How To Repair Your Seat Base.

[skitzone80b]

Hey guys, went round a corner and almost put my face into the window when my seat base broke two days ago. The wreckers wanted $150 for a base and I knew it'd just break again. I've never done anything with seats and honestly thought you'd need to restitch the cloth if I took it off. After being told I didn't it was on!

Well this was the damage

So got the oxy out got her nice n warm n beat the original steal back into shape and welded it up

So then made up a template to reinforce it all with

Then cut the steal out, heated it with an oxy and bent it all into shape

Drilled a hole in and then placed it over top of the area, tacked it in a few places heated it up and beat it into shape.

Then after it was all done we seam welded it, heated it up and then doused it in water so it shrunk over it.

Add some primer and it looks like this

So their ya go, if you want it done properly this is how you do it. I called up a lot of wreckers and private wrecks who laughed when I asked for a drivers seat apparently it's a very common problem but couldn't find any repaird for it on the net. Now I know that not everyone owns a mig n oxy so if you need this done in perth have a word n might be able to sort something out for around the price of a used seat base...

[freeze_dk]

The *beep* at the panel beaters my car was at broke mine.. They denied it so insurance wouldn't cover it. Took it to motorcraft in coburg where they do trimming and were gonna charge me 260 to do what you just posted

[skitzone80b]

In all honesty though man $260's cheapers then I expected a shop to charge cause it honestly took us 4 hours or so and most shops charge up around the $100 an hour mark. It did take a fair bit of work to remove the seat remove all the trim try and get it back into shape as much as possible and then make all the reinforcement. Welding it on was the quickest bit lol.

[ratter]

to be fair Freeze, how can you blame them for something that is a common problem? It's just unfortunate that it happened while the car was in their posession, but it would have been something that had been occuring for quite a time.

If the guy weighed 180 kg or something and it was not a common issue, I could understand pointing the finger.

We normally use a new seat base and reinforce that when doing the repairs

[skitzone80b]

So Ratter the shop does this fairly often? I know I should have used a new seat base but it's my daily did I go about tit he right way or would you have changed a couple of things?

[ratter]

we have done possibly 6 or so, so not something we see every week, but have reported quite a few broken ones that owners do not want to fix

[freeze_dk]

I understand mick.. They were careless With all 3 cars we took there, out of all 3 mine was the only one that didn't get fixed because of ther f*ck up

Are the cars manual or auto.? All the autos I've been in are fine, just the manual ones that are broken

Edited 15/03/13 03:17 AM by freeze_dk

[ratter]

can't give exact breakdown But I know at least 3 of them were auto's, 1 was a 400 rwkw car with a driver that weighed possibly 130+, another was a bog stock XR6 on gas and a girl that weighed possibly 60 kg