The Camaro I purchased last August has been coming along great, but the interior was still lacking quite a lot.

I ended up doing a lot of reading and decided to go with some 4th gen seats mainly due to availability and condition (decent quality 3rd gen seats are not easy to come by in AZ.)

The issue I had with 4th gen seats (pretty much all seat for that matter) was that all the driver's side seats I came across were torn and had damaged foam. the rear and passenger seats were all in pretty good condition.

I did some more research and read that you CAN replace the foam and upholstery from the passenger to driver side with very minimal modification.

This post will go over the basic of how to do that.

First things first, if you are going to do this, you will obviously need both the driver's side seat AND a SPARE passenger seat (assuming you already have one good passenger seat.)

You will need to disassemble both seats which is very easy to do.

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How to start

First start off by taking the track off both seats. If i recall correctly, its around 13-14mm bolt, and each track has two bolts. Just adjust the rails on the tracks to get to the bolts and take them off.

Once the tracks are off, you can disassemble the top and bottom of the seats.

To do this, take off the plastic cover that houses the seat arm handle that adjusts the tilt of the seat. There are two phillips head screws holding it on. Once this is off, you can start unbolting the back from the bottom. The side with the adjusting arm is held on by two bolts (13 or 14mm again, same as the tracks), and the oppositie side is held on by a larger star bolt (sorry don't know what size, its kinda big.)

Once those three bolts are taken off, the top comes off:


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Bottom portion of the seat

With the top and bottom separated, you can take off the upholstery. I started with the bottom portion. The bottom upholstery is held in place by four plastic "clip" type things that clip on the bottom of the frame. The fabric is also held in place by the most powerful velcro you'll ever come across on the foam itself. To get the plastic clips out, take a thin long screwdriver and pry it in the corners and carefully pop out the clips.

In this picture, you can see the white clips from the old upholstery:


In this picture, you can see where the velcro developed by Zues himself holds the upholstery in place on the top on the good seat cushion I was using:


With the upholstery off, you can directly take the foam out. It may be a little stuck due to heat/moisture getting it stuck to the frame, but it should come right off with little to no effort:



If you want to, you can replace the foam spring cushion thing. The drivers side one was damage, and the passenger side one was good so I swapped them:


That piece above is held in by two springs that keep the plastic bar at the bottom in two clips. It prys out and installs pretty easily.

Installing the seat cushion is reverse of removal:


Make sure to align the upholstery to the foam before pressing down the velcro.

You DO have to put the passenger side upholstery (and foam if desired) on the DRIVER's side frame. This is because the frame on the drivers side has opposite holes where the adjusting arm bracket goes. I suppose you could tap out holes on the passenger side frame, but taking the foam out and putting it back in takes much less time then figuring the bolt size and tapping holes etc. Once the new upholstery is on the driver's side frame, you will have to feel where the mounting holes are and take a knife/screwdriver and make some holes for where the bolts go.

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Upper portion of the seat

For the upper part of the seat, the bottom of the lip is held together by another one of those plastic clips, except the upholstery clips to itself. You can pry the two plastic clips apart from each other with a screwdriver.

The upholstery is also help on by velcro, so you'll have to shove your hand up the seat to get it off the velcro before pulling it off.

Another thing to be careful of when taking the top upholstery off is the back handle/lever that folds the seat forward. It SHOULD fit through the opening in the fabric it is protruding from, but it's a tight fit.

Here you can see the upholstery unclipped from itself and the black lever you have to get the fabric around:


Here is the seat with the fabric off:


To take off the foam from the frame for the top part of the seat, there is a little clip that holds it to the bottom:


It just pops right out and the rest of the seat comes right off.



The passanger side foam I had was still a little damaged so I used some spray foam as a bandaid:


Once the good foam is on the driver's side frame, you can pull the upholstery over the top.

 

Continued

This part is a little more tricky because you have to make sure it's aligned properly. It's not hard really, but you may have to put your hand up the front side to get it unstuck from the velcro a few times before you get it positioned right. Once the cushion is positioned right, you can feel where that little black lever is and cut a small opening for it to shove right through. If you feel really ambitious, you can sew up the opening on the other side where the lever was sickout out of, but its not noticeable and doesn't pose a stress point on the fabric so I left it how it is.

Here is the "new" driver side seat:


Here are the before pictures of my car:

(fancy I know)


(the previous owner took great care of the interior)

And here's the after:


The seats are still a little dirty because they came from a junk yard, but the upholstery is in great shape and the fabric still feels strong. I know it will clean up nice and they sure look much better than the old seats.

The good news is I got the rear bench seats, two passenger seats, and a driver side seat for $105.

Now I know if I buy the nice vinyl/leather seat covers from hawks it will be pretty easy.

Let me know if there are any questions and hopefully this can help someone who is thinking about doing this!

 

Looks great ...nice work .

 

I did the same swap of a 4th gen passenger seat onto the drivers side. I used an iron-on patch on the inside to fix the slot that the lever you came out of.

Lon

 

I forgot about those iron on patches. I may try to use one of those. I am going to be hand stitching a new shift boot lever and e-brake handle so maybe I'll just stitch that up too. However the iron on patch seems pretty easy.