Hey Everyone,

I have a Skoda Fabia (2001) elegance, (unfortunately) I have the sandy/beige interior which had quite a few marks on it when I bought the car, I was wondering if anyone knows how easy/hard it would be to replace the front and back seats? I'm hoping I could source some from a scrap yard or ebay etc. I would ideally like grey/black as they seem to show less marks and wear and tear.

Any advice?

seats are really easy to remove and replace, its only one 17mm bolt to remove the back seats, and 8 multispline bolts for the front seats, shouldnt take more than an hour to switch them out. The only difficult task would be sourcing the Fabia seats that you want.

Can't say about front seats as I've never had them out .But Haynes makes it look easy .Rear seats - the squabs are held in place with wire hinges-tilt forward to get to the hinge, lift sideways and squab lifts out. The backrest is held in place with the bottom hinge and the top catch.But, could you trust second hand belts,as thje centre one is part of the seat. ( Unless it's easy to change)

Haven't loked, but there's possibly a "how to " guide on it ,in here somewhere .

I've had a look at my local broker yard and they seem to have 4 or 5 fabias available for parts, so I'll go and see what I can get. I'm not too bothered about the rear centre belt as we don't often have people in the back, certainly never 3 in the back seat! I might try and replace the rest of the interior, most of it seems fair straight fowards to switch out, just takes time to do it all. I think the car looks much better in grey/black than beige.

Has anyone else experimented with switching interior trim parts?

I swapped over my seats at the weekend,it honestly took me no more than hour, the only fiddly bit I found was removing the rear seat backs but that was obviously due to them never having been removed before,Ihad the rear seats in and out in less than 25 mins.

Whereabouts in the Uk are you?

I'm currently in Swansea but moving to Exeter later this week. I've done a little more searching on the net and it seems fairly straight forwards to change the seats, so I think the tricky part will be getting hold of some seats and trim to replace what I have. Having looked at so many interiors which look dark and pristine, I'm itching to get the beige out of my car!

Hopefully if I regularly check the brokers/ebay I can get some darker seats and trim.

If you have an elegance, I assume you also have heated seats?

Unlikely you'll find another heated set in a breakers.

Yeah I have heated seats, I think I would consider losing the function of heated seats for a better interior. However the breaker yard here in Swansea has 2 elegance fabias so hopefully I'll get lucky. The beige trim is a nightmare, every single mark or blemish stands out so much.

If you're moving to Exeter give Jason (devonutopia) a shout if you need any pointers about modifying.

Thanks for that, I'm sure I'll have a few questions if i manage to get hold of some replacement trim/seats. Everyone is so friendly and helpful the forum, its very reassuring

if you think the beige ones are hard to keep clean you should try owning a vrs!!!

Is it a bad idea to remove all the beige plastic trim from my Fabia and have it sprayed black? has anyone else tried this, seems it might be a better way of improving the colour scheme without hunting around scrap yards. Assuming I can find someone to spray them professionally, I don't fancy trying it with a can of spray paint!

i had to repair the heat elements in my old elegance fabia, its not too difficult, so it wouldnt be too hard to retro fit the heat element to the seats as you will already have all the electrical circuitry for it.

You'd be better off finding a fabia that somebody is breaking and replacing your beige trim with the grey equivalent. Certain pieces of trim such as the heater vent surrounds can be painted very effectively but others like the glovebox lid (I think this is beige?) would be difficult to get a good finish on due to the texture

Yeah the glovebox is beige and the texture may make it difficult to paint, I think it would probably need 1 or 2 thin layers of paint. The 2 fabias I found in breakers yards in Swansea had either a door or window removed and a lot of the interior had been removed, so unforunately I couldn't get a full set of trim. I'll probably have to ask my local breakers yards to contact me when any new fabias come in and hope for a black trim elegance.