Hi, I thought I would share some info. The air bladder in the side bolster on the back ( upright part) of my passenger seat stopped inflating. By removing the back of the seat, removing the headrest, unhooking the straps that hold the front of the seat on, there was just enough space to slide my hand in to assess that the bladder had split along one of its outer seams. I was able to remove the bladder from the cloth backing of the seat adapter assembly and extract it from the seat with out taking the seat apart. MB would would not supply an individual bladder, just the whole seat adaptor ( part no MA2219102275) at £537!
- I repaired the existing bladder by heat welding a new seam with an iron and some paper. All fairly straight forward.
It took about an hour to get the bladder out and 30 mins to put it back in. Cost me nothing.
So if you have a leaking side bolster on the back of your dynamic seat, don't pay silly money to get it fixed!
The seat is a dynamic seat in a 2006 W221 S320 Cdi with 105K miles

 

Sure, that's one way to go about it. Or my method, which is to cry, then drop it off at the dealership, then start drinking. Either one.

 

A DIY with photos would be nice.

 

Split in bladder





Repair

 

- yes it would, didn't take any pictures apart from of the air bladder.

 

I love Mike and Dave, in a Silver dollar and Mayo packet kind of way.


Hey Headlights, is that your sisters green ruler?

 

Cool. So you basically heated the plastic inside from where the rupture had occurred. Maybe using wax paper would have left a better seam. Othwerwise nice fix!

 

Why use paper to mend plastic?

 

If he had put the iron in direct contact with the plastic, it would have just melted onto the metal and not released, leaving an even more messed up air bladder. With paper between the plastic and iron, it would only melt on the paper and still be able to remain in shape to seal the leak.

 

Nice, Thanks for the tip!

 

thanks for the tip. I have a couple of bags doing the same thing. along with a seat bushing going out. I'm going to attempt the repair based on your input.

 

Thanks a lot !!

 

Thanks for the tip! I tried it on my 2008 S550 4matic with a leaking left side bolster. I determined this while driving and inflating the bolsters - both right and left inflated but the left one would go soft. The location of the leak on the bolster wasn't obvious. So I unhooked the bolster from the adaptor (2219102275) but left the intake hose connected. I then tuned the car on and inflated the side bolster to locate the leak (right next to the air intake hose) - kind of like finding a leak on a bicycle tube. The leak (a small one) was right next to the air injection hose on the seam. I used some parchment paper between an iron and the bolster. It worked like a champ!. Tested the repair by again turning on the car and putting air in the side bolsters. All the functions now work on my dynamic seat!

A few hints..
1) There are two metal clips in the back of the seat about 1/3 the way down from the top of the seat. they are in a about 1/2 inch hole in the felt. They hold the back of the seat to the frame. If you undo these clips, you have more room to work. However, watch how hard you lift up on the seat cover to get more room...I broke the air manifold (202.800.0322) which distributes air from the pump to two lines in the seat because I pulled too hard. In retrospect, I should have unplugged these air lines (snap plugs) and unplugged the wires from the seat module which would have allowed the seat cover to separate further from the adapter thus giving me more room.
2) Adjust the seat so it is flat like a bed to help gain access to the bladders.
3) To take the seat cover completely off, (which I did not do) you have to remove the side airbag (on left side) to remove the cover..
4) Getting the headrest guides out was somewhat tricky. There is a spring loaded stop that has to be compressed while pulling the guides out. I compressed them with channel - lock pliers while pulling up.
5) Google AR91.18-P-1820SX for a general procedure of how to undo the seat. AR91.16-P-0050SX for head rest and guides removal.. AR91.60-P-06955X for side airbag removal.
6) The hardest part was undoing the bladder mounting tabs through the felt with not much room to work.
7) I got an airbag error message while I was turning the car on and testing for leaks. After I put everything back together, the error message went away.

My indy wanted $1,100 to do the procedure ($800 for the bladder adaptor and $300 labor). Other than replacing the air manifold that I broke ($13 part), my cost was 0 and it took me a couple of hours.

 

litespeedone - thank you for tips ! BTW In August I repaired my right seat quickly unplugged all air cables (which connects compressor with seat), then cleaned connector orings, plugged them back and till now seat is working fine. On the left I have to use your procedure as only re-connecting of air lines wasn't repaired it..
Did you made any photos - can you share them ?

 

I hope it helps. I didn't take any pictures but will try to remember to take some showing the back of the seat when I replace the air manifold that I broke. In addition when you work on the bladder, you leave it connected to the air tube that fills it (see headlight's photo in the original post). So you end up working on the bladder on top of the seat bottom. To prevent damage to the seat bottom while using an iron, I used a piece of plywood as an ironing board placed on top of the seat.. Using the parchment paper prevented the iron from sticking to the plastic and made for a neat repair as the parchment paper doesn't stick..

 

I took some pictures of the back of the seat. In this picture, there are two dime-size holes to the left and right of the head rest elevator. These holes provide access to the clips you'll want to undo to provide room between the seat pad and the bladders to remove the bladder.









This picture shows a close up of the clip. To undo the clip, you hold the clip with pliers and push the rod into the seat and around the clip.








This picture shows the air bag on the left side of the seat (black box). There is a white cloth that wraps around the air bag and is attached to the seat cover. In order to fully remove the seat cover, you have to remove the airbag which is held in place by a rivet just below the air bag and slide it out of the white cloth. Removing the airbag and finally the seat cover would make the job a little easier. However, I would suppose you would have to disconnect both batteries and I needed to be able to power up the seats to find the leak so I opted not to remove the airbag.

 

Did this today and everything worked out well. Both passanger seat bladders had holes in them. I used a torch heated socket and parchment paper to heat weld them shut. Everything is holding up fine so far.

One thing is add is that you access the bladders from the front of the seat, with it all the way back flat. The bladders can be pulled out from the bottom of the seat and serviced. I just disconnected the air hose from the rear and removed them from the car.

Overall an easy job, but getting the tabs in and out was a bit tricky. Much easier on the interior side due to no airbag.

Here's a few (bad) pics to help give readers a better idea of what they will deal with when you take this on.

 

I'm glad it worked for you. Mine are still working well after performing the procedure almost 10 months ago.

 

wow, i'd like to try it on my 2012 driver side. hope it's not too hard.

thanks for all the info guys.

 

tried today, fix both of the bladder on driver seat.
I can't remove the bladder, but able to see it.
I find out both of the bladder are leaking at lower corner, so I use the paste without remove the whole thing from the seat. works fine.
should've get devcon, however, 6.99 USD per tube, sold in Canada is 69.99 CAD....!!! so I use a replacement. working fine.

oops I can't upload image..

 

I recently went through this repair (thanks to the information provided in this thread, thanks) and posted a YouTube video documenting the repair, in case anyone's interested.

I tried the clothing iron and it didn't work for me. I wound up using Loctite vinyl repair adhesive and that worked very well!

 

Nice video. Thanks for sharing.

 

Nice job. My repair eventually failed and so did some of the valves. I ended up getting a used upper seat on ebay for $150. The seat adapter on that one was also bad but i was able to combine parts and make a functional adapter.

 

I watched this video a few days ago and you make it look like it is so easy to repair. What I would like to see is a repair for the seat heater.
Thanks for the reminder and I have watched all off your videos.

 

Hi,

Found this thread when investigating an air leak in my 2013 G350 drivers seat. However it turned out that the connector to the adjuster/valve was broken and not the bladder. Does anyone have or know where I can find the part number for this hose connector? I will probably try to glue it back together as there is a flange left on the hose side, but want to have the part if it fails again. What glue is best to use for this kind of plastic?

Multicontour hose connectors