Car Seats and Sciatica

[revinto7]

try an inversion table if you can to relieve pressure on the nerve ,also a firm flat sport bucket like the mustang is the culprit ,my hellcat seats are much more comfy for me and they are bigger to .my 18 gt cloth seats are better for my sciatica than the leather mustang seats and forget recaro seats they are made for 5'8 160 pound people i can't even get my lats between the bolsters ..

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[Grintch]

I think ur stuck adjusting the seats to find a more comfortable position. The aftermarket seats are more tailored towards racing and lightweight. I personally haven’t seen a seat that is marketed as more comfortable and thus the premium seats are probably the best it’ll get. Maybe you can talk to somebody that does upholstery and see if they can add more foam or something and recover the seats?

Recaro has an Ergo line.

Even the race seats often have different size options, which should help given his issue seems to be the seat is too narrow for him. But you really need to try before you buy, and finding a place that stocks a wide range of seats that you can try, including size variations is often tough.

 

[Memphis-EcoStang]

You actually sit on it - it helps your back by allowing your tailbone to "sag" beneith the normal sitting position. As crazy as it sounds, I think it's actually the natural position for our spines. This is the one I have: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V2L5JRA/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It works exactly the opposite it looks. the open end of the "U" goes towards the back of the seat - that's the tailbone relief area. I find that sometimes I have to position the padding right next to the back of the seat, and other times I have to pull it about an inch or two forward. It all depends on the airline seat. I'm a heavy guy, so you might not need to fanagle it as much as I do.

I will say - I don't use it in the car, I only use it on airplanes, but I'm throwing it out there in case it might help. Might be worth a try if it's got so bad you don't drive the car as much as you would like. I hope it helps, and sorry again about the back!

Gave this a shot- seems to help (THANKS!), chiropractor has had me on an inversion table, regular treatment seems to be helping. Of all things I have tried so far though, Yoga seems to be helping the most, loosening up the hip joint which seems to be an issue. Sports trainer is also suggesting adding Sumo deadlifts to the workout routine to help out. Have a trip to 425 motor sports in Bellevue scheduled, they have a couple hundred seats in stock that you can sit in, just haven't worked up the courage for the long drive yet. Also an ice pack on the lower back has been helping with the longer drives

 

[RBINCA]

Great informative thread, have an 2018 with cloth seats, within half hour my sciatica starts hurting. The leather seats in my Shelby are better can go about an hour before pain starts setting in. The leather bucket seats in my old 2000 F150 Lariat are the best giving me about an 1.5 hours before pain. I have purchased a foam pad for the 2018 but haven't tried yet due to the weather..

 

[CrashOverride]

That's awesome, I'm glad it helped out. When I went in for physical therapy, they pointed to my very tight hamstrings (Because I have a tendency to slump forward and use my back instead of my legs). They had me doing some hamstring stretches and that helped out quite a bit. I used to have an inversion table, but for me I traded back pain for a headache. I've seen some horizontal ones which basically stretch you like a torture device, yet controlled and slow, and not painful. "Spinal decompression" is what they call it here. I have to wonder if spending several hours a day (e.g. sleeping) in a decompression device would allow the spine a much greater chance to heal.

The worst riding vehicle for me? When I bought my old SRT-4 from a guy, he had it on lowering springs. The neon is plagued with an already very short suspension travel, so lowering it requires the springs to basically be a piece of cylinder pipe. I had to drive it back almost 300 miles. It hurt so bad, that I lowered the hot air pressure in the tires to about 20 psi. I never stopped for more than a few minutes along the way for fear that the cold pressure would be so low, I'd break the bead. My first mod on that car was to go back to normal springs.

 

[ripto]

I also have a problem with the premium seats. Since day 1, driving the car home (of course never felt any pain on the test drives), my lower back has hurt me. My previous car, a '12 Focus, I never had an issue in, and hardly ever remember touching the seat adjustments. I adjust my seat basically daily on the Mustang. I've tried all different kinds of positions. I attribute my pain to being in a reclined position, rather than straight up like working at an office desk. I was so down and regretting this purchasing for months, I still do some days.

I found the lumbar support to be a huge pain, even on the most "deflated" setting, so much that I removed the seat from the car, opened it up, and disabled the mechanism. That helped to a point.

My remaining issue I feel is that my seat bottom sags so horribly, that my back is no longer aligned with the seat back. I have sat on a couple of folded up t-shirts recently, raising me up maybe an inch, and that seemed to help. I have some supplies from a local upholstery shop that I will attempt to install in the seat bottom to boost up the rear of it a bit to replicate the effect of the t-shirts. I can still feel what feels like lumbar support resting against my mid to lower back, where it should be at my lower back. Just seems too high. I think that extra inch or so higher in my seat now would help.

