Interior - Seats. Rebuilding

You might remember I pulled the BMW seats apart and to gain some much needed height inside the car I needed to do away with the innerspring design and use a tin bucket out of a Toyota Vitz.

The tin bucket is a rigid setup, so I called in on my friendly Upholsterer to obtain some advice on the best way we could look at upholstering the seats so that they were reasonably comfortable, but also in such a way that not too much thickness would be added to the cushion.

Grant advised that 2 inch thick dense foam was about as thin as you can go and this would compress down to somewhere near an inch. Perfect!

Grant kindly gave me an off cut so I could try it in the car.....and it worked I could still see out the windscreen.....just!

SO....on with putting the seats back together. Firstly I had my mate Bill attend to welding the tin buckets in place. They sat inside the BMW frames nicely so it was just a case of tack welding them to the frame along the front edge and creating some brackets for the unsupported sides. Again Bill welded these in place for me.

I had just intended wiping the seats down and leaving it at that. (they are quite greasy from all the lubed cables, motors and cogs and years of dust had stuck to this grease too).

Here you can see that build up of grime.

Unfortunately though the tin buckets began to rust. Its amazing how quickly they deteriorated actually. This was no good, as you can imagine, when Grant goes to upholster these seats the last thing he'd want is rust and grease and dirt getting over the new upholstery as he tries to cover them.

There was nothing for it then, but to give them a good tidy up. The grease and dirt came off okay and I touched up the rusty bits with POR15. This is a special paint that goes straight over rust, hence the name POR which is an abbreviation for Paint Over Rust.

It is wicked stuff. You put it on with a brush and it provides a nice smooth glossy coat. It is weird too cause it doesn't rely on evaporation to cure like normal paint. Instead it draws moisture to cure, so it can even dry on a wet day. When you buy this paint they warn you not to get it on your skin. This isn't because its toxic (though I imagine it is) it is because you won't get this stuff off once its dry. Meths, turps, thinners, strippers. None of them will go near it. The only way to get it off is by using a mechanical method like a grinder. Funnily enough an angle grinder to the finger tips to get surplus paint off isn't that pleasant, so you just have to wait for it to wear off over time.....about 2 weeks.

I have learnt my lesson though and always use rubber gloves when using POR15 now.

Anyway, it didn't need to be flash, the aim was just to ensure the seats were clean and well protected. Here you can see one all painted up and reassembled. Looks okay and as I say the main thing is they are totally clean now. Hard case really as I have spent about 24 hours on tidying these seats and rebuilding them and the only bits you will see after they are reupholstered is the little blue plastic covers you can see on the sides of the seat in the below picture. They will of course be painted to match the upholstery colour.

Here you can see one of the tack welds that Bill did along the front of the buckets to attach them to the frame.

And here you can see the upstands added to hold the previously unsupported sides in place. There are blobs of weld on the top too that you can see. These were actually drilled holes and weld has been put down through them and onto a metal plate underneath for added strength.

Here is a view of those metal plates from underneath. And no thats not a dribble of black paint dribbling down the support bracket, it is one of many claws on the underside of the seat. When upholstering the seats the fabric is pulled over these claws which are then folded over to hold the upholstery in place.

I'm sure you'll agree the mechanicals under the seats are looking much better now too.

Ok two seats done and ready to set aside.......whats next......