Thank you!
Hey weren't you heading this way this coming weekend? Look back a few posts.

So to finish off on all the drop link discussion last week I received the "correct" Weltmeister 6 7/8", which a few guys here verified the length on theirs, is what the standard Weltmeister drop link measures.
It is plain to see they will on work on this car, which apparently was lowered way back in the day by about 2 inches. As I said it drives just fine as set up. Case closed.


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I had planned to come down since I have been out of town the last 3 weekends. However I now have a chance to work on the Silver car this weekend AND go for a ride to Angeles Crest. As much as I want to see the car in person I am jonesing for a ride in my car and will have to see you another day. Have fun though.

Seat Update

My upholsterer is pretty resourceful. Original webbing in NLA. He took the "best" of the old webbing (elasticity is pretty much gone) and reused it to make it look like the original webbing was still there on the bottoms.

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There was just enough of the better looking stuff left to do it on both seats! Inside the old webbing he put new. Very creative!


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I think upholsterers must be part alchemist and part witch doctor.

Next Update on the seats

He starts with the inner wall foam (yellow) and then fills all the frame cavities with foam (gray). This method provides strength to the inner walls and prevents them from sinking into the frame. Then he adds foam to the top rail.

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Here is a picture of the old foam used where it was just one piece wrapped around inside and out, which makes for a bulkier look because the foam is always pushing outwards against the vinyl.

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He told me to bring the head rest grommets next time up as he needed them.
Hmmmm interesting.


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Last weeks trip to local Cars & Coffee brought to my attention the targa top. I had long thought it was “ok” but now outside it clearly wasn’t and I could clearly see it needed a paint job. I have seen many threads about painting the targa top and decided to paint it with SEM Trim Black as a recommendation from a friend. Spray can on a large surface is not the greatest because the fan is so small.

After 3 attempts I still was not satisfied. It was a combination of things the gave the poor results. Number one with that small fan you really have to keep the “wet line” going or you end up with zebra stripes and I have been painting for years. Maybe shoot a little slower and heavier coat helps. Number two there must be no wind and that is maybe the most critical with the small fan too. Number three the SEM product is good mind you, but I don’t think it really likes spraying that big of a flat surface all at once (with the can horizontal for a prolonged period of time) because early coats sometimes the nozzle skipped or sometimes spattered and it usually happened 5 inches before you could get to the other edge.

Today was a total success, no wind, good coverage, cooperative can. Nice sheen, not shiny, and a good finish.


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Looks fantastic. Nice work

Rob,
I agree, good one (going to have to admit, had to look up alchemist ). He really is turning lead into gold!

Here he was telling me how the original seat bottom was good but he was somehow going to improve it. Looking forward to seeing how! So far really nice work and ideas.


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Hey Lucky, you should do yourself a favor and have your upholsterer order up some "Pirelli Webbing" before you go any further. It's a little more expensive but is worth it. It's the stuff they used to used on vintage car seats. My Volvo 1800E needed webbing replaced and instead of buying the original Pirelli material, I bought the cheaper Dunlop (looks like what you are using)... it hasn't help up well at all. I'm going to have to re-do it. The Pirelli is more of an off-white/cream colored rubber looking material, rather than the stretchy Dunlop. I can sort of relate to what you are doing... I bought E30 BMW sport seats off craigslist (because of their high side bolsters) and combined them with the relatively flat original recaros that were in my 1800E. So I had to weld frame pieces together and manipulate foam, add webbing, custom upholster. But now I have original looking seats (with original side brackets/hinges) but with nice firm side bolsters. It was a 'B' to do but worth the effort. Just trying to save you some frustration up the road with the webbing. Great job on everything, btw !!

Thanks for the tip I will talk to him first thing tomorrow morning. He may be too far along though I'm afraid, there has been more progress. Thanks again for weighing in!

