I promised someone I'd share pictures of a W126 front seat spring but I deleted his direct email message so I don't know where to send the pictures. The pictures might be helpful to others so I'll share the link to the pictures. The pictures are available at http://photos.yahoo.com/tabijan in the SDL front seat album. Help yourself to the pictures in the other albums.

Here's a walkthrough of the pictures -

1) the bottom edge of the upholstery is folded over in a hem with a cardboard stiffener. This hem is held in a channel than runs along the periphery of the seat base. The front and sides are one stretch, the back is a separate stretch. To release the upholstery, it's just a matter of putting weight on the seat to provide enough slack in the upholstery to slide the hem down and off the seat base.

2) You can kind of follow the hemline around the seat. The white lining holds a pad to the leather. At the sides and forward edge of the pleats there are metal rods which hogrings hook to hold the upholstery to the horsehair pad. There are also a couple dozen staples holding a skirt of the white lining to the horsehair pad.

3) Sorry about the 70s photo angle. The point of this picture is to show that you can probably service the seat spring without removing the seat. For people like me who can't press their own weight, that's a big deal.

4) It's easier to see in this picture the upper outer edge of the seat spring. The horsehair pad slips onto this upper outer edge. The horsehair pad slides on from the front. The upholstery is held in place by hooking to the rear edge of the seat base. The horsehair pad itself is not retained in the rear.

5 & 6) This is the bottom of the horsehair pad made by Continental Gumiwerks or something like that. You can see the folds that hold onto the seat spring upper outer edge.

I can't tell how good this horsehair pad is. It's certainly intact. The pad in my 450SEL was more like what's at the bottom of a box of shredded wheat. But this pad is a little lacking in springiness. It's flexible but not cushy. Before springing (pun intended) for new pads, I'll see about stuffing some high density foam between the horsehair pad and the upholstery. Hopefully I can find the kind of foam those TushCush things (http://www.sitincomfort.com/cocusesucu.html) are made of.

If anyone cares to work the pics so they fit the upload limits of this forum, be my guest. I'm tired of futzing with it.

Sixto
95 S420
87 300SDL