin]

check my old seat warmer write-up for pics of the seat (if you can find it) and it may help

It's Here

By the way Doug, many thanks for that write up.

I wouldn't have even started atttempting to fit the warmers to my elan seats without it.

Roland

[tweetdriver63]

check my old seat warmer write-up for pics of the seat (if you can find it) and it may help

It's Here

By the way Doug, many thanks for that write up.

I wouldn't have even started atttempting to fit the warmers to my Elan seats without it.

Roland

I found it. It's on the upgrades page. There really don't seem to be good pics of the actual seat removal. Tomorrow when I take the seat out, I'm going to try to take some of the wrench-on-bolt under the seat variety.

[tweetdriver63]

Got the seat out. Not too tough, really. Here's a few pics of the 17mm bolts holding it in:

These are the rear ones. There are two in the front in the same locations on the runners. There are also spacers between the brackets and the floor. I just left them sitting in their respective dents in the carpet, so I wouldn't get them mixed up.

Here's a pic of the other ends under the car:

The outboard ones have to be held with a wrench when you turn the bolts. The inboard ones, if they haven't been altered (like mine) are little blocks inside a tunnel, and don't need holding. My front inboard block had been replaced by a standard nut, and I think I'll be making the same swap at the rear, since I can't get the bolt to start in the threads.

This is what I found underneath had broken:

The black rubber "sling" that holds the cushion up is split all the way front to rear.

Here's my temporary fix:


I would say I "McGuyvered" it, but there was no duct tape used. I used 1/16 x 1-1/2 aluminum, cut to length, and bent at each end. I disconnected the clips holding the sling in place, then hooked the bent ends of the aluminum "slats" around the metal rods at each side of the sling assembly. Then I pulled hard to get the clips back into the holes on the seat frame. After putting the two cross-members in, I then put the fore-aft ones in just by putting them between the cross-members and cushion, and wedging one end on top of the rear of the seat frame. It's not perfect, by it feels pretty normal to sit in, and will hold until my new seat covers get here (I'm getting them from kmckmc's source), then I'll have my local re-trimmer fix the seat permanently when he's putting the new covers on.