[DavidPeab]

Suby's got over 166K miles on it and the seat is driving me (pun intended) crazy. I am at least the second owner of this car and the seat was not broken in by me, so the wires or springs where I sit are not covered in foam or padding anymore and make it difficult for long drives.

Any ideas on how to fix this? I recall seeing a thread about reupholstering or adding padding. How difficult or expensive would that be? The seats are cloth and not torn. Any brand of seat pad seem to work better than another? How about one that just sits on top of the seat?

Also, after owning this car for nearly two years I found the lumbar support yesterday! The back of the seat always felt sort of odd and I attributed it to being worn out like the seat cushion. I felt this slim plastic strip on the right side of my driver's seat and fiddled with it until it moved. I rotated it back and wow, I no longer had the kidney punch I usually get from lumbar support. I'm 6' 4" tall and 200 lbs. and lumbar support usually pushes into my back at the wrong point.

 

[Dave804]

Shouldn't be very difficult in my mind. Move it all the way back, undo two bolts, all the way forward undo two bolts. Tilt forward, unplug the harness if need be, then pull out the back door.

To make your life easier I'd get a set of hog ring pliers. Foam I don't have too much experience with. Getting good used foam from another seat would cost about $5 at the junk yards around here. The local military surplus store/general ******* enterprise stocks and sells custom cut foam rubber. Any biz that specializes in used office furniture probably has some too.

 

[DavidPeab]

I'll have a look to see how hard it might be to get the cloth off without destroying it. And to see if I think I can ever get it back on properly.

 

[Dave804]

My estimate, guaranteed inaccurate lol, is about $150-200 if you have a shop do it. I'd say under $50 for the foam, then maybe 2 hours labor. My sister had heaters installed on some car seats. $400, but that included 200 for the elements and all of the labor to wire the power and switches.

Never taken apart a subaru seat, but here's some good general info. Basically the stitching in the fabric holds it's shape to the foam. Hog rings clamp that down at all of the joints and pressure points, metal seat frame keeps the shape. Not too bad with a well recreated piece of foam.
Classic Car Upholstery 101: Re-Covering Seats - Part 2