The driver seat on my new to me 2009 s600 is not comfortable. Biggest issue is that there is way way too much shoulder "support". Looked in COMMAND and the shoulder support level is actually 0, the lowest, with air bladder completely deflated. Hmm that doesn't look right. So in COMMAND I tried to increase the shoulder support and it does increase, making the seat infinitely more uncomfortable. I then tried to deflate it, and it does deflate, if I press on the shoulder area it seems to deflate a little bit more, making the seat slightly more comfortable. However, after driving for maybe 5 minutes the shoulder "support" gradually comes back... After reading many posts on this forum and after my C4 multiplexer arrives from China I decided to give it a try.

First off DAS told me that right lateral support is not possible to inflate. OK one air bladder leak *might* also cause other air bladder to malfunction. So I partially removed the seat cover, pulled the right air bladder out and tried to inflate it, and surely it's leaking right when the tube enters the air bladder. Sealed it with some cheapo Amazon vinyl repair kit. While waiting for it to cure, I took a look at the shoulder air bladder, and was surprised that even after a successful deflate, and the pressure value reading at 0, the air bladder still fills very full. If I manually squeeze the air bladder while it deflates, I can get it to flatten, but it somehow quickly inflates itself??? I thought aha that's the smoking gun, maybe the valve is somehow bad and lets air in? So I disconnected the green tube from the valve to the air bladder and manually squeeze the air bladder flat. To my utter surprise they inflate themselves again after half a minute, holy ****. Now I think, valve is fine. The bladder simply returns to some kind of a memorized shape (inflated) due to elasticity.

At this point I'm done with the shoulder air bladder and decided to permanently remove it. After fighting with some plastic clips I got the air bladder removed, and to my horror I finally found out why the seat is uncomfortable: the driver seat is molded differently than the passenger seat, the shoulder area is simply bulging by design, with or without the air bladder. You got to be kidding me.

Now I just sealed the exposed green tube due to the air bladder being removed (hopefully it doesn't trigger any error code), and onto more research on how to fully replaced the driver seat cover with the passenger one. Thanks Mercedes.

removed shoulder air bladder. notice that they always seems to be inflated

exposed air tube plugged, with the help of a bunch of electric tape

 

ok now that I think about it, the bulging in the driver seat is probably not by design, but a result of god knows how many years of the shoulder bladder being inflated. I'll need to come up with a way to flatten them back somehow.

 

in my view this is a design feature - mine are fully operational - they inflate lots and deflate - but to start with I have three times the force pressing on my shoulders than I get in ANY other car seat - and the passenger one is the exactly the same - on long journeys it leads to massive shoulder cramping issues

when I talked to guys at work about it - they pointed out the S class is of course designed for the lizard people (so likely its to accommodate their tails)

funny enough cheap corolla seats OK - hilux are a joke for the same reason as above


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