Thread: 110 county seat restoration

Hi rar110
The wadding,as they call it is available from clarke rubber style shops,in varying degrees of "support".You could get a brown canvas in a similar "hue" if thats the term and do a rebuild yourself.
Or an auto apoulstery(well I cant work the spelling out opscan do a rebuild for you.
Andrew

upholstery. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]


You could alternatively use vinyl. Use staples to secure the vinyl to the base and can either fold or seam the corners depending on your desire.

Try looking in discount fabric places like Spotlight as well. :wink:

thanks for the feed back. I think doing it my self is the only option. I think I will be off to a foam shop (maybe not Clark Robbers) and spotlight in the near future.

I got a quote from a non-genuine supplier today for two seat bases - $1300 - I had to sit down after that.

rar110

Let us know if you find a good foam shop that's cheaper than the other one you implied wasn't. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif[/img]

Originally posted by rar110

I got a quote from a non-genuine supplier today for two seat bases - $1300 - I had to sit down after that.

That's probably without GST. 8O

Spotlight has "learn to" classes as well, perhaps you could enroll in a course to brush up your fabric skills before you attack the seats ?

G'day you cannot use staples on 110 front seats as they have a steel base as different to the Series Landrover with a wooden base, the 110 seat cover is a mixture of fabric and vinyl plus the cushion, it is held in place by some type of flexible material to hold the vinyl sides into the steel base, a mate of mine had his Series 3 Isuzu seats (same as early 110's) recovered by an automotive uphoslterer it was quite reasonably priced at the time and hard to tell the difference, my 2 front seats are pretty ordinary at the moment and I will probably be doing something similar in the near future cheers

Another feather to my cap - when i was a kid i lived next door to a motor trimmer - many mis spent hours at his elbow watching and learning.

Recovering auto stuff is very straight forward, if not a little time consuming.

You will need the following :

access to an old solid sewing machine , i have an Old Singer which is very solid and will work on upholstry material. Or ideally an industrial machine. But i recently did my lounge with the "normal one"

a china graph pencil

some kero to remove the china graph pencil and the overspray of the glue (if used)

some contact adhesive like Quick grip - 3M makes a bewdy that is dear but works well and is in spray cans.

a straight edge.

a stanley knife

Heavy weight upholstry thread - you can get this at spotlight

and this is how you do it:

take the seat out of the vehicle, take the seat apart and into its two component pieces.

take the runners off , and basically remove all the metal clips etc which hold the vynil on, sometimes there will be springs through a calico type material with steel pins - youll know it when ya see it.

once the cover is off, with a stanley knnife carefully cut the stitching that holds the pieces togather once you have the pieces apart take the bits of cotton dregs off them.

Lay the new vynil or velour out on a large flat area - polished floor boards are good - Do ya feel like mum making prom dresses yet?

Now heres a tricky bit have a look at the old seat and if there is foam on the inside of the vinyl you will need to glue foam to the vinyl before you start cutting. This is fairly easy BUT - upolstry foam has this - what I can describe as facing its a poly type of white stuff that is smooth to touch - unlike raw foam which is sort of sticky... apply contact adhesive to both sides and glue away as per the glue instructions.

once the glue is dry turn the material face side up and with the china graph pencil trace around the edge of the pieces, so that you have the whole size marked out. You will see that there is a stitching line about 5 to 10 mm in from the edge, if you would like to be really anal copy that line in on the pieces.

Now that you have it all copied out, cut the pieces out and you are nearly ready to sew. Set the machine up and get to it lad !

basically your out facing material faces in, so basically you are sewing inside out.

At this stage dont forget that sometimes there are smallish pieces of calico type material that are sewn in to pull the vynil through the foam of the base / back of the seat thats how you get that contour look.

Ok so once you have sewn it all up turn it right side out and check your work. Basically there should only be a very small bit of china graph showing if you have done things right (clean up with kero if you have to)

fit the new cover to the old seat base / foam and secure in the same manner it was when ya took it to bits - take some digi pix if your memory isnt so good

Once it is all together clean up overspray and china graph with kero

Basically its really easy - depite my instructions

im happy to offer any advice - in fact if anyone in sydeny has a seat base or something that needs to be re covered and they are willing to pay for materials - im happy to show ya how to do it

Regards

Mick

Great post, LRMick.

BB this post deserves a run in some sort of locked "how to" section. ?!