Recaro Seats - 77e21.info

I picked up a set of Recaro sport seats from a '83 320i sport model over the summer. They were in average shape based on what I have seen on ebay. The driver's seats of course had the worst wear with the common problems with the left bolsters. This is the seat I'm showing in the picture above and in the "before" picture below. The good news was that they were complete and all mechanisms worked. The driver's side recline knob was broken but I was able to find a replacement.

I decided I wanted to see if I could really restore these seats to like new condition. The interior of my car is about a 9.5 out of 10 and I didn't want to just slap these worn out seats of the wrong color into my car. This page and the project page links to the left document my entire process of restoring these seats to the condition shown in the "after" picture above.

I started by completely disassembling the driver's seat to understand what I would need to do the restoration. I figured the seat in the worst shape would show me what I was really looking at to do this. I knew I needed to recover the seats but I found out that the bolster foam on the left side of the seat was torn up pretty badly.

To make these seats as nice as I wanted I needed to find a way to replace the bolster foam on at least the left side of my driver's seat. I spent quite a while researching sources of new foam. The original foam bolsters have not been available from Recaro for years. I did find a substitute that will get me close.

Recaro still provides bolster foam for some of its more modern seats. I read on a VW forum about Captial Seating in the U.K. which sells bolster foam. The closest match I was able to find is:

These pieces are for the seats used in the Ford Escort Turbo RS and Capri and are not exact matches for the E21 so some modification will be required. I ordered a full set of 6 pieces to redo both seats. The foam replacement page linked on the left details this work. I ultimately decided not to use the outer backrest foam pieces. Upon initial inspection, these pieces looked almost identical to the originals. I discovered several problems with them once I attempted to fit the covers over them. The shape of the backrest bolsters was all wrong for the E21 seats. So this was one of the more significant mistakes I made on this project.

I decided to go with all vinyl covers with embossed centers. I ordered the covers from GAHH and they turned out great. Take a look at the assembly page for more information on the covers and the seat reassembly. I decided that color match was more important to me than the cloth centers. I have been sitting on the all-vinyl "comfort" seats for years anyways.

		Recaro Seat Restoration

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