I've been having problems with the front seats in my 1991 - 245 ever since I purchased it three years ago. Namely both upper parts of the front seats were a little rotated to the inside. After looking into the brickboard archives I suspected to be the seat foam, failing from overweight :-)), especially since the previous owner was as big as me. Still it was curious since I had no such problems with the 1979 - 244.
Last week though I had to deal with the problem since the upper half of the left seat back part broke completely and was held in place only by the textile material.
To my surprise I found that it was not the seat foam (actually the foam was in pretty bad shape but not completely broken so I managed to repair it), but the metal structure of the seat had colapsed. Three of the seat metal joints gave in and the fourth was about to. More than that I found out that event the structure of the bottom gave in, having one complete fracture and three incomplete. As you will see in the pictures, all fractures in the metal are not on the welding but very close to it, it's metal fatigue as I see it.
This happened to both seats ( on the other seat the fractures were incomplete)and while I can understand it on my seat, for it carries 100 kilos (220 pounds) the other seat is usually taken by my wife, and she weights only 45 kilos.
Beeing curious about it I removed and checked the other seats of my old 244 - manufactured 12 years earlier, to find out that these were in perfect shape, no fractures, just as they left the factory in 1978.
Here are the images:
http://img17.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc210&image=137_PICT2885.jpg
http://img5.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc182&image=d24_PICT2886.jpg
http://img10.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc76&image=20a_PICT2883.jpg
http://img21.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc49&image=aaa_PICT2874.jpg
http://img7.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc129&image=60e_PICT2875.jpg
http://img22.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc133&image=460_PICT2880.jpg
http://img22.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc128&image=6c8_PICT2881.jpg
http://img16.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc186&image=e6b_PICT2882.jpg
http://img9.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc41&image=a8a_PICT2884.jpg
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1991 Volvo 245; 1979 Volvo 244