How to Repair a Hole In Your Car Seat

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By jamaclassics
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Repair a Hole In Your Car Seat

If you have the type of car seat that has a removable cover, you can patch a hole in the seat foam fairly easily. The hard part is getting the seat out of the car and the cover off of the seat. Some sockets and a ratchet, a screwdriver, and Torx bits or other common hand tools will get the seat out. Getting the cover off to fix the foam varies from model to model and year. Then there’s the problem of the hole in the cover. That’s another article.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Angle grinder & coarse disks
Sharp serrated knife
Junk yard foam
Spray adhesive or contact cement
Hand tools to remove seat

Step 1

Hole

Get some junkyard foam, or buy foam at the fabric store. Foam from another car seat will be the right density and thickness, whereas foam from the fabric store will have to be sculpted. Remove the seat from the car. Remove the seat cover in the damaged area. The seat cover will be held on with hog rings, plastic clips, wire listings or Velcro strips. Some seat covers (Chevy Cavalier, Dodge Caravan, Honda Fit) are glued on—you can’t remove these, so we won’t address those here.
Step 2

Most holes occur in the bottom, not the leanback, but you’ll probably have to separate the two seat sections to get the cover off. There are bolts on the sides, usually covered by a trim piece or plastic cover. Many seats have Torx bolts, so you’ll need bits from the tool section of your home center store to get them out. T-45 and T-55 are the most common Torx sizes used in seats. You may need a 10mm socket to seat the bits on a ratchet, if they don’t come with a drive base.
Step 3

After you’ve removed the cover, cut out the damaged section of the foam rubber with the knife, making it square or rectangular which will be easier to work with than an irregular shape. Do this freehand if you have a good eye, or draw cut lines with a ruler. Save the piece you cut out, we’re going to use it for a pattern.
Step 4

Put the piece with the hole you chopped out of your foam rubber on top of the replacement foam and trace around it. Cut this out with the knife. Trial fit this new piece in the opening in your foam. It can stick up above the rest of the foam, don’t worry. If it fits snugly, set it on some newspaper and spray all four sides with contact cement. (You can also use aerosol hi-tack glue) Spray the sides of the opening and let both pieces tack up according to the directions.
Step 5

Pop the new piece of foam rubber into the glued opening and line it up.
Allow the glue to cure. Use a coarse disk on the angle grinder to level and contour the insert to match the surrounding foam if it sticks up. Glue some headlining the same color as the seat covers over the repair area to disguise the repair, if you’re not replacing the damaged seat cover with a new one. Replace the cover, reassemble the seat and reinstall it in your car. For help with removing various types of covers, see my article on this.