Anyone find Golf TDI S seats a bit too firm?

At first I liked my MK7 Golf TDI S black v-tex seats and still there aren't bad. But they do seem a bit too firm, especially the seat back. My '14 Jetta SE seats look similar but they seem softer to me. After 30 min driving in my Golf, my back doesn't feel awesome.

Wondering if some high quality sheep skin covers will help? I know it will make them a bit cooler.

This probably won't be of much immediate help for you, but...

I have an SE into which I've put SEL seats. The SE (same as S) seatbacks were a bit firm but acceptable and not the reason I swapped them out. The reason for the swap was I wanted seat cushion tilt and lumbar 4-way adjustment.

Now with the SEL seat, I find the lumbar, when adjusted out, to be "sharper", less cushioned than the SE, painful after 1/2 an hour, and barely acceptable.

I am going to be re-upholstering the SELs and when the covers are off I intend to somehow soften the lumbar projection. One thing I'm going to add to the cushions under the upholstery are these gel inserts and I may do something similar to the lumbar plate, but more likely it will be a replacement of or addition of foam.

Can't help with sheepskins other than to mention that they should be designed for compatibility with the side airbags.

If it were me, I'd swap in a '15 Jetta seat since that's a known quantity for you and any other solution is a crap shoot.

the golf s and se seats are really bad and unconfortable. I changed mine to '17 golf R seats which are leather surfaces rather than plastic. What a pleasure to sit on. The standard seats I couldn't even give away and ended taking them to the dump.

Thanks for replies. Chris, my Jetta is a ‘14 SE. I fixed that typo. Thunder, was it hard to swap out for the R seats it was it a straight swap? How much did R seats cost?

easy swap but S has no wiring in plug for seat heaters I had to use the passenger seat module from the S so as to not need recoding. my R seats were from a 2017 R. Cost with shipping was about 450. I used rear seats from a leather 2015 gti. they were 250. Stitching is red gti, stitching R is silver grey. Probably its the best thing I did to my car, truly confortable with all electric adjustments and the leather breaks in and it becomes even better. Easier probably to find a set of leather gti seats, obviously but the R's get totaled by people driving them at worp speeds. Its well worth the effort to do a seat upgrade either to leather or cloth away from plastic.

Chris Bell said:

I am going to be re-upholstering the SELs and when the covers are off I intend to somehow soften the lumbar projection. One thing I'm going to add to the cushions under the upholstery are these gel inserts and I may do something similar to the lumbar plate, but more likely it will be a replacement of or addition of foam.

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Not much of a worry for you, but in cold climates gel inserts can get extremely hard and take a long time to warm up. My wife had one of those gel cushions from Costco. When we went to Northern Indiana for Christmas, she ended up throwing the thing in the back of the wagen. She said it was like sitting on an ice pack.

kjclow said:

Not much of a worry for you, but in cold climates gel inserts can get extremely hard and take a long time to warm up. My wife had one of those gel cushions from Costco. When we went to Northern Indiana for Christmas, she ended up throwing the thing in the back of the wagen. She said it was like sitting on an ice pack.

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Great point and I am thinking about moving to a colder climate. Those inserts look thin enough, though, that with seat heaters turned up to 11, hopefully it would be a quick thaw.

thundershorts said:

easy swap but S has no wiring in plug for seat heaters I had to use the passenger seat module from the S so as to not need recoding. my R seats were from a 2017 R. Cost with shipping was about 450. I used rear seats from a leather 2015 gti. they were 250. Stitching is red gti, stitching R is silver grey. Probably its the best thing I did to my car, truly confortable with all electric adjustments and the leather breaks in and it becomes even better. Easier probably to find a set of leather gti seats, obviously but the R's get totaled by people driving them at worp speeds. Its well worth the effort to do a seat upgrade either to leather or cloth away from plastic.

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Thanks, Thunder. I don’t hate the stock seats but don’t love them. I don’t commute either. Trying a Dreamer car back support. If that doesn’t improve things enough, will look for GTI cloth seats. Only want cloth. Will ‘15-17 seats work on TDI rails?

