Seats and things

During the last month, I spent time preparing parts I had available.  I spent a couple of days stripping down the seats and it was messy!  I was glad to get the old burlap and rotted foams off the frames.  I was hoping a quick clean of the frames would be enough, but it wasn't for most of them.  The two front seats were a complete disaster under the covers.  I took them out to Gary Lowe of Lowe's Sand Blasting and had them blasted clean.  The back seat upper spring frame was pretty rusted at one end.  It looked like someone had leaned it against a wall and let it get rained on.  So we sand blasted that too.  The seat cushion for the back seat was ok for the most part.  Just some mild rust on the left side.

So today I spent a bit of time painting the seat frames.  Not done with all of them, but about half way.  I also painted my 7/8" GT front sway bar, but then the garage was closed and it knocked it down, so I will have to wait a few days and sand and paint again.  Stuff happens!

I also started to refeed the spring wires through the canvas.  I am not sure this is going to work as I need to get some listing wire to bind the flex wire to.  When I removed the flex wire from the old piping, the ends broke.  It may be too brittle and I may have to do what the local cover shop recommended and go with a layer of burlap and thin jute.  I am mostly concerned about the springs tying together to bear the weight and the wire has to be spring wire otherwise I run the risk of it folding back and puncturing the seat cover.

My first attempt wasn't so bad.  I folded up the material acordian style and then fed the wires through.  It worked pretty good, but the spacing wasn't very accurate so when I pressed it tight, it would not fit.  So as a second attempt, I took a sharpy marker and put the wires next to the burlap, marked the location of each wire on the listing wire, then re-assembled.  Wa-la!  The spacing was on and it worked.  I pulled the burlap back over the wires and it was pretty good.  The next time I do this, I am going to mark where to fold the burlap to make sure I get good spacing.

A member of the California Special forum sold me a bunch of parts for the interior so I spent the rest of my free time cleaning those up.  I am real grateful to Marty for the parts.  The car was originally blue and was converted to a black interior so it is nice to have guys like Marty around to get correct parts from.