Rear Center Seat-back Swap

My 2013 Passat has a nice little storage compartment built into the rear center seat, that you can access when you fold the seat back down to use the cup holders. My 2015 Passat has the folding seat back and cup holders, but there's no storage compartment any more. Since I like to keep some kid entertainment there for long drives (deck of cards, pencil and paper, etc), I was thinking of swapping my 2013 seat back into my 2015 before turning the 2013 in for the buy-back. Does anyone know A) if this is possible and B) how to do it? I used the Google, but didn't find anything useful, which is unusual and seems like a bad sign that I'm asking for the impossible.

I don't know if the sizing or fabric is identical, but the seat unbolts pretty easily and comes out. I pulled mine when installing the 4 ga wire to my rear battery. Pull out the seat bottom first so the backs can fold all the way down, then unbolt the saddle pieces that hold the seat pivots in place.

There's lots of stuff I've tried to search for on these cars, I don't think many are out there modding and posting about it. Most of the instructions that apply to a Jetta are reasonably close on the Passat.

2015’s don’t seem to have the rubber inserts in the door pockets(mine doesn’t), so if your 13 has them, take them with you.

Jedadiah said:

2015’s don’t seem to have the rubber inserts in the door pockets(mine doesn’t), so if your 13 has them, take them with you.

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My 2015 Highline (USA SEL) does not have them, maybe they leave them out for 2 reasons. Added cost and taking away a little space.

Jedadiah said:

2015’s don’t seem to have the rubber inserts in the door pockets(mine doesn’t), so if your 13 has them, take them with you.

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Good tip. I noticed a few other minor things like that, but wasn't sure whether they were because the prior owner removed them, or because they just didn't come in 2015s. Trunk liner and CarGo blocks are other examples.

BroncoAZ said:

I don't know if the sizing or fabric is identical, but the seat unbolts pretty easily and comes out. I pulled mine when installing the 4 ga wire to my rear battery. Pull out the seat bottom first so the backs can fold all the way down, then unbolt the saddle pieces that hold the seat pivots in place.

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Thanks BroncoAZ. I have the same interior on both, and the 2013 is still in good shape, so swapping the entire seatback is an option, if I can figure out how to get them off. I'll look into it this weekend or the next (experimenting on the 2013, which is heading to a wrecker anyway since there's no fix for 2012-2014 MT).

So in case anyone is curious, I did manage to swap out the center seat-back this weekend. It was fairly simple, but took me a long time to figure out. Here's the basic steps:
1) Fold down driver's side rear seat. (The 40 of the 60/40 split.)
2) Remove cover plate that hides the hinge for the center seat-back. It's just held on by a couple of plastic tabs. I used two flat-head screwdrivers simultaneously. It helps to use a flashlight to see the tabs, at least two of which are visible from above.
3) Unscrew bolt/pin on that side. It's a star-drive bolt; not sure what size.
4) Fold seat-back forward, then push down/forward on the driver-side to disconnect.
5) Seat-back is now held on by connection to the far/passenger side. I tried at first to unscrew that bolt as well, by mushing the passenger-side seat far enough back that I could get to it. This did work, however, this took a lot of force and ultimately made it much harder to reinstall the replacement seat-back (hard to get the screw threaded straight with so much pressure from the seat). But with the seat-back out completely, I realized that the the bolt on the passenger side connects to a removable plate that clips to a metal flange. So instead of unscrewing the bolt, it's much easier to pull the fabric away from the bolt area until you see the plastic tabs, then pry the plate off using a screwdriver on the tabs.
6) Once you have the seat-back out, insert the replacement seat-back in reverse - first click the passenger-side plate back into position, then push the driver-side down/back/up to re-seat it. (It helps to try reinstalling the plate with it not connected to the seat-back first, just to see how it goes in, then try it with it attached.) Once you've reattached the driver-side bolt/pin and cover plate, you're done.
7) It took me about two hours, but knowing what to do now, I could probably do it in 20 minutes.