‘80 Series Seat Repair

[Tools R Us]

The 80 series driver seats have a design weakness that causes the outside bolster to flatten. It gets worse with a lift, you tend to slide out of the truck more on the bolster, but it is a pretty easy fix.

Remove the seat, four 14mm bolts and unplug the harness. Then remove the lower pad assembly, four 12mm bolts and unplug the switch harness. Remove the switch handles and the switch cover pops off. To remove the pad and upholstery, there are some hog rings and fold over tabs. I had a seam failing, so completely removed the upholstery from the pad, this was the biggest pain of the job and is normally unnecessary, just fold the upholstery back to do the work.

In these pix you can see where the wire rod supports for the switch panel have cut into the foam. Toyota lined the back of the foam with felt cloth to support it, but it stopped right where the wires are, allowing them to cut into the foam.

 

[Tools R Us]

Found some foam that is about the same density, stopped an upholstery supply store for some foam contact cement. Using a sharp, serrated bread knife cut out the damaged pad foam and new blocks foam to fit the holes. Sprayed the contact cement on the mating surfaces and stuck them in. Then carved it to shape.

The contact cement is sticky stuff, once it touches it’s there! If you try to pull it apart the foam it rips, the glue joint holds solid.

 

[Tools R Us]

Seeing the weakness in the seat design I wanted to make some extra support. So carved some foam to fit in the voids around the wire supports, glued them in, then carved the top to fit the pad. On the pad side, cut up a t-shirt and glued pieces of the fabric to the foam to keep it from pulling apart, in some places used several layers.

 

[Tools R Us]

I meant to shoot a bunch of pix of putting the seat together, etc, but about the time that the foam was cut I started getting panicked phone calls from Spike, his wife, friends, etc. Something about being stuck in the mud and needing help! So the focus shifted to just getting it back together.

It would have been easier if I would have bought a hog ring kit. I opened them up to remove and bent them back to install, the kit is cheap and it’s much easier to cut them off and install new ones with the proper pliers.

Spent most of the next day driving and the difference was very noticeable, having a bolster to rest your left leg on again makes the ride much more comfortable!

 

[musthave]

Great write up as always. Miss your contributions.

 

[duece71]

Yep, I have this very “foam sag” on the drivers cloth seat. Thank you for the detailed pictures.