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Hey guys, how you doing? It's Henry at Motion Blowers. Welcome back to another episode.
This is my 2012 Mercedes-Benz E350. I've had it for 13 years. Never had a problem.
That's why I still have the car. The chair I'm sitting on, I've had for eight years.
It's a little Tykes baby chair. It's been perfect for my repairs. As you can see,
it's on its last leg. This is a new mechanics chair on wheels. It's a replacement for that.
I'm going to open it up, put it together, and see how it works.
So the chair is from Vibor. Got cup holders, places where you can stick your screwdrivers,
a bottom tray for other tools that you can put on there, rotating caster wheels,
full leather seat. Really extends pretty high. It lowers to this level. However, this seat for me
is still too high. I need something short like that. This will do for working on cars and stuff.
If you guys would like this mechanics chair, I'll leave a link in the description.
My daughter borrowed the car for her summer internship in Ohio, and it came back like this.
Seats are all ripped. Now the cigarette lighter doesn't work. And no, it's not the fuse. The
cigarette socket itself. The metal tab at the back, that's the positive. Sides run on negative.
It broke off. A Chinese aftermarket socket costs $38. But a used tray with the cigarette lighter
socket in it, OEM, genuine Mercedes, the whole thing was only $36. And an aftermarket seat cover
that matches the color exactly was only $38. The color is identical.
But how do you remove the bottom seat? I took this cover off, but you still can't see any
screws to remove this panel. Drop the tray. You do see that. I guess I can remove this tray out.
Two Torx screws. Comes right out. Now I can finally clean this.
It appears that there are two Torx bolts that hold the seat pan in. Probably can't see it.
It's right here. Two of them. Two bigger Torx. You're gonna have to come up with some kind of
tool, like a ratchet with a Torx bit in it. It's tight. This thing popped off. It goes in like this.
Oh, it's connected to something. You have to stick your head in there to see how you
disconnect that harness. Seat pan goes forward. You have to disconnect these two plugs here
because it's connected to the chair. Also a disconnection right here. This harness
was connected right there. Disconnecting that thing was a bitch. Two of them.
Couldn't understand why they wouldn't come out.
So this is very interesting. So the old cover came off. Not easy, but not especially hard either.
So these little plastic canals just pop right onto the bottom of that. I mean,
it takes some finagling, obviously. The trick is, though, there are these hooks
that are placed onto the cushion and it goes into that. It loops into these areas here, right?
So you have to kind of just use a flathead screwdriver and push this rod out from
underneath the hooks and it's all the way around. So the tricky part is because my car has heated
seats, the heating pad itself, this stuff right here, don't mess that up because this is the heat.
This is the current. It has this really thin fabric. You just tear it with your hands.
That was adhered on here. So you can't remove the seat cover because it had the heating pad
sewn into there. So just rip it like that. So the heating pad sits flush like that. You know
what I'm saying? So here's the heating pad. And then now I'm going to attempt to just slip that
one on because that didn't come with the heating pad. So you have to take the heating pad off the
Get out of here. Those instructions suck. You couldn't figure out your head from your ass
with those instructions. So it required some cutting. Plastic thing that goes all the way
around. It's all connected to one piece. But when you make the big turn, the bend,
if you put the front in, the sides will pop out. If you put in the sides first,
the front will pop out with very, very stiff plastic. There's no way you're going to be able
to wrap it around the big two corner turns over here. The 90 degree turn, there's no way you're
going to be able to do that. So you had to snip the plastic here, snip the plastic here, so that
you have no plastic on the 90 degree turn. See? Now it fits. So is it the tightest fit as original?
No. Because the aftermarket one didn't have this square structure over here
that had these holes for the tabs to pull down. Or like they say in Canada, pull down.
So this didn't have these. What are you going to do? This is sewn on here, you know?
And even the original one is cut here. See? So that this isn't so flex, uh, isn't so stiff.
So it makes the 90 degree turn easily. You gotta cut it. So that's what I did. I cut it just like
that. So you have one strip here for the front, one strip on the side, one strip on the side,
and then it'll go on. It's not as form-fitting and tight as the original, of course, but I think with
heat, uh, sitting down use of it, it'll eventually mold into it pretty well.
And I will say it does match in color perfectly. I'm pretty surprised that it does because I was
worried that I was going to get it and it wasn't going to match at all. This was going to be either
too light or too dark or completely a different color altogether, but I'm pretty pleased with
how it came out. I mean, it sucked, but what are you going to do? You know, uh, short of going to
buy a brand new entire seat from Mercedes that probably costs two, $3,000. You're crazy if you
think I'm going to do that. Car's 13 years old. So I'm just going to put this seat back in and
with use and it settling down the heat, I think it'll be okay. I mean, it's not as tight as the
original, of course, it's a little loose, a little loose, but I mean, I'm just thrilled that the color
is exactly the same and it only costs $38. Now onto the cigarette lighter socket.
All right. It was so hot that the camera died while I was in the middle of fixing it.
Needless to say, it completely sucked. Working on Mercedes is a nightmare. I had to dismantle
stuff in here, stuff in here, stuff in there, everywhere. I had to dismantle all this just
to get a new cigarette lighter socket and the seat. It's got a few wrinkles in it,
but I think that with the heat and stuff, city got it. It'll eventually get better. Uh, it does
match perfectly though. So that's, that's pretty cool. So you had to fix this because it's the only
area in the front where you can have a cigarette lighter. And I have so many accessories and charge
your phone and all that. And the main thing was my dash cam. When it didn't work, I went to check
the fuse. It wasn't the fuse. So I figured out that it was a broken this because the positive
side on the bottom, the tab, it was floating around on the, on the, on the bottom there.
So I knew it was busted. So while it did take a long time to do it in the end,
my dash cam works now. Start recording. And I'll be able to charge stuff. So yeah,
if I paid Mercedes to do it, it would have cost a fortune, but instead I got a new seat cover for
38 bucks and 36 bucks for the new, uh, cigarette socket. So about 70, 80 bucks total to fix
something that probably would have been five, $800. So try to do ---- yourself, save a lot of money.
I did work on it for six hours though. I will be honest. Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed the video.
We'll see you guys next time on motors and blowers.
See you guys next time on motors and blowers.
