Well, I'm off to the upholstery shop to inquire about seat reshaping

Great. More money out of pocket for another seat modification or perhaps no shop will want to alter the seat.

Just how narrow did Toyota think one's butt is supposed to be? And I'm not a really wide dude to begin with. How must this seat be for someone with broad hips? They must be largely sitting on those raised sides. Yuck.

Listen to this -

The driver's seat flat portion in butt area is only 11.5" wide ....

the total seat width is 19" in butt area....

That means 40% of the seat width where your butt sits is taken up by those stupid, obtrusive raised side bolsters or whatever you call them. Oh, that's right, they are supposed to hold one in the seat while agressively cornering. Wwwhat aggresive cornering?

I'll see if any upholsterer is willing to reshape or replace the seat bottom.

As for replacing the seat with some Recaro Touring seat, I'll bet they couldn't utilize the important seat position sensor on a Recaro. Then your steering wheel airbag would not know where you're at. Or maybe not, I don't know.

I'm getting tired of this stupid seat crap. If it comes to selling the car altogether, so be it. I own the car, I can go there.

 

Oooh, doubt I'll go to a motorcycle place to have a car seat worked on. I need a place that is expert at disassembling the lower part of the seat to work on it. Doesn't seem a motorcycle place would have a clue how to even take the trim off a Toyota car seat, which for the untrained is not easy.

There are many auto seat upholsterers in the SF Bay Area. I'll keep ya'll posted how it goes.

 

I sat in a 2007 Corolla seat yesterday and the seat bottom is much more agreeable to me. And I have reason to believe a Corolla seat foam pad will drop into the Prius frame (from Solar_Powered's work and .pdf document).

Toyota's price for a Corolla seat foam - $208

the seat bottom fabric - $380

pffffft. I'd just buy a used Corolla seat for parts or look on eBay. Wow does Toyota fleece people on parts.

 

I talked to a real nice dude named Darrell at King Kovers in Fremont. He said they could definitely shave some foam off the seat bottom and side bolster area. He showed me the carving tool and shaved some spare foam.

I would need to mount the seat in the car before they put the fabric back on. Not so easy to mount this modified seat, but I did it once so far. This is one option I will likely pursue.

Also I talked to Terry Griffin at Griffin Motorworks in Berkeley who's installed a number of Recaro seats in Prius'. Would cost about $1,700 total to have a good Recaro touring type seat installed. They can install the seat position sensor and it could all be put back to stock easily later on too. Pricey, but another option.

Of course another option would be to trade in or sell outright for another car, but that would result in, by far, the biggest loss of investment. My car with financing was about $30.8k. I'll bet trade in would be well under $20k and would be tough to sell much over $20k. Least attractive option.

 

I went to Sid's Custom Upholstery in Palo Alto, a place that has installed Recaro seats in a number of Gen2 Pri's.

I sat in a Recaro Specialist M demo seat, which a touring style and costs about $1k for just the seat. It's quite comfortable and the seat bottom is very long. You can extend a thigh support forward which comes within a few inches of back of my knees.

One downside is if you want to lay flat and nap in the car, cannot do it in the Recaro as it becomes split level when reclined. The stock Prius seat is pretty good for laying back on.

Very nice owner of the shop at Sid's, named Hugo and staff seemed upbeat. Good location.

I drove up to another place in a back alley, but backed out of there quickly.

 

Note - was working on headrest/foam last week and trying all seatbottom, seatback adjustments to get out of pulling this seat out, but ....

I've reached the end of my rope with this driver's seat ... again. I'll be pulling the used, remounted one out to take down to King Kover's in Fremont next week. The owner seemed very nice and they have an A rating with the BBB. The owner, Darrell showed me a foam shaving tool. It's like a mini hedge trimmer and shaves foam perfectly.

I'll be having some foam shaved off those raised sides of the seat. They are so irritating. Goal is to shape the seat bottom for me.

