The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Interiors Restoring Bench Seat vs. using an S10 seat . . ? ?

Hi all,

I am working on a 58 Apache Pickup and it currently has an old ratty S10 seat in it . . .

I have access to a stock 58 bench seat from a parts truck, but it has no upholstery and it looks like a few of the connecting wire pieces are poking out of the drivers

How difficult is it to repair/recover one of these old bench seats if they are pretty much disassembled down to the springs?

I do have a sandblaster and a can of POR-15.

My options are to either recover the S10 bench seat or to try and restore this original seat.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!

-Joe

Depends on what you want when truck is finished. It will take about the same amount of time to recover. If you don't need to replace the foam in the s-10 seat it will be cheaper to recover. Personally I would recover the original. You can buy the foam and covers from several vendors. I've used lmc truck and classic industries for the materials in the past. You can also buy the hog rings and pliers from either. You should be able to fix the springs and rods fairly easy. Look at the s-10 seat and how the metal wires ( hog rings)hold the fabric to the frame. The original will basically be the same.

By the way the foam just sits in place and you simply stretch the seat fabric over the foam and frame. Then used the hog rings along the inside of the frame where you will probably find some of the originals.

just a note to add to yellow52's post, a great place to get hog rings in bulk and for really cheap is local feed stores. i got some (not for my truck yet) in a bag of 200 for about 7 bucks at my local feed store.

also, i would go for the original seat given the opportunity, as they are getting harder to find.

Heads up...some of the TF seats use a special C clip to hold the bottom seat cover to the seat frame, not hog rings. If you don't have the clips they may be hard to find.

Mike B

Thanks, everyone, for your replies. I think I am going to attempt to reconstruct the old bench seat. My only concern is that I am missing a couple of those small springs that make an "X" between the large ones on the seat.

Is there a place where I can order them?

Also, looking at the LMC catalog, does their "bench seat rebuild kit" provide material for both the seat bottom and seat back? I can't tell . . . .

Thanks, everybody. I'll let you all know how this one goes . . .

The seat material and seat foam comes as a set to do one complete seat. Also compare the price with classic industries and they should have the seat repair components to fix the springs your missing. Make sure you post some pics during your process.