Reupholstering my seats
Entry posted by Shawn Piper in Restoration ·
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In the 80's, my aunt had the seats reupholstered. Unfortunately, the upholstery was done in black when they should have been blue. This was something I wanted to fix.
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The first thing I did was tear down the seats. The horse hair padding was basically powder so this process was really messy.
Once the seats were dismantled, I pressure washed all the crud from the frames. The rust was removed using Metal Rescue Gel... this stuff works amazingly well and I highly recommend it.
Some seat parts were damaged, such as the interior plastic dust covers, so I acquired some derelict seats for parts.
Other parts I sourced on eBay Germany, such as the fasteners. I bought new fasteners because mine were stripped from the previous upholstery job (I know the Philips style isnt correct for a 69, but it was better than what I was working with). .jpg.2e700b215e187791f06786870beb020e.jpg)
The hinges and seat rails came apart and I sent the pieces out to have them re-chromed and zinc plated. It was at this point that I knew I could never reassemble these things (the huge hinge spring looked like it required a special tool that I didn't have).
Fortunately, there is a local shop called Autobahn Interiors that specializes in vintage Porches. They had the right tools to re-assemble the seats and were also able to recover them using the correct German vinyl.
In this process, we discovered that my seats were a rare, wide-backed variety.
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And here are the completed seats. The rear seats don't have the basket weave pattern across the whole thing because the upholstery shop didn't have an iron big enough. Overall, I'm very pleased with them and I think they are a huge improvement over what I had.
Edited by Shawn Piper
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