Bron; http://interior.mbzarticles.org/seats/seats/

Introduction

This is a very general article that deals in the broad strokes of restoration of Mercedes car seats. First off, the seats in your MB are not like the seats in, say, a Chevy they're much better engineered than that. Think of a big expensive piece of leather furniture and you'd be closer.

There's two major component parts to the seat: the surface (leather, MB-Tex or cloth) and the guts. Let's look at them first.

The seat box

There's a spring box first of all, and over time, especially with more force on them than less, they sag. The other problem that can happen is the springs in the spring box break. A cheap fix is to swap the drivers and passengers seat spring boxes. You have a couple of options here. If you can find, through conventional furniture channels, the springs themselves you can graft them in and repair yours, or you *might* luck out and find a good used one. Any low milage part owned by a skinny guy will work. Never buy a seat box from a 500 pounds man, you can bet he's changing them every year. They are not cheap new - not over priced really, they are well built and do last a long time. How do you know if yours is sagging? Sit in all the seats then sit in the drivers seat last. Did it feel any different? No? Then yours is ok.

Pads

On top of the spring box are a set of pads. These can be made of various things depending on the age of your car. Horsehair pads and a foam pad on top and not uncommon in earlier cars. There's no cheap fix to renew these pads. Maybe you can find good used ones but you're chances are probably as great at finding a good used shock absorber, brake fluid or a fan belt. So, you'll probably need to get new ones. They aren't cheap (but don't worry, it's not like you're buying Rolls Royce or Volvo parts or something).

Seat Coverings

That stuff was easy and (comparatively) cheap. Now we get to the covering material. This can be any number of different kinds of leather. MB's own incredibly durable "Taxi leather" "MB-Tex" vinyl (often advertised as leather by people that a) don't know better and b) can't tell the difference) and cloth: woven or velour, with to without MB-Tex inserts. Mostly without. Some cars seldom had Tex (US 126 cars) some cars seldom had leather (euro versions of inexpensive models) but any Mercedes could have cloth, text or leather. Leather cracks, seats may get ripped and the drivers seat bolster gets worn in almost every Mercedes:

Typically worn Mercedes drivers seat

If it's cloth, clean it with any brand of automotive upholstery cleaner. If there's rip or tear it can be repaired easily by any automotive upholstery repair shop. New seat covers are available sometimes. Getting good second hand cloth seat covers is dicey but doable.

MB-Tex is what most MB's came with prior to about 1980. The stuff was just everywhere - and for good reason. This ain't the vinyl from your fathers Oldsmobile, it's increadably durable, long lasting and soft stuff. Second hand parts are common (although almost nobody will sell you just a used seat cover as they can't really sell what's left once they remove the cover. You end up having to pay for a seat and telling them to just ship the cover) and reasonable. I've never heard of anybody doing any repairs to worn Tex (it's that durable, I've just never seen any that ever wore out) but it's just vinyl so it should be easy and cheap to fix.

Leather

Ah yes. Cloth lasts a long time. Tex seems to last forever. MB's with flawless leather are either new or very rare. But you have some options:

Repair: Consensus seems to be that Leatherique is not only the undisputed winner, but the only thing that actually works. Follow the directions on their site TO THE LETTER. As long as your seats aren't shredded to bits you can probably save them. If they're merely worn, cracked, ripped or torn or dried out then Leatherique can save them - and if you'd used it in the first place your seats would never have got cracked and worn and ripped and dried out. End of Sermon.

Replacement - used: Used good leather seat covers for an older Benz? Pardon me while I giggle uncontrollably. You might find some but don't count on it. New: Here is where you have the most options. You can order them from Mercedes and there's no question they'll be the right color and leather. Or, you can order from aftermarket suppliers who such as World Upholstery or GAHH who specialize in replacement Mercedes (and other) leather seat covers. They will be cheaper and in many cases are indistinguishable from what you'd get from MB. Leather is leather and MB doesn't own all the cows! There are a number of these after market places and experience has been mixed with some of them with a few folks swearing by one place and a couple swearing at them. Overall, experiences have been positive however. Whatever you do, when you get your leather back into shape, use Leatherique on it. You can ask about it on the mailing lists here but only do that if you're prepared to get a lot of email from people extolling it's virtues!

Mercedes used many different kinds of leather with different kinds of dyes and different finishes. Clearly the nicest was used on the M100 600's and 111 cabriolet's, this is made by Roser and sadly the factory is no more. What's left is what's left and best of luck finding it. Be sure to get samples of any potential leather replacement so you get a good match for texture, suppleness, color and so forth.

If you can't find the exact replacement leather then get as close as you can to the original texture and feel and worry about the color later. In some cases you simply won't be able to find the original color - for example look at the blue color #206 used on cars in 1966 - that color was out of use by 1968 and may have only been used that one year. You very likely will never find any. But, color is easy to fix, Leatherique makes a series if dyes that will in fact turn a black seat white and is color fast, and each dye is custom matched at no extra charge. If you want the original color cut a small out of the way piece from the underside - it will be the original color - and send it to the leatherique folks and they will make you a dead on match. Dying the leather is a very striaghtforward process albeit time consuming, but the more effort you put into it the better the results will be and it's not hard at all to be able to make seats that look indistinguishable from factory new.

You absolutely will need a pair of hog ring (not hog nose!) pliers and some hog rings. Don't even thing about ringing the covers to the frame without them. They're about $10 in a farm store or coop and a bag of hog rings may cost you a dollar.

Part Numbers
Some of these part numbers can be hard to find. I'd be happy to post any you send me here:

• 1985 300 CD Seat box: 123 910 24 50

Suppliers

• Gahh Leathers
  www.gahhinc.com

• World Upholstery
  www.worlduph.com

• Don't forget about eBay too.

Richard Sexton,
[e-mail]

20. Restoring Mercedes Seats
General Principles

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