How 2: Repair Recaro Seats

[SiCaln]

Side Bolster Foam

I had noticed that my newly purchased seats needed some reconstructive surgery carried out. I purchased the required parts from this store (excellent service) Capital Seating , they also provide replacement fabric should it be needed.

I purchased the SR/Sport outer backrest foam and Speed RH bolster foam (you may however need different parts dependant on model of seat).

As you can see from my seat, the driver's RH side bolster is damaged and torn, so needs replacing.

After removing the seat from the car place it on a smooth solid surface with the base of the subframe facing upwards.

The first job is to remove this from the base of the seat, which is done using a torq/posidrive screw driver on the 3 bolts on each side of the seat.

This removes the rails from the base of the seat, so you can gain easier access to the clips and fixings needed shortly.

As I am replacing the rear foam too I next seperated the top part of the seat from the bottom part, by firstly pulling off the side cover as shown and used a flat head screw driver to remove the cir-clip and washer shown

and then un-doing this large phillips screw on the side to seperate the top and bottom, you also have to release the backrest using the handles that drop the seat forward.

Now pull the metal work off the newly released fixing and seperate top and bottom.

With the base now removed from the bottom, begin by sliding a flat hear screw driver under the clips indicated by the yellow arrows and removing the thin pole (shown in the last pic here) from it that holds the fabric in place over the foam.

Lastly, Remove the last piece of fabric wrapped over the white tape (shown) at front and back)

Now simply pull off the fabric and examine damage, as you can see I had attempted a temporary repair with tape, but to no avail.

This picture shows what is holding you in the seat, a nice delicate thick bar of metal!

I found it easier to sit the new foam in place first and then simply reverse the process, wrapping the fabric from the inside, by centre cushion, around to the underside of the chair, then hammering the retaining clips back down into place to hold the fabric still.

Et Voila! Your newly repaired and comfy seat awaits you!

[SiCaln]

Outer Foam Rest

Having already removed the top from the bottom of the seat, you are now ready to tackle the job of replacing the outer foam rest.

Firstly, look at the bottom of the back rest and you will see a strip of plastic with 2 staples in it.

Remove the staples with a pair of pliers, you don't really need them to be honest. Then you will see that the seat is held together by these plastic retaining strips which hook into eachother, I slid my finger in between the two and pulled them apart.

Then lay the seat on its back and lift the centre cushion upwards, it is fixed at the middle with 2 retaining hooks that just swivel out. The black fabric on the seat also has retaining clips on the side that need to be removed as you can see here.

I found it made the job a lot easier if you remove the centre cushion, you do this by sliding your hand in between the top of the cushion and the seat frame, and remove the fabric from the 3 hooks indicated here.

Then after removing the cushion, roll the fabric upwards undoing the clips on the side as you go to allow more fabric to come off. You do not have to take off the plastic back release levers at the side of the seat to do this.

The old foam is stuck to the top of the chair but will just pull off. You can see the damage on the foam removed from my seat.

Here is the comfy looking frame of your seat waiting for the new foam to be installed

The new foam slots in to place over the skeleton of the seat, I would advise re-glueing the top of the foam together as it was previously. Now just roll the fabric back over the chair and down.

You will have to re-attach the fabric of the chair to the 3 hooks at the top of the chair shown earlier first, secondly attatch the centre cushion back in the same way over the 3 hooks and the 2 retaining ones in the middle of the seat.

Once the fabric has been rolled down to the base of the seat, connect the two plastic hook strips at the bottom of the seat fabric back together and re-attatch to the base of the seat by reversing the instructions for disassembly.

Seat as good as new and old foam can now be recycled for packing material.

vucrG