New Seat, What a Treat - Part 1

I had a few days off, so rather than spend them playing in the snow or taking a personal trip, I stayed home, and re-upholstered the driver seat of Oliver, the MG. Today's post covers the start of that journey. Sorry today's post is a few hours late.

Old Seat Out
Remember when I installed the old seats on top of the new carpet (See MGB - carpeting (part 2))? Even with the nuts jammed under the seat rails, the seats placed the driver kind of low in the car. Sure, it is a little British car, so you're supposed to sit low. But, there are limits. I figure my eyes should be about 2/3 of the way up the windscreen, and I was around halfway. It felt like I was sitting a hair over the floor, suspended by the vinyl seat cover and little else. I had planned to replace the seat covers, foams, etc last Spring when I had the small win-fall that netted me the new carpet. I just hadn't gotten to the work because I had other things going on, and I wanted to drive the car. So, with this small break, I had my chance. Starting with a basic 7/16" spanner, I removed the 4 bolts which held the driver seat to the floor and removed the driver seat.

I moved the seat upstairs to the shedroom. That room is clean, and all of the interior bits are stored there, so it made more sense than trying to do it in the packed garage or in one of the general living spaces. First, the headrest needs to come off. With the seat on the floor, I stood on the seat bottom and whip-sawed the headrest: pushing it all the way down and then yanking it back up. This violent push/shove blend actually worked, freeing the headrest in a handful of reps. I set the headrest aside, and moved to the Lower Cover.

Old Lower Cover Off
The lower cover is held on with 4 sets of 4 hog rings: one set along each of the sides. I was able to work them free with a small slotted screw driver, exposing the padding underneath. The padding was orange and tattered near the edges. When originally constructed, this foam would sit on top of a 3-sided metal hoop to which 6 rubber straps are attached. This webbing creates a little give to the seat, and provides the lift from underneath. On this seat, the webbing was in disarray. Most of the ends were disconnected and tattered. Fortunately, I had a replacement set for the refresh effort. The pad, cover and webbing were tossed towards the shedroom door and I shifted to the Upper Cover.

Old Upper Cover Off

The upper cover is held on with 4 square clips along the back and 4 hog rings below that, holding the front down. The hog rings flew off with a little pressure with a slotted screwdriver. I did my best to not damage the cover. The square clips needed more coaxing, and since I did not know about them, I had not ordered replacements, so I needed to be careful with the originals. Before the cover will slide off, the seat-angle arm needs to be removed. It is held on with a Phillps head bolt. Once the 2 sets of clips and the angle arm were removed, the cover slid right off the top.

Within the cover, I could see a few interesting things. First, the original foam was orange, and had tattered along the edges. The "hard back" was cardboard that appeared to not be original, nor standard-issue. It looked like a square of cardboard had been cut from a shoe box, or something. It had been taped, with duct tape, to the orange foam. Cool. The tape, cardboard and foam fell apart without much prompting. I think the cover was holding everything together. I tossed the mess atop the Lower Cover mess.

Separate
Now, I was down to the metal. I could see the rust spots, and recognized the need to address the frame. There are 2 plastic hinge covers that protect fingers and the covers from the seat hinge. These remove with a Phillips screwdriver. With the plastic covers set aside, the bolts that represent the hinge can be removed with 1/2 inch spanners. Before I could deal with the rust, though, I removed the seat runners from the bottom of the seat. Moving the seat forward and backward had become difficult, so I wanted to get all that nasty grease and grit out of the runners. I took the seat frame and the runners downstairs, and then focused on the head rest.

Headrest

The seam for the headrest cover is on the bottom, hidden by a small plastic strip, held in place by 2 Phillips screws. With the plastic strip removed, the staples which hold the cover on can be addressed. I used a small slotted screw driver to loosen them, and finished the job with a pair of needle-nose pliers. The cover slides off fairly easily at this point, taking the old foam with it. I had new covers and new foam, but I hadn't anticipated small wood slats along the bottom edge. It is to these slats that the staples and Phillips screws attach. Not all of the wood was bad, but the bottom-most pieces were. I took one good sample from each side and cut pieces that would fit from some scrap wood I had lying around. In a pinch, you could cut up a paint stir-stick: it is the right thickness. The key is finding something thin enough to fit in the channel along the underside of he headrest.

The headrest steel was in a similar state to the rest of the seat frame: some surface rust spots, but no rust-through. I brought it downstairs as well, and moved all 3 pieces to the front porch.

Rust Treatment
Some aspects of working on cars does not change no matter what you are working on: dealing with rust. I attacked the rusty areas with 60-grit sandpaper and then sanded the whole thing with 100-grit. This left a decent edge for paint to bite into. I painted all surfaces with Permatex Rust Treatment, and let them dry overnight. The following morning, I shot them with some black Rustoleum I had in the garage, and hung everything to cure on the front porch with bailing wire.

All of the random other bits got the cleaning treatment. The seat runners, for example, were soaked in de-greaser and cleaned up. All of the little plastic bits and handles were deep cleaned as well. Even the fasteners which I intended to reuse were cleaned up and scrubbed.

I was feeling pretty good at this point. The tear down was easy, the rust invasion was not too bad. I figured the easy part was over, though. Turned out, I was right, but I'll get into that next time. Thanks, as always, for following along-