theiceman

Well here I am at it again .. I was getting a little bored since not much has happened to my car since I blew the air box off a couple of years ago now. There was one thing irritating me and that was a small tear in the Pasenger seat.

I bought some cork seat covers on ebay for a 77 a couple of years ago and fixed te drivers seat. It was suppose to be a temporary measure while i fixed mine , but never did. So now I have the matching one for the other side and I can send mine out to get patched. The seatwork on the 78 on model looked much nicer but also was not as robust for sure . So this "tough "basketweave " patern will do for ne and doesn't look to far off.
i am not sure how the pics will show so I will just do the mini write up and you can see the pics.

there is a pic of the tear i had .

Taking the actual seat out was about 5 minutes with my air gun , front two bolts first , slide the seat all the way forward then the back to bolts.
Take it into the basement , take the seat rails off with a 4mm allen wrench I think. They were really gummed up ..... a project for a bit later.

Underneath the seat it is pretty straight forward. i used a dremmel to cut through the old " hog rings" holding the seat flap down and then bent up on the hooks to take off the material around the outsides. there was some wire to so I untwisted that,
To get the "bucket " effect stiff pices of wire are fed through loops of fabric then pulled through slots in the spong. these are fastened to the botom of the sponge with more hog rigs. You have to dig for these but I got to them and cut them off. you have to cut through some sponge but it is unavoidable.

then the seat material comes away. My sponge wasn't in to bad a shape actually so i didn't steam it. I did however glue some webbing to the bottom of the seat. This would give the hog rings something to bit as I was afraid the sponge was starting to deteriorate after 30 years. This would allow the hog rings to grab soemtin along with the wire .

While the glue dried for the webbing i cleaned out the rails with brake claner in a bucket .. it cam out blck with all the old grease. i lubed the rails with silcon spray and they slide great.

When the glue dried a threaded the steel rod through the seat material ears for my replcement cover and pushed them down into the slits in the sponge. The run horizontally through the seat ( 4) the tough part was using the hog ring pliers to grab the sponge, the new webbing and the wire piece in the spong. Needed to people to do that.
once the wires were all gripped with about 4 hog rings each it started to take shape. Pulled the rest of the seat cover over and reded the edges on the hooks.
buttoned her up with 3 more hog rings on the flaps and I was done. Took about 2 hours not includuding drying time for the glue.

The tricky part is putting the seat back in . Fter the reails are on you HAVE to tighten the back bolts first , if you do the front the seat will not slide forward enough to get the back bolts in.

HAndy tip ... put the front bolts in finger tight from underneath. This puts some of the bolt through the hole so it will stay alligned while you do the back . Slide the seat forward ( the upside down bolt wont interfere ) tighten in the back bolts. Slide the seat back , take out the ypside doen bolts , put them in the riht way and tighten down .. Job done.

i found with the lst seat it doesn't look perfect right away , takes a few heat and siting cycles for the cusion to form to the cover , then the wrinkles all go away.

Now I can just relax while i have mine patched.

cheers.

theiceman

Here are some pics of it as it went back together. You can see now with the webbing the hog rings have soemthing to bite. i was afraid if I just tried to grab the sponge the wire might just pull the hog ring right through ...

dshepp806

Nice, Ice.

My driver side bloster is torn open, so I'm up for seat cover rework. For now, I bought a set of chaps to hide it. My leather seats have the black piping. I always worry about how the linen color will match with the doors and console....

What do they call that web material?

Best,

Doyle

theiceman

Not even sure what it is called Doyle .. I just went to the fabric store and said I need some fine webbing and she handedme a giant piece for like 2.00 i then glued it on with a spray adhesive glue. Worked great .

floete

Chaps? What are chaps? Got pix or a link? A number of cars I've looked at in my great 911/912e hunt have had bolster problems; maybe 'chaps' would be a good temporary fix. Thanks!

edit: google is my friend. for others who might be curious about the so-called, ha ha, Village People chaps look, check out:

http://www.automotion.com/product.as...1&dept_id=4913 .

dshepp806

Take a look here: http://www.automotion.com/product.as...dept%5Fid=4913


I couldn't bring myself to use complete seat covers, as I never saw any I really liked.....then I found the above item....seemed to better serve my purpose, as the black actually goes quite well with the color scheme.

Again, just a temporary "patch".

Best,

Doyle

justinsrx7

Nice work Clive. If my seats were in better shape, I would have gone that route as well, but my bolsters were shot. That's just a little bit out of my league...lol

theiceman

yeah if the bolsters are toast Justin you are looking at new sponge probably. Then I would have gone your route and just replaced them. Problem for me also is my car is pretty well orginal and finding Cork seats in good shape is very difficult. HAving a black car with black seats not only looks great but black seats are easier to find.

Ed Hughes

Great job ice! Upholstery has always seemed like a black art to me, but it looks like you have a good handle on it.

theiceman

... well ... not really .... I haven't showed the after picture ...

Ed Hughes

Well, then I'll reserve judgement. What you showed looks good.

rusnak

The best way is to access the rear side of the skin, and double stitch. If you spray water on the hide, it will expand enough to stretch over the foam, then it'll shrink as it dries. You might have to build up the foam with layers of thinner foam.

theiceman

doesn't look too bad .. will do until i get my seats repaired.

theiceman

colour looks off in that pic ... try this one

Ed Hughes

See, it was a good job! Better than most pre-89's out there, IMO.