Replacing car seat

OCL96

I have a car on finance and it has a few cigarette burns in it. It would be cheaper to replace (with the exact same one) rather than get it repaired. If i replace the car seat would the company know? do car seats have an exact number? Like an ID number to identify that seat should be in a different car.

[Deleted User]

Is smoking in a car still a thing people do?

angrycrow

The seat won't have anything to identify the car it came from so you can swap it out with another identical seat and they won't know.

Modern seats often have side airbags and some seats also have anti submarine airbags in the base. The seat belt pretensioner is also built into the seat so you need to be careful none of these devices have been triggered on the replacement seat. You also need to disconnect the battery before changing the seat due to the airbags. 

It may be possibly to order a new seat base cover from the manufacturer and swap it over. 

AdrianC

Deleted_User said:

Is smoking in a car still a thing people do?

Apparently there's a tiny minority.

As Crow says, you've got the cosmetic challenge of finding the exact same trim material and pattern.
Then you've got the functional change-over, with airbags and pretensioner belts that may need coding to the body-control computer.

There's various trim-repair services, like the paintless-dent guys and the touch-up guys. Any second-hand-car place will know who the good local ones are.

Or just swallow the "wear and tear" charge, and make a mental note to take better care in the future when you're spending several years driving somebody else's car.