Upholstery Repair, seats, foam rubber, leather dye

[fahrvegnugen at cox.net (David Utley)]

> 
> From: Chris <vze28h54@verizon.net>
> Date: 2004/08/02 Mon PM 05:41:02 EDT
> To: scirocco-l@scirocco.org>
> Subject: Upholstery Repair, seats,  foam rubber, leather dye
> 
> For those of you who have repaired your seats:
> 
> 1.  Did you have to use OEM foam rubber? (I'm thinking specifically about 
> the side bolsters. The OEMs are molded into shape.  I had the foam in one 
> bolster replaced by a shop and they said they would use a more dense foam. 
> This led me to believe that a generic block of foam was used and perhaps 
> only needed to be roughly shaped in order to work.)

I used OE.  If it is an 84.5 and later, it should be available.  Contact me directly with your year and I will confirm one way or another...  BTW, one way to make the OE foam last longer---  Take sheet metal and weld it to the bars that hold the bolster in place.  Hammer it over the top edge to that there are no sharp edges, and weld the back edge to the frame.  The bolsters destroy themselves because they get pinched.  If the metal is there, this will not happen.  I am in the process of doing this with a set of Recaros.  I will let you know how it turns out...
> 
> 2.  If  OEM foam should be used (and I don't think the foam for our cars is 
> still available from VW) did you find foam parts from later year VWs (or 
> other cars) that could be substituted (perhaps with some reshaping)?

I would doubt that anything other than a VW would fit directly.  Recaro makes seats for other manufacturers, but it seems to me that they all look slightly different, I am sure to differentiate the brands overall look to the original customer (My .02)...


No help on the other stuff, but hopefully that will help...

Cheers,
  David


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