North Carolina MG Car Club Tech session Held at Flying Circus 12/4/99

SEAT UPHOLSTERY 101
The purpose of this 'get together' was to allow members to see and handle the most daunting aspect of an interior restoration, The seat upholstery. Don Annas had two seats that were used as the basis for the session and all the work was performed using readily available hand tools

1) First carefully extricate your tattered and torn seats. Its a wise thing to take this opportunity to make any necessary repairs to the floor panels so that replacement goes smoothly. But that may be a Tech session in itself...

2) Take the seat covers off, carefully noting the position and location of mounting hardware, after all YOU DO have to put it back together too...

3) After cleaning and repainting the frames, checking their operation and lubrication, remove the two pivot bolts and seperate the base and back frames so that each can be dealt with seperately

4) We (Konrad Shoen) started with the base. The diaghram under the cushion was removed and replaced. On early cars it is the wire frame with straps seen here, you can refit the later style rubber diaghram.

5) The seat base foam is glued into place (NOTE they are HANDED left and right) using a good quality contact adhesive. The seat base cover is slipped over and roughly positioned before being removed, glue applied to the centre section(where Tony Thomas' pinkies' are) and seams of the cushion and then finally glued to the foam.
Once the glue has had chance to set a bit, the edges can be pulled around the frame, glued and/or clipped in place.

6) The seat back has the same treatment but instead of the diaghram it has a back panel that shapes the seat. We improved the original design of this card panel by adding a 1/4" layer of foam padding. It looks smoother and makes the back more tactile

7) The Headrests can be a struggle, as the original style of a one piece moulding for the cover is no longer manufactured, you have to use a cover that has beading sewn into it and tends to be a bit of a squeeze to get the seams and the padding right.
Sometimes a plastic bag over the foam helps things slip into place.

This is not the correct use of a headrest however.

Well, after all that hard work (as well as the puffing and groaning), this is how you turn an MGB into a bus.
Remove everything but the seats and the steering wheel. and you can get at least 11 people in an MGB