My drivers side car seat is pretty worn. Could I swap the passenger side seat with the drivers seat?
Depending on the make/model of car yes. But it’s nowhere near as easy as you’d think. Plus it can mess up the airbags. And may not be legal to do based on jurisdiction.
You are usually far better off getting a new seat, or a matching seat from salvage, or investing in upholstery or some very nice seat covers.
If it has electronic controls then no. The controls would be on the wrong side. Also, drivers seats will usually have more features than a passenger seat. Most likely the mounting points to the floor are different as well. Very much doubt this could be done on most cars built this century.
It is assumed that there will be a driver in the driver’s seat but not necessarily in the pax seat; therefore, some cars have a weight sensor in the pax seat - if weight not detected then there’s no need to deploy that airbag. The cable to hook that up probably isn’t long enough to run under the seat on the driver’s side. If that’s not hooked up I’m not sure the pax airbag would deploy in an accident. The person sitting in your pax seat is presumably a friend or loved one. is that a risk you’re willing to take? It’s much simpler & less expensive to just get seat covers.
If the fabric or leather seat cover is worn/cracked just buy a cover. If the padding is shot, find someone who does car seat upholstery repair & they can add new padding & a new cover that looks original.
I’d be flabbergasted if driver/passenger seats from a mass market passenger car from the last 25 years were mechanically compatible. MAYBE the upholstery portions could be switched to solve the OP but I can’t imagine the underlying rails, slides & anchors aligning. Of course, airbag sensors and electric controls are right out.
I recently had both front seats of my 2010 Lexus recovered. I bought replacement covers online ($400), thinking it wouldn’t be too hard to do it myself, but on watching a YouTube video (which I obviously should have done before buying them), I realized it would be a real pain. It requires some specialized tools and expertise.
I found an upholsterer nearby who did the job, but it was tougher than he expected, too, and he upped the original price on me. If I had known how expensive the whole job was going to be – almost $1,000 – I would only have bought and installed the driver’s seat since the passenger’s seat was nowhere near as worn. They wouldn’t have matched perfectly, but for $500, I would have lived with it.
Go to a salvage yard search website (like car-part.com) and enter your vehicle information. You may find a used one that would be a direct replacement as far as installation.
If you get really lucky it may be the same color/material.
Harder than it used to be. Car seats may be made in left and right configurations. Now with electrical devices connected in them it becomes more difficult to do then just unbolting one and replacing it with another. Also note, car seats must be bolted in using Grade 8 coarse threaded nuts and bolts intended for impact tools but can be done with a long sturdy wrench and some shoulder-grease (similar to elbow-grease but requiring more force to be applied).
I thought about doing this for a car I used to own where the driver’s seat was really worn, but discarded the idea because any replacement from the same model and year would, well, be the same age and likely as/nearly as worn as the one I wanted to replace.
Not necessarily. It could have been rarely driven by a little old lady or it could have been in an accident or had mechanical issues that pulled it off the road earlier in life. Many/most of those car donations to charity in all of those radio commercials end up going to the junkyard; they don’t want to be in the used car business & if they scrap it right away they get some money quickly rather than having to deal with inventory, fixing up, sales, & everything else that comes with selling a used car.
Also, depending what/where the wear damage is & how you drove (a lot of short trips getting in & out of the car a lot) your seats may be worse than a higher mileage one that did a lot of long-distance driving & not so many times in & out of the seat.
I got replacement seats for a car by buying a used version for next to nothing that the owner had kept seat covers on the whole time. I wouldn’t count on finding that kind of deal easily though. However, car seats can be re-upholstered. I think it’s harder to find shops that do that these days. You can talk to any body shop about it, they usually shop out work like that to someplace local.
Merely a suggestion to the OP: perhaps ask a mod to modify the title indicating that the ‘car seats’ asked about are not child safety car seats but passenger or driver’s seats. In other words, add some clarifying details for readers.
I thought it was going to be about strategy for rotating driving shifts on a road trip.
“We’ll take a break and switch seats at the next rest stop.”