I thought I'd show you what you're likely to find when you start rebuilding the seats in your Classic Chevy... As my original front seat had long ago been discarded for bucket seats, the following photos show our work with the back seat. |
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We started out by removing the faded velour covers from an upholstery job in the 70's. Note the diamond stitch pattern. The seat covers show the abuse of 10 years in the Dakota sun. Originally a nice blue color, the seats now are a very sickly purple color! |
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Hiding under all that 70's velour was the original seats covers! You can see the model 150 seat covers had a rather unflattering look. The two-tone silver & black style was carried through to the door panels as well. The matting was in fairly good shape though. It is fastened to the seat with factory "hog rings". This orginal cover was next removed to expose the seat frame and springs. |
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A close examination of the bottom seat frame showed it was bent in two spots. I bent it back into the correct shape without much trouble. Unfortunately, two of the springs were broken. Do you think some heavyweight butts may have sat on these seats and caused the damaged? Ha-ha!
So, what do you do with a broken spring on your project's seats? Well, you can try to fix it by welding the broken spring and then keeping your fingers crossed in hopes that the weld will hold well into the future despite any big butts that may sit in your classic! Another option is to try to locate an NOS (new old stock) seat. The problem is that NOS parts for Classic Chevys are getting increasingly expensive and difficult to locate. Because of the age of our classics, a lot of NOS parts are not in the best of shape either. That's where companies like Glide Engineering come to the rescue. Located in southern California, Glide offers brand new seat frames for a wide variety of vehicles. Although the Glide products are pricey, the quality is better than original and have set a new standard for the automotive restoration industry.
At this point, I plan to obtain some NOS seats from Rock's Antique Automobiles - a local new and used parts supplier specializing in 55/6/7 Chevys. I'll update this page as the project progresses... |
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