I want to fix my driver seat bolster before the leather wears through. Appears the foam padding underneath the leather has deteriorated. See photo below. Anyone repaired this before on the XF and have any tips?

 

Just to follow up on this. I did repair it. Turns out the seat bolster foam squab was torn. The inner 2-3 inches has a steel backing plate, but the outer 3-4 inches has no support structure and is just dense foam rubber and it was torn right along the edge of the backing plate. In the picture below, what you are seeing is the first coat of the dark tan contact cement that I applied to the tear (its not aligned and glued at this point in the process but the dark color kind of highlights where the foam was torn). Incidentally, that hole in the white fabric you are looking through is not a tear, but rather, that appears to be part of the airbag system to help direct which way the airbag goes when it inflates. My first thought was just cut it for access and then sew it back but after studying, figured why it was there and quite conveniently, I was able to use that hole to work through. Don't cut that white nylon material.


To glue the foam, I used a contact adhesive and brushed it into the tear with a disposable acid brush. I had to wedge some plugs into the tear in the foam to hold it open while I applied the glue to both sides and let it dry. Once dry, I brushed in a third coat on one side only, removed my plugs and then carefully aligned the foam and stuck it back together.

At that point I thought I was done, but when I stretched the leather back over, there was some loose, baggyness, possibly from being stretched in the removal or maybe just from the foam rubber having broken down over time a bit. It happens. So I made a pattern for some 1/2 inch batting, peeled the leather back again and stuffed it in. For those not familiar with upholstery tricks, like stuffing a sofa cushion, the way you do it is to put the foam in a plastic bag, use your vacuum to suction it down to nothing, slide it in, release the air and it expands to fill the cavity. Then the plastic bag can be torn open and removed. It's easy.




All back together and with the exception of a little surface wear, looks like new again.


I didn't have to pull the seat out of the car, but I did have to unbolt it from the floor to get the side trims off to be able to access the releases to get the back off. There's instructions how to do that in another thread about replacing the seat ventilation filters.

Hope this helps someone else keep their XF interior looking good. After all, it was the Porfolio interior that really sold me on this car.

 

That looks like a really good repair
Well done!

 

nice

 

Good work.

On many other Jaguar models, it's the leather that goes and a regular topic across the model forums is recolouring with leather dye. This is a first for repairing the foam.

Graham

 

Turns out what you see in that picture in the initial post was the outline of the steel support structure as the foam around it had torn away. I didn't know what it was before I took it apart, but I was concerned that if I didn't do something, if I continued to drive the car as it was, that the leather would wear through along that hard edge much faster than typical side bolster wear. I think what happened was I probably at some point put my hand on that side bolster to support myself while getting in or out of the car on my dad's driveway which has a rather steep slope which makes it hard to get in and out of the car. I finally started to reverse into the driveway when I go to visit. Anyway, I'd advise now that everyone else with these seats avoid putting too much weight on those bolsters as they're not designed to take it. And I'm rather small compared to most American men, so y'all be careful with these bolsters.