Disassembling Front Seats

[bmwm3owner]

I am in the process of re-dying the leather on my front seats, using the German Black color from Leatherique. I managed to remove the seats and disassemble the top half from the bottom half, mostly with ease. Because I am anal, I would like to remove the bolsters from the seats but I do not want to go thru extreme hell to do so. I did a search on s14.net and did find one write up on Car Art Unlimited, but some photos would be great.

Anyone have any idea where to find a write-up with illustrations on how to disassemble the seats? My motivation is to clean the leather thoroughly, replace any damaged parts and make sure that the leather dye gets in all places.

Any help would be great.

Also, has anyone installed seat heaters after the fact? Any place to get a kit? Thanks

Sash K

[BeastPower]

There are a bunch of sources on the Net that sell heat seater kits. You may also be able to source and retrofit original BMW ones that came with other e30 models (ask Don McAdams).

Cheers, Daniel.

[OnrailsM3]

Merry Christmas
http://www.mwerks.com/artman/publish...ter_1188.shtml

[EN88M3]

I am in the process of doing the same exact thing using the Leatherique also. bmwm3owner let us know how urs comes out. thanks!

[bmwm3owner]

Will do. I am at the first step. I am doing one seat at a time, but since I am not driving the car for the winter, I have quite a bit of time. Please keep me posted on your progress with the re-dye as well.

Sash K

[kmarei]

i also need to know
i just bought 4 seat shocks from ebay that i need to change
and i was thinking of buying a passenger seat in black and taking the leather off and putting it on my driver side
easier than trying to restore it and having any differences in shade etc

[CourtM3]

putting the pass side on the drivers side is quick and would work

[kmarei]

good news
i might just get a pair that has a good passenger side and swap with my driver
so i end up with 2 great seats and sell the other ones
my driver is not too bad but would prefer to have 2 great seats as i am restoring my M3

[Gator18]

Speaking of taking the seats apart. . .

Does any one experience with a seat wobbling? With the seat pushed all the way up or all the way back, I have movement between the rails (the piece that gets bolted down and the piece that slides).

The problem is that I also get movement of the seat back, front to back.

Any one think its just the rails, or do i need to try to take the whole seat apart?

I tried searching but didn't find the answers I was looking for.

Thanks.

[Gator18]

Bump?

Anyone??

[TooTall]

Yes, my drivers seat wobbles, actually rocks back and forth slightly. I don't know exactly why and I hope to have time to take it out and disassemble it over the holiday. Actually it has a few problems, including a broken frame and worn bolsters. So, we'll see.


Kurt O.

[m3pat2]

The seat wobbling forward and back is usually caused by a broken weld. There is a round bar that goes across the front bottom of the seat, part of the mechanism which allows you to tilt the front of the seat up.

You'll have to take the seat out to see it and then get a muffler shop to put a weld bead on it.

[nbrown]

swap passenger seat for driver's side

good news
i might just get a pair that has a good passenger side and swap with my driver
so i end up with 2 great seats and sell the other ones
my driver is not too bad but would prefer to have 2 great seats as i am restoring my M3

Has anyone done this type of swap?

How difficult is it to exchange only the upholstery pieces of a passenger seat with the driver so that the levers and handles would be correct on the driver's side?

Thanks for any info on this.

[M3Hammer]

The following site has a nice write-up on seat repair/dis-assembly and addresses
some common problems:

http://www.esatclear.ie/~bpurcell/318isseat.html#top

Cheers.

[nbrown]

question:

Great help M3HAMMER, I'll be needing that.

The passenger seats I've seen for sale look like they are in pretty good shape. It seems like it would be possible to trade the good bolsters from one for the bad ones on my driver's side. Are these parts interchageable?

Thanks