[nuron]

My leatherette seat has been cracking in the usual places and I decided to replace it with the more genuine and durable Dakota Black leather. Cost of the seat was $100 off Craigslist instead of going an auto upholstery shop that quoted me $350+. Sorry for the huge images.

Before:


After:


To start:

Remove four seat rail bolts and seat belt bolt, along with any harness clips underneath the seat


Underneath--it's a heated sport manual so relatively simple underneath compared to the power seats:


Remove seat adjustment trim panel--two clips and one bolt.




Pull off the seat adjustment levers:


Pull off the bolster adjustment. Spread the two lengthwise tabs and the button will pop out.


Undo these two leather tie-downs (both sides)


Remove trim by seat belt buckle


Remove wire harness clip on the right side. This sends heat to the seat so it's attached to the bottom cushion. Then unplug harness from control unit.



Underneath front of seat. Held on by three plastic poles so press the right and left poles in a little bit and they'll pop out. Pull and center clip will come out.


The black trip hold downs will need to be remove from the rear and front sides and the cushion should now come off. The manual thigh adjustment I didn't know how to take off but I didn't need to. The bottom seat just clips into the thigh adjustment so just look underneath and pry it off. Swap in your new cushion.


When putting your seat back in the car, I suggest removing the headrest and making the seat flat as possible in the adjustments, along with tilting the backrest forward. Make the seat tracks flush with the rear of the seat (by sitting in the seat and pushing back) so it doesn't get caught on your door sill. This is all easy with a manual seat so not sure how you power seat owners will do all this--moving the seat back forward and backward was needed for me during the seat removal. If you're looking to replace your heated seat, make sure the replacement cushion is also heated! I didn't realize that after the fact and tried retrofitting the heat coils from my old cushion to the new one and it was unsuccessful. However, the seat back is still heated so I din't lose out on much. Having a non ripped seat is worth it over using heat few minutes a year. Good luck.

[aarvin2]

Thank you very much mate, I was looking for this everywhere!!

[polo 1992]

Hi, not sure if you know the answer but if I have powered heated seats and I bought replacement manual heated seats could I swap just the seats while losing the manual components and swapping with the powered components? Thank you
Great post btw