My young son reclined the passenger seat back on top of a baby seat base and kept going until the plastic seat back buckled and pushed in. Any ideas how much this is going to cost to repair or replace? 

Thanks

Welcome Graham and thanks for joining. 

Oops! Strong and persistent young lad you have there! 
Although the panel buckling damage appears significant, it should be possible to minimise/eliminate this via. warming the damaged area with a hair dryer, and carefully easing it back into shape with manipulation aided by plastic trim lever tools. 
The ideal would be to remove the whole panel to do this, but they are often reluctant to come off unless you know exactly where they are clipped - otherwise broken clips! 
I think your best expectation would be damage limitation rather than elimination, depending how confident you are with carrying out the above. 

Let us know what you think Graham. 
Kind regards,

Gareth. 

Sounds worth a try! 
I’ll let you know how it goes 😬

 

Thanks

Graham

Don’t try Graham unless you have an adequate range of plastic trim removal tools - should be available on EBay or Amazon. 
Gently, gently would be my approach, ‘teasing’ the crease slowly. 
If you have to push the trim tools down behind the panel ( as I think you will) strongly masking tape a length cord to the top to retrieve the tool in case of difficulties! 
Good luck, and let us know how you get on, and stop feeding that son extra Weetabix! - otherwise you are going to end up with a ‘one careful owner - x careless children’ vehicle. 
Kind regards,

Gareth.

Just a little extra on this. It wasn’t an especially strong pre-schooler that caused the damage as the seat as power adjust. I would have expected some sort of safety mechanism to stop the recline when resistance was encountered (someone’s legs for example or, as in this case, an isofix seat base) but apparently not 🤷‍♂️

 

still haven’t given the repair a go. Will update when I do. 
 

cheers

Graham 

31 minutes ago, AtomXL said:

Just a little extra on this. It wasn’t an especially strong pre-schooler that caused the damage as the seat as power adjust. I would have expected some sort of safety mechanism to stop the recline when resistance was encountered (someone’s legs for example or, as in this case, an isofix seat base) but apparently not 🤷‍♂️

 

still haven’t given the repair a go. Will update when I do. 
 

cheers

Graham 

Hi if as Gareth said you invest in a trim removal kit the job is fairly straight forward start at the top and work your way round down the right side, the cover has a push in locking system at the bottom so once the top and sides are free lift the cover up and out, depending on the model some of the covers are glued to the rear lumbar adjustment this can be removed from the metal plate with a bit of persistence and re attached with velcro, heat the plastic with a heat gun but you have to keep the the heat moving whilst pushing gently from the inside with the plastic handle of a screwdriver or similar, did a lot of this with  bumpers during the eighties they took a bit of time as they were a lot thicker but the fact is ABS plastic will always try and go back to its moulded shape. PS any clips you need to replace are on Ebay at a tenth of the price from the dealer.

Steve.

Hi AtomXL, 

Sorry to comment on an old thread but my family member has just done the exact same thing on my Q5 and I found this post when frantically googling for help!

Did you manage to do the repair?

Thank you

No, since it’s a lease car I decided it wasn’t worth the risk of me botching the repair so I ended up taking it to my local Audi dealer to have the seat back replaced. Think it was around £300. 

Ouch! That makes sense. I think I’ll have to bite the bullet and have it replaced too as I don’t know how confident I am carrying out a repair by myself.

I’m glad I have an idea of cost now in any case.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply!

Jen

 

Jennifer.

If you are prepared to pay to have the work done you have nothing to lose by trying it yourself first. You may just save yourself a few hundred pounds.