IMO, there is too much bulk in the raised sides of the seat bottom. Apparently they are there to keep one from sliding out of the seat, but why is there so much bulk of foam in the raised sides, which just constantly press into my thighs and hips. Feels terrible after a long day at work. This seat has really brought down any enjoyment of driving this car.

I'll let you know how it's going.

 

I need to have foam removed from the seat bottom cushion. I sit too high in the car already. I'm over 6'2" (really) with 36" legs. I don't like looking down on the dash so much and my sightline is pretty high up the windshield. If I slouch in the seat to get lower sightline, then my knees hit the steering wheel even if tilted all the way up. I'd be happy to sit 1" lower.

Even though my seat can slide back 2 1/2" extra from stock ...

there is no way to adjust the seat bottom lower (lack of vertical seat height adjuster / lowerer as found in the 2010 Prius, all Corollas, and many other Toyotas)

I've tried cutting foam with kitchen knives and that stuff just does not cut. I can lop it off with scissors, but cannot plane it. That 'mini hedge trimmer' is the tool the upholsterer has for really cutting foam. If the seat cushion gets jacked up, a replacement from Toyota will cost about $200 and I'll be back to where I started. Plus about $200 or more for the upholsterer. Not good.

Hindsight is 20/20, but had I known I'd be facing these difficult mods, I would have never bought this car. Not worth the hassle.

Tonight I drove the car with the original 'max slid back' position .... boggles my mind that I bought this car. What was I thinking? I am way too tall for this car! IMO, I'm about 6" too tall for this car.

------------
Adding foam to the headrest wasn't too hard - I got slabs of 3/4" , 7/8" and 1" dense foam and put them up into the headrest cover (which is not a really snug fit). I'm using the 3/4" foam IIRC.

 

Oh darn, dummy me ...

I just removed a gas pedal pad which was taking away 5/8" of legroom. Now I can stretch out my legs more and it feels good.

During the first seat mod attempt when a Mobility Systems moved the seat back about 4", I put the gas pedal pad on, layered with 1/2" of foam. I left it on by habit since then, even after finishing my own remount mod of the seat.

When needing more legroom, quite counterproductive to have 5/8" of gas pedal pad. At least I got rid of it.

 

I checked the used driver's seat into an upholstery shop for 'cutting down the seat bottom'.

Will take a few days. We'll see how it goes.

 

On the seat bottom, the raised sides just press like crazy into my hips and thighs. I'm kinda bony in the hips which does not help. That's my main complaint. The seat bottom is very annoying to me. Seatback is fine.

I also think the 2004 -09 seat foam is very dense. The foam on those raised sides has much more 'give' on the 2010 Prius I drove 120 miles yesterday.

I've got my original seat that came with the car installed and drove it around today. It's incredible - my guess is that the 2nd Gen Prius was really designed for people about 4'6" to about 5'8". The room is sooooo bad in front to me.

The 2010 seating is very good to me. I had no comfort problems driving 120 miles on the fabric seat. I still slide the seat all the way back on that one too. A Camry is one Toyota I would not slide the seat all the way back on. Bigger car though.

Typically we get big seats in big vehicles like a Sequoia, Tundra, but there goes the fuel economy driving those.

 

Here's an article about correct seating in a car -

Defensive Driving & Road Safety: Correct Seating & Driving Position

Says seat should be tilted to get thigh support. I've never got enough of that even with seat slid an extra 2" back. I noticed in the 2010 with height adjust almost full down, the seat bottom is tilted back quite a bit as it should be.

Says seat cushion should be close to back of knees. Not even close for me with the 09 seat.

Although many claim comfort in a Gen2, it's generally not a good seat. My nieces 1999 Honda Civic at least has height adjust and a decent seat bottom. It really stinks to have a hybrid that's reliable and zips really well, but the seat is so annoying.

I hope this upholstery work pans out.

 

Thank you. I hope so too. This is the 3rd modification on the seat, and I'm thinking it will be the last try.