W124 seat separate from motors?
 

If I ever find a dark blue driver's seat for my '87 300D in the local junkyard, can I separate the seat from the motors without a lot of work? I suspect that they will ask a lot more for a power seat (that may or may not work) that for just the seat itself without the power tracks. I've never had the front seats out of a 124, don't know how they are assembled.

My seat works fine but has an ugly repaired tear in the seat bottom that is hard to hide unless I buy an expensive set of sheepskins. I have a piece of vinyl glued over the damaged spot and painted with SEM "Shadow Blue." It hides it as well as is possible but is still embarrassing.

Jeremy

It isn't too hard to work on them. I have a full spare set of seats for my wagon that I have been fixing up. You could also get just the seat sans back and electrics. It all comes apart pretty easily.

I'm curious too, I have a perfect blue-tex '88 driver's seat, but as it is too heavy to ship I'll probably end up scrapping it. How hard would it be to remove the seat "cover" and ship it?

It depends what your definition of too much work is. When I redid my seats, I pulled them from the car. IIRC there are 6 bolts, 3 on each side that hold it on to the power section. I have the Mercede$$ource book on seat repair if you want to borrow it, let me know. I may still have your address in an old email.

EDIT: You only need the MB tex. That comes off pretty easy. It is just crimped into a metal edge in the base. If you sit in the seat you can compress it enough to pull it out. Once you get all four outside edges up you will need to reach under and cut or bend open some hog ties. Does that make sense?

Chris

Not very hard. Is the seat out of the car already? If you guys haven't had the bottom pads off than you don't have the foam pads in there for support. You will want them. If you switched in a later model seat, you probably have them.

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/c...hdamage026.jpg

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/c...hdamage027.jpg

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/c...hdamage028.jpg

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/c...hdamage029.jpg

"Too much work" is a function of location. At home in the garage with all my tools, no problem. Sweating out in the dirt and gravel of Pick and Pull with a limited tool set is another matter. It does sound like all I need is the MB-Tex seat bottom. Thanks for the advice.

My seats are probably the original and the padding is pretty squashed. I don't find the seats uncomfortable but I and others have noted that when you siot down you seem to sink and sink and sink. Replacing the padding sounds like a good idea. I'd be happy to buy babymog's seat cover and the pad underneath it. I agree that the whole seat is expensive to ship, I shipped a (manual) 123 seat once and it was a pain -- big box, Greyhound, about $60 two years ago.

Jeremy

I bought the whole set from Potomac German in FL and They crated all the seats into one very large box and shipped it across the country via common carrier. It wasn't all that expensive if I recall correctly. I had never thought to take the seat off of the rails in place. There are four bolts that attach the seat rails to the vehicle and those are easy enough to get out. The MBTex just unclips as noted although and you do have to watch those ties that hold the ribs in the seat cover down.

I bought new seat pads for my seats along with the retrofit foam side bolsters. I also bought a third party seat heater kit. if your springs aren't broken then replacing the pads can almost make up for the 20 years of butts.

Jeremy, the seats aren`t all that expensive. I just bought both front seats and the rear seat out of a 87 560SEL from SJ PNP. 136,000 miles, black on black. perfect leather interior w/0 any signs of wear or cracks.
front seat out the door $47.46 each with the seat motors.

I removed the rear seat cover and pad $20.00 plus tax etc.
I did this at PNP, took about 10 min to remove it.

As far as shipping goes, it depends on weight, but also on the size of the box. I shipped a seat to DAW-TWO last year, and think it was $60.00. thinking back on it, next time I ship one I`ll seperate the back from the bottom so the box is smaller.

If the seat spring box has broken springs or tired ones, the pass seat spring box will swap over. I did this on my 85 123.

Charlie

The passenger seat base cover and seat back will swap out to the driver's seat as well. You just need to cut a hole for the arm rest.

OK, so now I gotta find a set of blue seats in Windsor P&P or someone to sell me a driver's bottom MB-Tex and pad.

Or a passenger side MBtex pad. The only difference in the driver and passenger seats is the memory feature. There are extra controls to handle that.

Hey that can be your next electronic wizardry. Figuring out the wiring from the switch to the seat. I'm pretty sure the 126 has the memory seat in both positions, so it should be do able.

Before you change the cover order 2 foam cushions for additional side support. 124 910 16 75

Item Number..... MSRP..... Price
1249101675...... $9.25..... $6.32

Seats and tracks - Seat components - Adapter
Adapter 1987 - 1995

The memory seat wiring is massive but it should be possible to adapt a driver memory seat to a passenger seat for early 124s. Didn't the later ones have memory on both seats?

As for the seat covers, it looks like there are several options that I didn't know about. I'll just have to wait to see what shows up first.

The trouble will be working on a seat at the PYP if you can't get power to it. You have to slide the seat aft to get to the very tight screws that go up into the seat at the front corners. Hopefully you can get to the 4 bolts attaching the seat to the car and there's room to open the door enough to get the seat out.

I don't see fry catchers on your seats. If you find seats without fry catchers or can pry them out of the way, you should be able to release the seat bottom tex from the seat frame then work on the unseen side to release the tex with pad from the seat frame. Use bolt cutters on the springs if you don't feel like wrestling hog rings.

I got a set of 90-up seats for $230 and haven't looked back. You should decide if new pads on -89 seats are more comfortable than used 90-up seats before rejuvenating your seats.

Sixto
87 300D

Thanks, Sixto. BTW, what is a "fry catcher?"

It's a strip of plastic lined with felt that attaches to the inboard edge of the seat bottom. Maybe it's a feature of leather seats.

Driver side in car viewed from driver seat -

http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/IMG_8574.jpg

Passenger side out of car viewed from ahead of the passenger seat -

http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/IMG_8575.jpg

Sixto
87 300D