So I bought some new seats from a mk3 to fit in my mk2. The fabric is super cool but one of the cables was snapped, the drivers side wasn't height adjustable, and the bolsters and springs were knckered where they'd been retrimmed before with this super cool fabric.

So my project yesterday was to strip the old seats and fit the outer fabric to my original seats. I thought I'd document it so if anyone else needs the info its here for you.

1. get the seats out of the car. There's just one bolt at the front of the seat, 10mm and allen key, undo this and you can slide the seat off the back of the runners and out of the car. simple.

2. remove the headrest of the seat. Theres a split pin type jobby that you need to push through and then prize out with a screwdriver, being careful not to damage the plastic. once the two pins are out you can pull the headrest out.

3. Theres 4 sharp tabs at the bottom back of the seat upright, you can prise these up to free off the cover.

in this one you can see how screwed the old seats were! they are filled with a wood fibre bonded with glue. This one hadn't faired well!

4. Slide the cover up (gently!)

5. the side lever is quite simple, prise the lever out (I levered it out with a tyre lever against a spanner so I didn't damage the plastic). Once the lever is out the frame will pop out too.

6. when you get the seat cover up a bit higher you will see that there's a horizontal rod on the front and back that threads through the cover, unhook these from the seat springs, being careful not to rip the fabric if you are reusing the covers)

7. to get the headrest sleeves out, you need to squeeze the four pins at the same time and push it out of the top (bit of a bitch to do but you'll get there

here's what it looks like when out if it helps figure out getting it out

and again

8. That's your top cover off, now to seperate the back and bottom. there's again split pin type things to get to on the hinges. I couldn't see any way of getting the plastic shroud off without breaking it so managed to get the clips out without removing them.

9. to get the base cover off, unhook this spring

10. and the tab on each side

11. and the push pin on the front. get a flat screwdriver right underneath, it will pop out and you can reuse it.

12. I found it easier to remove the rods threaded through the seat from the foam by pulling the foam off of the seat base but it depends on what condition it's in.

In true haynes style, refitting is the reverse of removal!

And this shows the layout of the cables. you can see the back of the lever in the top left. Oh, and you can see how a seat should look compared to the crap above!

Edited 7 June, 201115 yr by runforrestrun

I did this yesterday night. I ripped mine apart to have a look at the cable but it had been re-attached before with a terminal block. All i could think of was that the cable went across like pic 3 but there was none, so put it back together but i glued the seat adjuster up. Did wonder how the head rest came out but cba so slid the lining up.

nice guide

Mods maybe want to put it in the FAQ?

/\ Agreed this is about to come in really handy!

Is there a way to just swap the bases of the seats?

what? as in put the bottom of one seat onto another seat which has a damaged base. If so then yes it can be done.

Is there a way to just swap the bases of the seats?

already told you its possible