Creaking driver's seat

[Saxmaniac]

Has anyone else had creaky upholstery and would there be a simple cure? It's a 2018 hybrid. I've asked the dealer to sort it every time they've had it in and they either quietly forget or assure me it's been lubricated. They've done nothing of course. I was thinking perhaps a hypodermic syringe with some sort of silicone fluid might stop it. It's at a fairly localised area and seems like foam padding creaking against the internal seat framework. Any ideas anyone?

[furtula]

I have the same thing in my 1st gen, thought about doing the same thing as you suggest, but there's no guarantee you will hit the right spot, only make a mess.

Sadly, it's not possible to remove upholstering in some easy way, to treat the issue. 

I just got used to it, and not notice it anymore.

[Gerg]

For different reasons (seat base clicking and a lumber adjust installation)I have taken the seat apart.  On our older model the seats did have some superficial rust on the frame - there is no paint put on these seats frames.

If you unzip the rear of the driver's seat cover whilst sat in the rear of the car (some elasticated loops may need removing from underneath the seat for this to come free, it is not intuitive how these fit, a photo with a camera phone on the car floor might help you later on to see how they clip on).

The first picture where rust was located on our car (arrows pointing to behind the frame piece) with the seat cover completely removed.  The second picture shows the rust, but from a perspective you won't get! You can see the inside of the seat without removing the cover, just by unzipping the two vertical zips (with no 'tangs', btw, can be a little painful on the fingers).

When the rust rubs against the foam upholstery, it does seem to creak.  I don't know if this is what you are suffering from.  But some furniture polish or such like in that area might help you.

I removed the rust with a 3M Scotchbrite pad, so no grit was left behind.  It's a bit of a squeeze if the seat is still in the car - it depends how big you are and if you've got nimble fingers.

 

[TonyHSD]

My one it’s the same and it’s not the first car to do that, all of my Japanese cars had done it for some reason, perhaps as Gerg post’s explained. 

[Saxmaniac]

Thanks for the replies and the photos are very useful. This creaking is very annoying at low speeds and it's almost continuous. The area of the seat that it comes from is quite localised, don't know about rust as it happened from only a few months old, but I think I'll try to pick a suitable fluid and risk damage, though I'll proceed very carefully

[Gerg]

57 minutes ago, Saxmaniac said:

don't know about rust as it happened from only a few months old

I would be inclined to agree with you. 

When fitting some extra sound damping in the doors of two Aurises, three out of four doors of each of them had 'failed' mastic-attached polythene water seals.  In all cases, the mastic had simply become unstuck over time and allowed the polythene to lift away, sometimes enough to get my finger into the gap!  A 'normal' water entry point seemed to be directly underneath the door speaker.  A few other forum members have seen this too, when door trims have been removed.  I don't think much water gets in - it's subtle.

I think in one of these cars (it depends if the gap is near somewhere that the water is normally held back), this may have accelerated the seat frame rusting.  The original owner of the car was recorded as Toyota GB, and less than 2000 miles was covered in their ownership of two years.  If water got in then it didn't get much chance to dry out in that car.

The lack of paint seems to have been Toyota policy for years - I remember a 'Car' magazine article (from 1992-ish?) describing a complete strip down of the, then relatively new, Lexus LS 400.  This was undertaken by GM engineers, and the information shared with the magazine.  I think they were very impressed with it all, but they were surprised that the seat frames had no paint anywhere.   I think they did find a small amount of rusting evident.

[Steve Whits]

4 hours ago, Saxmaniac said:

Thanks for the replies and the photos are very useful. This creaking is very annoying at low speeds and it's almost continuous. The area of the seat that it comes from is quite localised, don't know about rust as it happened from only a few months old, but I think I'll try to pick a suitable fluid and risk damage, though I'll proceed very carefully

I had this issue with mine and the dealer took the seat apart twice and eventually sorted it. I suppose I was fortunate to have a good dealer.