A warning about seat foam.

Hello,

I was very happy to discover that the seat back covers unzipped as I thought I'd give mine a wash and maybe dye them. They're in good condition and I figured it wouldn't hurt. But my happiness was short lived !

As I unzipped the cover I got all this sticky brown stuff on my hands and on further inspection discovered that the foam had degraded and gone horrible. It's not the main foam, that you sit on, it's the padding foam around the edges that has gone wrong, mainly the parts on the bottom corners. I've never seen anything like it, it's really awful.

I then unzipped the other seat cover and it's the same, I also suspect it's on the bottom half of the seats as when you press on parts of their edges it doesn't bounce back and feels soft and squishy. That will mean taking out the bottom staples and pulling the cover off but this will be a very slow process and I can only handle one piece at a time.

The only way to describe this stuff is tar, it's gone the full degrade and gone back to it's oil base and it's disgusting. I scraped a lot of it off with a knife and the only thing that shifts the remainder from anything is practically neat washing detergent and then you have to keep rubbing it in until something shifts. You get covered in it, everything gets stuck together and the tiniest crumbly piece will smear into a massive oily stain and lead to more scrubbing.

My camper is thirty years old and I'd recommend everybody with vans of similar age checking their seat foam before they finish up with a monster task like I just landed myself. Push the seat edges and if it doesn't bounce back or feels not like foam you should have a check and even if it's only slightly crumbling change it before it's too late.

On a positive note all credit to Toyota because despite the carnage on the inside of the covers the material these seats are covered in showed no sign of it at all and the main foam is intact. But now I know what's going on I'm not sleeping or sitting on that !

Good luck and I hope you don't discover what I did, it's a nightmare.