E30 Zone

Hello all,

Both my front (leather) seats have burst stitching, and I'd like to get them fixed before it gets any worse. I was wondering if they're easy to remove (just need to remove the seat base itself, the backrest is fine) so I can get them done while I'm servicing the engine.

Anyone done this? Do I need to remove the seat complete off the body?

Cheers, Eddie

You'll have to take it of the body alright and put it on a bench, its fairly straight forward after that.

The bit that's not immediately obvious is how to remove the back of the seat first: Two small self tappers right at the base of the back, unhook the cables for the tilt if two door seats, then find two largish cross head screws two thirds of the way down each side, often hidden by a flap of material. Unscrew both of these, then the whole back lifts off of the tapered arms.
Very important that these two screws don't work loose after you refit them, as this leads to a twisted seat frame, followed by a broken seat frame, which is then a MOT test failure.

http://www.esatclear.ie/~bpurcell/318isseat.html
this may help

Thanks fellas,

That's just what I needed, toby. Thanks!

Brian, my driver's seat did just that, for some reason it's been broken and welded back together. Unfortunately it wasn't put together very carefully, so the backrest ended up being welded in such a way that it doesn't come forward as much as I'd like it to, and the backrest adjustment lever ended up so high that someone not used to it will press it with their hip when getting into the seat, and then tumble backwards. Not nice!

Mine being a Touring, I'm assuming only 4-door seats are identical, right? All others will have tilting mechanisms. Is there any difference between pre- and post-facelift seats? I'll be sourcing a decent frame to swap over as soon as I can, so it's good to know what fits.

Cheers, Eddie