We have been looking for an explorer for a while. One of the "must haves" was heated leather seats with all the buttons to adjust it whatever way is needed. My wife has had two spinal fusions and must have a versatile seat. We tried out a 2015 XLT that ticked all the boxes. She drove it and loved it. It ended up slipping away, but we knew that an explorer was the vehicle we wanted. I ended up finding a 2013 that was pretty much identical to the 2015, even the mileage (29K vs 31K). I went ahead and bought it without her driving it (you see where this is going, right?). Well, she drove it for the first time last night (about 10 miles) and could never get the seat adjusted to where it didn't hurt her back. She was in so much pain that she took a pain killer and went straight to bed. I went to car-part.com and searched 2015 seat to see if it was the same as a 2013. According to them, it is the same. What is the difference, if any? Did I miss something and make a $30,000 mistake?


Both of these vehicles are XLT. Are the seats in a limited different?

 

I'm assuming the drivers seat in the 2013 has all the same controls as the 2015, I'm sure you would have confirmed that. So I would optimistically hope that with all the possible adjustments that might affect your wife's comfort - not just seat, but steering wheel and pedal adjustments as well - she just hasn't found the same positions that worked so well for her in the 2015.

 

I'm pretty sure they are the same, but the 2015 is gone so I can't verify that 100%. I'm hoping she just hasn't found the sweet spot. I don't think either had adjustable pedals.

 

There may be more adjustments than you realize. There was a recent posting somewhere on the FTE forums by a guy who had been driving his vehicle for years and just realized it had a telescoping steering column, lol.

 

It does telescope. I'm not sure if she knew that. Will make sure next time she drives it. She is out of town and won't be back until the weekend.

 

I can't comment on the sameness of the Explorer design but will note that when seats "break in" they can sometimes sag and change their shape. If a large person owned one or the other Explorer, one of the seats may have sagged differently. Even if the bottom cushion gets flatter, it will put the backrest in a different place. Is she playing with the lumbar support and all other adjustments? And leather and cloth seats using the same construction can feel different on the spine--cloth has more "give" in smaller spots.

I have had a bad back since I was 14 (I'm 64 so that's 50 years) and had a triple spinal fusion in 2011 (8 screws and 3 rods) so I get it. Before my surgery I could survive only about 10% of the car seats on the market for extended times. After my surgery I'm better but still rule out at least 2 out of 3 vehicles. My approach is to take the exact vehicle for a test drive for at least an hour. 10 or 20 minutes will not tell me what I've got, and I have sold vehicles, changed out seats to Recaros, or bought Ford captain's chairs for the front of my van (which had conversion seats that sucked), and gone thru all kinds of crap to survive. I have brought a book and sat in a car in dealer showrooms for an hour...

My specific problem is that I can't have a "hump" in the lumbar support area so I always back off the lumbar support and even then, many cars had too much of a hump anyway. I took apart an Acura seat in my '98 TL and removed the whole lumbar support mechanism which was a big nylon paddle behind the cushion.

Best of luck to your wife. My suggestion would be to go to a Ford dealer and compare the seat in a 2015 (or just a different vehicle) to the 2013 seat and have her take note of what might be different and what makes the good one good for her. Padding can break down, foam can have different hardness from one batch to another, etc. If you can make note of the exact difference between the 2 seats, you can go to an upholstery shop and have them reconfigure the foam, or put in new foam, or whatever it takes.

Best regards,
George

 

I've only driven this vehicle a handful of mile since I bought it and really never attempted to adjust the seat to suit me just right. Well today I decided to drive it and see what was what. I couldn't get it adjusted to suit me either. My butt felt like it was falling into a hole. When I got home I looked under there, hoping to find a broken spring or something. What was telling was what I didn't find.


The great big picture is the underside of the drivers seat. The springs are right against the yellow foam. I don't know why the pic is so big. If a mod can fix it, that would be great.


The smaller pic is the passenger seat. Between the springs and foam is a sheet of nylon about 1/8" thick and jute against the springs. The passenger seat sits just fine.


I feel like that part was just left out of my driver seat when it was built. Both seats are heated and power, so I don't think there should be any difference. I can't picture that the springs should be against the foam or they would just sink into it.


Can someone look under their driver's seat and see if the jute/nylon part is in there?

 

I don't have one to look under but it definitely seems like someone took your seat apart, maybe to fix a broken seat heater (?) and had some parts left over when they finished. Or maybe a prior owner wanted the seat to be "softer" in the cushion and had it modified.

Ford would definitely not put foam directly on springs like that--it would cut thru and deteriorate in a short time. And sitting in a hole will definitely put stresses on the spine due to lack of support for the tailbone as well as putting the spine in the wrong place on the seat back.

Glad you found such an obvious problem. Like I said in my post above, I've been thru a lot of car seat issues and do find most of Ford's seats (including the Explorer and Edge) to be comfortable for me.

George

 

Well, I went to the local dealer today and showed the service mgr. the pictures. He didn't know if it was correct so he checked one in their shop. The driver seat was just like mine, so this is normal...don't know why. He is a little skinny guy and said he didn't think anything was wrong with my seat. I left there and went to an upholstery shop up the street and asked that guy if he had any suggestions. He was a bigger guy like me, 200ish and said he could tell what I was talking about. He suggested trying to get them to replace the seat foam under warranty. My in service date was 6-6-13, so this is the absolute last day of the factory warranty. I went back to the dealer and asked the service mgr. if he would attempt to get the foam replacement ok'd. I wanted a work order made today to verify that I brought up the problem during the warranty period. His answer was "There's nothing wrong and they won't do anything about it." and would not make a work order on it. I sent a PM to the "Ford Service" person here on this forum and got a reply today. I gave Meagan my info and she is going to look into it for me. I don't know how it will turn out, but at least I have it in the pipeline before the warranty expires, even if I had to come in through the back door.

 

Good luck with it, IB... At worst, you could have an upholstery shop remake the cushion with harder and/or thicker foam, or simply put in a hard nylon base under the springs (like a plywood board between the mattress and box spring). Way cheaper than a new vehicle. It is harder with today's vehicles to swap out seats given things like side air bags, seat belt interlocks, seat heaters, etc.

Hope you can make it work for your wife...I know what it's like to have a vehicle that you love but that you can't be comfortable in.

George