loughery

My right cheek too! Small world.... 5mg of Valium will loosen it up and let you slow down to enjoy the ride. Works for me

Yaff

Except for the Valium part - Same freakin thing here.

I brought my 2004 baby to a specialized shop 2 weeks ago.
It was a two fold project
- Restore the color on the steering wheel and driver's elbow paddings.
- Repad the driver seat.

I don't know what kind skin lotion the previous owner was using because the rest of the car was in show room condition. I call it my 10 years old new car. Anyway, I don't know how long the color job will last but right now it looks and feels perfect.

The seat repadding is another story. It's a 250$ down the drain failure. I'm still debating if I'm going to return to the shop to allow them to do the job right since they left some parts loose when reassembling the seat.

It seams like the padding caved in near the edge of the seat cushion frame which makes an uncomfortable pressure on the butt cheek right next to the seat belt attach. The technician who did the repadding was not the same guy to whom I explain the problem and he totally didn't get what I needed.

Once upon a time few years ago there was a site known here for offering the shop manuals. Since I knew it was going to be shut down sooner or later, I dared pumping the 5000+ pdfs… Good thinking since this site is officially down.

So for anyone of you who feels like doing it themselves. Here's a couple of extremely valuable documents.
(Or you can give those documents to the shop you elect for the job - might help them not to screw up)

FRONT SEAT

• COMPONENTS m_bo_0157.pdf
• COMPONENTS m_bo_0001.pdf
• REMOVAL m_bo_0159.pdf
• REMOVAL m_bo_0003.pdf
• DISASSEMBLY m_bo_0160.pdf
• DISASSEMBLY m_bo_0004.pdf
• REASSEMBLY m_bo_0165.pdf
• REASSEMBLY m_bo_0009.pdf
• INSTALLATION m_bo_0170.pdf
• INSTALLATION m_bo_0014.pdf

I left the installation ones for sake of integrity... They are a bit of a joke (one liner saying reverse disassembly)

Good luck with your project. I will provide an update whatever I do it myself or get the shop to try again.

warminwisc

My first LS the seat was sunken, this one was real good with 8k more miles. Regular oil changes, any accidents, single owner then "are you fat" sounds like the newest question to ask owners when calling on their cars. LOL Warm

aypues

That's what I thought too. I've since then found out that all LS430 seats are hard as rock. Terrible design. I've never had sciatic pain until I got this car.

Legender

LOL 'are you fat'. I'll have to remember that one....

Yaff

Now that I'm starting to research this, it seams the LS460 and LS600 just carried on this poor design. One of our 460 forum member got it fixed at a local shop...

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/6775821-post1.html

ButT (pun intended)

People following the thread posted information saying Lexus even made a TSB for the 460 and the 600: L-SB-0071-09

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/6778680-post9.html

I'm wondering if we can hacked the replacement cushion in our 430?

I think we should make a sub-community of sorry butt LS430 owners and figure out together a definitive fix for this PITA issue.

Yaff

Does anyone knows if it is possible to remove the seat cushion cover without taking down the whole seat?

jimbosr1

you have to separate the seat back then take apart the seat bottom.you will need hog rings and a hog ring tool.you will also need a good pair of wire cutters.this job is not hard.take your time and save some money and know that its done right.
buy a new seat cushion from lexus so it will fit right.