Where did you find R seats so cheap?? Insane deal.

If you do a swap, I recommend that whatever model you choose, spend a day with one. I recently had my Phase 2A update done at the dealer, needed a loaner and they only could do a rental (only the 2B update entitles you to a loaner) and got a '17 Alltrack which has the SEL seats. Now I already put SEL seats in my SE, but I thought it would have been nice to know that the lumbar would be an issue before I went ahead with the swap. I still would have done it because I would be reupholstering in cloth and could easily address the lumbar, but knowledge is power.

I imagine finding a GTI or R dealer-rental would be very difficult if not impossible, but worthwhile IMO. I had read so many favorable comments about the SEL seats relative to the SEs that I thought these would be THE turnkey answer. And they will be after I'm finished modifying them.

BTW, thunder's price seems typical. I got my full set of SELs for $425 delivered from E. to W. Coast.

Chris Bell said:

If you do a swap, I recommend that whatever model you choose, spend a day with one. I recently had my Phase 2A update done at the dealer, needed a loaner and they only could do a rental (only the 2B update entitles you to a loaner) and got a '17 Alltrack which has the SEL seats. Now I already put SEL seats in my SE, but I thought it would have been nice to know that the lumbar would be an issue before I went ahead with the swap. I still would have done it because I would be reupholstering in cloth and could easily address the lumbar, but knowledge is power.

I imagine finding a GTI or R dealer-rental would be very difficult if not impossible, but worthwhile IMO. I had read so many favorable comments about the SEL seats relative to the SEs that I thought these would be THE turnkey answer. And they will be after I'm finished modifying them.

BTW, thunder's price seems typical. I got my full set of SELs for $425 delivered from E. to W. Coast.

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I’ve sat in GTI cloth seats a few times and test drove them. I know I’d have no issue with them. However found some '15 GTI cloth seats on Ebay but when I plug in my model ('15 Golf TDI S) for compatibility it says it's not compatible? I thought they would be?

Where did you guys buy seats from? EBay?

Chris Bell said:

car-part.com

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Thanks!
So does anyone know if a GTI cloth seat is a straight swap? I don't want to have to do any drilling etc.

Plug and play except as previously noted, no hookup for seat heaters in your S. Later base Mk7 GTIs had heating, I don't think earlier Mk7s did(?)

Chris Bell said:

Plug and play except as previously noted, no hookup for seat heaters in your S. Later base Mk7 GTIs had heating, I don't think earlier Mk7s did(?)

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That wouldn't matter since my TDI S has no heated seats anyway.

thundershorts said:

easy swap but S has no wiring in plug for seat heaters I had to use the passenger seat module from the S so as to not need recoding.

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What do you mean by this? I'm assuming your TDI S doesn't have heated seats, nor does mine.

So why did you need this and what for?

The passenger seat has a module on the underside held with 1 screw. The airbag light for passenger will stay lit if the system doesn't recongnize the module. You can get the seat heaters to work but you;ll need to change the dash control, add two wires to the seat harness, coding, etc. Where you live I'd just get cloth gti seats and happly motor on.

thundershorts said:

The passenger seat has a module on the underside held with 1 screw. The airbag light for passenger will stay lit if the system doesn't recongnize the module. You can get the seat heaters to work but you;ll need to change the dash control, add two wires to the seat harness, coding, etc. Where you live I'd just get cloth gti seats and happly motor on.

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All cloth GTI seats from 2015 up have heated seats. Can see in the pics of the wrecked pics as well the buttons on the console. I'm not going to be adding wires/dash controls, so the airbag light will just stay on I guess.

no wires, etc to add, all you have to do is put the original module from your seat you are removing on the gti pass seat and plug it in. It tales less than a minute.

Well I got and put on my Dreamer Car Back support yesterday and drove around in it today some. Have to say, big difference. Really comfortable and it doesn't move at all thanks to great straps. You do lose a tiny amount of bottom seat depth b/c the cushion width but not much. Will see how it goes but for now, I'm liking it.

That looks surprisingly well designed.