I have thought about adding washers to the rear seat mounts too, but I also need that relative height adjustment between seat bottom and back but that washers won't help there.

I have considered pads, but they take away from the heating and cooling effects (which I've also had several problems with so far with this car).

I have been to a back doctor and started seeing a chiropractor about 6 months ago now to help me. My back doctor said I had minor wear at my lower most disk, and that core work would help, and my chiro says I have spinal stenosis and "shelf butt" and is trying to re-establish a straighter back.

All in all, zero problems in my Focus over the 6 years I owned it, and problems from day one in the Mustang since purchasing it 9 months ago.

 

[CrashOverride]

This is far from an easy swap, but you could think about swapping the entire seat. I had a BMW 135 a few cars ago, and it was an entire manual seat - no power or anything - but it had lots of different settings. I found it to be the most comfortable seat of any of the 30+ cars I've owned. Granted, I had the "Leatherette" (Read: Craptastic-plastic) seats, so I got the back sweats pretty bad, but BMW does have real leather seats.

 

[Deleted member 35786]

I purchased my car a year ago with 21K on it and the seat has been uncomfortable and stiff since I owned it. I use a pad for long drives. However I am considering swapping out the seat cushion with a new one. No telling how much of beating the previous owners did to it.. (Prior rental car).. Question is, is it the foam bad or just the wires underneath are stretched out?

 

[Grintch]

I suspect it is more a driving position/ ergonomics issue than a seat issue. Especially for ripto. Given the drastic driving position difference between the Mustang and Focus.

 

[Deleted member 35786]

I have tried every position available on that seat. I am afraid I will just have to deal with it, perhaps install a new bottom seat cushion might help. Just leary if that will alleviate some of the issue. Have not heard from ripto as to if he had any solution. Curious if he did.

 

[ripto]

I suspect it is more a driving position/ ergonomics issue than a seat issue. Especially for ripto. Given the drastic driving position difference between the Mustang and Focus.

Yeah I am pretty sure its the angle I'm sitting at, how reclined it is, and the relative angle between my thighs and back. I managed to raise my butt up and the seat back mounts up a bit to flatten me out a little, but that makes me sit higher than I'd like, but I'll take it over constant back pain... now its just intermittent.

Since I've laid eyes on them, I'd say it would be hard for the metal wires of the seat to be bent. A support could be broken but there's really just not a lot there in the way of support. If you were handy you could probably weld in some thin metal pieces that span from each side of the seat and that would support the cushion really well.

 

[Deleted member 35786]

I just replaced my bottom seat cushion and it feels better. Not a drastic difference but a noticeable one. I attached a picture of the old cushion on the right and new one on the left. I have 29K miles on the car and I purchased it with 20K. It was a prior Avis rental, so there is no telling who sat in the seat and how much prior abuse it took.

 

[3star2nr]

Any Sciatica sufferer's out there who have changed out their seats (currently have Premium heated/cooled seats) for something less aggravating/painful? If so what seats? Anything to look for in particular?

These seats in particular aggravate my back so bad I am starting to dread getting into the car. At this point I am hoping to just replace the seats, but the pain is bad enough I have started to wonder if I need to sell the car.

Seems to be the seats in particular, Long car trips in other peoples cars do not bother my back as much as a 15 minute car ride in my car.

Try using a tennis ball on your lower back around the area where it hurts.

Short of that sell the car. There are no other alternatives

 

[ripto]

These seats have bothered me from day 1. I've taken apart the lumber (felt it was too intrusive even when fully out), added foam, raised the rear of it with spacers, and still bothers me but to a lesser extent. Right now I'm running it all the way down, with no spacers, which I expected to really kill my back like it did at the early stages of owning the car but somehow its not that bad. I removed the spacers and lowered it because I had a back doctor appt and I have an MRI scheduled, so I want the problem to show.

Right now I feel like the biggest complaint I have is the curvature of the seat back is such that the lower portion sticks out too much into my lower back. My only option I see is to trim the foam to make it flatter but that will affect the fitment of the cover (make it saggy). Here are pics of the lumbar I disabled, the foam I added, and the spacers with washers.

Lumbar:

Foam:

Before foam:

After foam:

Spacers:

Before spacers:

After spacers: note the little change in height of the front of the seat bottom and the decent change in height at the rear by the seat belt buckle

 

[DavidinDurango]

Just finished a 2000 mile trip, two days out and two days back. I noticed my pain could be relieved by changing the weight distribution on my (fat) butt. PP2 with Recaros.

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