The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Interiors 1947 AD seat needs redone

Where's the best place to get everything I need to take a '47 bench seat from a bare frame back to the stock original look? The seat in my truck is pretty much shot to heck, so I want to strip it down, blast it, paint the frame, and reupholster it to original specs. Anybody got any suggestions on where to buy materials?

Jim Carter sells a nice seat cover, and all the padding too. If you are anywhere close to Terre Haute, Indiana, I can refer you to a very good auto upholstery shop. They did a good job on mine.

Sorry, the truck's in Hamilton, IL. I'm in California right now on military duty, but I'll be heading back in the not too distant future. Does Jim Carter have a website where I can order the stuff from him?

Here are seat covers from Jim Carters, I used a rigid foam for the backing and not the cotton that Carter sells with the kit. My seat

Jim Carters web site

Nice

I also bought the Jim Carter seat kit. It came with the whole shebang. I spent a fine afternoon installing the kit. I even spent the like extra ten bucks or whatever, and bought what they call the Spanish Maroon, I think that's what they call it. My seat looks nice, and is very comfortable now that the springs aren't somewhat bare. I used the burlap, felt and cotton.

Sounds like a good deal. How hard is it to redo these seats? I am a complete newbie in the ways of upholstery.

Several years ago, I used the installation kits from Jim Carter, and the burlap and cotton was not enough to keep the springs from being felt. Maybe JC has changed the contents of their installation kit, or maybe I did not use the material correctly?

AD_Pickup: would you please post additional information about the rigid foam that you used? If available:Name brand and a source (on-line source, maybe)? Thanks.

It is hard to say how hard the reproduction upholstery sets are to install (individual background and experience varies) but we were able to obtain a good appearance on all eight cushions we reupholstered (first-time experience). We did not use hog-rings; we used the original style "C-Clips" to hold the material to the bottom of the cushion-frames.

I don't think its too difficult. You just have to go slow if you haven't done it before. It's no different than anything else on the trucks, if you get tired, or angry while you are doing it, you just need to take a break.

I can still slightly feel the springs, but I suspect they were like that from the factory.
I did tie my seat bottom springs, though they have the metal ties. I found this really helped the seat, it spreads the load over a larger area.

Christopher,

I did not tie any of the springs together (I'm a novice - I did not know any better) and I think this would have helped a lot.

Tim

I don't think I'm a pro. My hands were killing me and all raw from pulling on the cords and tying them up. It was fun though.

Can you explain this tying you did on the seat springs? I know less than nothing about upholstery, so any explanations would be much appreciated.

I tied front to back, and side to side all the way across. I was too lazy to do diagonals. If you search on the googlemachine, you'll find upholstry articles showing this, and what knot to tie. And pictures!!!!

As these seats are already the right "shape" all you are trying to do, is make more than one spring move at once. What you want, is the opposite of Christine Mcgee's pocket coil mattresses. When a spring gets loaded, you want it to drag down all its spring friends around it. Thus firming the seat up, and tending to make it less bumpy.