June 2007

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Seat Refurbishment

As promised in last months update, here is the fun we had breathing new life into our tired old coupe seats. The MGA Coupe has a different style of coverings to those used in roadsters. The backrests are substantially wider and higher  but I believe that the size of the seat is the same for all models. I have included pictures of the old seats to show what can be achieved. The reality is that I was only able to reuse the original seat frames because everything else was beyond repair. Everything is available to repair the seats. My preference was to reuse the existing covers but they were too far gone. The original leather was split and had holes in a number of areas and the stitching had was broken in many areas.  Any repairs would have been clearly visible and for me the seats set off the interior of the car so in this instance I decided to go for new covers and cushioning. The material used for cushioning is called rubberised horsehair. I have no idea if it is horsehair or not how ever but its readily available. The cotton wool padding material has been replaced with foam rubber. In general don't attempt to glue the seat covers to the foam/padding. 

Backrest 

Strip Down

One seat was systematically taken apart in order to understand how the padding in the coupe seat was built up because there has been a debate going amongst MGA owners about the lack of support given to the lower back area by the stock seats 

This picture was taken with the back rest folded down on the base frame. I opened up the cover at the bottom the backrest and you can see that the coupe at least did have a token piece of rubberised 'horsehair' padding to support the lower back. Note the three small strips of plywood screwed to the backrest frame. The cover was stapled to these.

Here I have taken the old cover off. The backrest is in the upright position. The main rubberised horsehair padding has been peeled off the backrest. It was held in place by wads of very flimsy cotton wool type strips.  (the white material seen in the photograph) Again you can see the small piece of rubberised horsehair 'lumbar' padding near the bottom edge. It also had a 'wad' of this padding near the top of the frame. In the picture it is laying on the lumbar pad

Here is the seat frame on the left and the back rest frame on the right. They are bolted together by a bolt on each side and the back frame pivots on these bolts. The frames are the only original parts I used in the seat rebuilds. They were rusty like everything else on the car but cleaned up nicely. The back rest frame has a thick card backboard that wraps around the frame. The original was badly creased and split in a number of places. The plywood strips used to staple the cover to have been taken off and were replaced with new pieces.

Rebuild

Step 1 is to glue the new backboard. Its made of thick card and has to be curved around the back frame. This job needs lots of contact adhesive and gaffer tape. I left the tape in place. You can see that I replaced the seat lumber pad with a  piece of rubberised horsehair that has the same thickness as the main back cushion. The upper piece that was cotton padding is a half thickness piece of rubberised horsehair cushion material.

Here the main rubberised horsehair back cushion has been glued in place to the back board and frame. It ends up being slightly curve when in place as the edges get shaped by the frame. The top edge is trimmed to match the top edge of the back frame. A piece of foam rubber is then glued across the top edge of the frame. It wraps over the top edge of the frame and gets glued to the back board one side and the main cushion on the other. 

Felt material is then glued to cover all of the outside of the back board. The edges are then wrapped around the frame edges and glued to the main cushion.  

The top edge of the felt material is wrapped over the top edge of the frame covering the foam rubber and again glued to the main cushion. 

Another piece of foam rubber is glued around the top area of the back board curling over the top edge of the frame. The idea is to completely mask the shape of the frame so that no edges are visible when the cover is put on.

More gaffer tape was used to cover all the edges. It looks awful I know but it does the job. 

Key things are to use good quality spray adhesive that is made for upholstery work that gives you a thick coating. Any other will drive you made because you wont get a thick enough layer. Remember to cover both surfaces and let them get tacky.

With the gaffer tape in place that cover slide on with no problem. An alternative is to wrap the seat back in cling film but I did not like the idea of having a moisture proof barrier in a seat. Surely its best to let it breath? At this stage make sure its on the frame evenly and that you have pleats parallel to the bottom of the frame. Make sure it tightly on the frame with no wrinkles front or back.

Note the plywood pieces are in place waiting for the cover staples. This sequence of photos just shows one way stapling the cover. Step 1 is to pull the back down tight making sure that seam is evenly curved at the top of the seat back

Then pull the front on the cover down and staple it over the back piece. The loose wings are neatly folded around the bolt holes in the frame and tucked under the two main flaps already stapled in place. Finish off with a staple salvo to make sure that the cover is well fixed to the plywood pieces.

The stapling is done with  staple gun commonly available. You have to keep check that creases are progressively pulled out of the material as you staple it in place. It requires a bit of trial and error. Don't be afraid to go through a couple of restarts. I had to pull out a bunch of staples to get it looking right.  Here is the finished article but I am still working on the two creases you can see. The tension that you put in the cover itself when pulling out the creases is trial and error. Do it until it looks alright for you. You will be the one sitting on it after all.  

Seat  

Here is old seat cover coming off and this is what you expect 50 year old foam rubber to look like. In some areas it was flat but still foam like but in other areas it had start to turn into a powder. The base has a mesh cage that protrudes out of the plywood frame. You can see the old foam trying to escape at the corners of the mesh cage.

When I took off the old cover and foam I found the base frame was in fact broken (See left picture) at the lower left side (looking at the picture above on the right) where it is narrow takes a lot of stress from the back frame. I am told that it is a common problem. Seat bases are handed and not interchangeable from side to side. 

The three wooden blocks seen on the right hand picture above locate the seat within the base frame. Nothing else is used!

Here are the replacement seat base, metal cage and stapling pieces for the seat back. All these are readily available. If I had wood working table saws etc I would have made my own but it was cheaper to buy them ready made rather than invest in power tools that I would have used just for these and for cutting floor boards.

Make sure you give the wood 2 or 3 good coatings of preservative. You will also find that the  three wooden  locating blocks will need trimming in order to make them fit in seat base frame

The metal cage is screwed into a recess of the wooden base frame.

Over this is glued a layer of thin felt. The purpose is to cover all sharp metal edges and screw heads because the foam is glued in next and any metal will gouge into it and wear holes.

Replacement seat foams come ready shaped (again handed left and right hand side) It is glued to the wooden base and the felt glued on from the previous step.

Foam rubber strips are then added to the front edge to conceal the edge of the wood base where it is ramped up. I used two pieces before I got the wooden edge to disappear.

The cover is a lot easier to fix and is just a case of tightening it evenly on opposite sides progressively working out wrinkles. Again how tight you make it up to you so long as you keep the seams straight and parallel. 

Finished 

BEFORE AFTER

Keen eyed reader will have spotted that the 'Before' picture has the seats wrongly placed. The straight side of the seat cushion goes along side the transmission. The 'After' pictures are the drivers seat for a right hand drive car. The give away is how the seat cushion is cut in on one side and not the other in order to make space for the handbrake. The middle picture is more representative of the colour. These replacement covers have leather areas where you sit and imitation leather in those areas normally not exposed such as the seat back and sides facing the transmission tunnel. You can only tell the  difference when closely looking at them. By the way its a very comfortable seat and has been well test by everyone in the family even though it is not in the car. Remember that the hardest part of seat renovation is getting both seats to look similar. That's a challenge as you have to get the same tension on the covers in both seats and takes trial and error but be patient and prepared to take staples out and you will get there.
 

 

 

 

All stuff on this site Copyright the Barbers, July, 2007 .
For problems or questions regarding this web contact mga1600@btopenworld.com
Last updated: 30/07/2007 .