refinishing leather seats

[Craig Lebakken]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roa, Greg" <groa at Cinergy.com>
To: "'Craig Lebakken'" <lebakken at cdicadwa.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 4:35 AM
Subject: RE: refinishing leather seats


> Sounds good Craig.   I've got the leather door panels, and
they are in good
> shape.  The seats are out, as I have the original seats in
the car still.
> I'll give the local shop a call, and see what they will
charge me to redo
> the seats.
> By the way, did you buy the bolsters from a parts store
(TPC?), or did you
> make up new ones?
>
> Thanks!
> Greg Roa


The lap bolster I rebuilt. What happens is that a black
plastic channel that serves as an interface between the foam
and the metal support rod of the seat frame breaks up, and
the support rod proceeds to cut its way through to the top.
The bolster also collapses when this occurs. I rebuilt it
using some "recycled" plastic  channel from a scrap seat,
and gluing it in with 3M spray adhesive. The rips and cracks
in the foam are also easily repaired this way by spraying
some adhesive into the tear, and clamping it together with a
duct tape butterfly. Let cure/dry overnight. The side
bolster I built up using some thin foam sheet rubber, glued
in several progressively smaller layers, the bottom layer
repairing the tear, the next layers providing contour.

After repairing the bolsters, replace the leather covers
with new hog rings. I also have a compound sheet metal
bending pliers that worked well in grabbing a length of
leather cover for stretching. The hog rings and pliers I
bought from Eastwood, and they worked great. Eastwood was
the only place I found that had the same size hog rings as
stock.

HTH

Craig Lebakken
1986 4KQ