Well this is what the seats looked like last Friday. I didn’t post these pictures because they were on my cell phone and I got lazy. My camera had died and it’s a different process to get the pics off the phone and work with them. Any way he did some magic shaping of the foam and he added additional foam to the outsides which are now very nice and smooth and firm.

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And the backs of the frames had a layer of foam to cover the webbing hooks, along with the foam along the top with the plastic bases of the head rest grommets which determine the height of that foam. He seems to be a master of foam densities and uses.


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Dougster
Arriving at the shop at 9:30 this morning, the ship had sailed on the webbing, and it turns out he had the Pirelli webbing there for me to see and compare. I had to agree with Oscar the upholsterer that the webbing installed was more correct, with all due respect to your recommendation. He has done upholstery his entire life and I am going defer to his guidance.

Again, I always appreciate help and comment and thank you.

This is what the seats looked like this morning. Backs fully covered in foam. So cool looking.

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And, he had applied a ¼” layer of foam over the inner sides and top rails over the shaved sculpted foam earlier installed.
Plus, he had created the back foam pieces.


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He did this with the seat bottoms which I thought was duty above and beyond. Before and after pics shown. First pic the foam is upside down unfortunately.


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He was cutting and fitting the vinyl this afternoon when I stopped by again. Check out that back! Clearly, like anything done well, it is all the work you never see that is the most important to yield a good result.

Unfortunately, I have other commitments the next few days and will miss further progress. I am hoping he will take pics for me. Should be done this week.


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Ooh, they're gonna look good!

Thanks for posting all the details. I always appreciate better understanding the various processes that are used in making/rebuilding/fixing the different parts of our little cars.
Can't wait to see the finished results!

Thanks! They are certainly coming along way different (better) than I thought.

This is the corduroy I found that very closely matches the original. Note the number 10 73 which I have no idea what it means, maybe a run number or lot number, I don't know but I am going to pretend it means Oct 1973 and means it is "period correct" material just for fun!.


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I am a wood worker and know a lot of "tricks" with wood, much like Oscar sure knows what he is doing here with all his exacting experience.
This is another in process picture from yesterday which shows how he pins/ fits the vinyl to the seat. I too like to see how things are done.
Thanks for looking in!


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And here is proof positive, from the back of the removed vinyl, that the seats were recovered in naguhyde years ago
The vinyl grain was way off with being too course.


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Returning to the shop yesterday afternoon I found the seat bottoms, which had I thought were ready to be covered, had been further enhanced from the post I did earlier. Now the sides have been faced and sculpted plus a thin layer of foam was applied to the top side.
Oscar noted that the back edge of the bottom cushion now matches the angle of the seat back. Details!


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He was working on the corduroy seat bottom panels and had attached this bar to the back side which will in turn be inserted into a slit he makes in the bottom foam to attach the fabric panel and secure it. And side pieces ready to be sewn to the seat bottom.


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The vinyl sides were now completely finished and the corduroy seat backs were done and also installed, The stitching was just amazing!


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Wow, looking great!!!

Thanks! and I was thinking about your stuck head rests yesterday and I shot this picture of my head rest post to show old dried glue from the previous recover in several areas. As I watched I could see how easy it was to end up with glue there. So he was careful to not spray near the post but even so we ended up wiping the posts down with lacquer thinner to be sure they were clean.

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This picture below shows a slot which could possibly have some type of keeper to lock the head rest in place, but on my posts (above) you can see there is no corresponding slot that would allow locking. Not saying yours doesn't have a slot in the post and they are in deed locked.
Hope you figure it out.


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I have those slots too, but there is nothing in them.

I’m running about a day behind in posting. I had the opportunity yesterday to witness the head rests rework and it proved to be much more involved than I’d imagined. For instance, this head rest had a crater in the face of it and Oscar said that it would show when done.

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Here it is filled, and he did other things too, like filling & blending and correcting the bottoms which looked pretty funky.

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And then he added to the sides and blended. Saving some old original head rests for me.


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Looking crazy nice! Those will be some beauties to sit on.

I agree and Friday was the big day.
The seats were finished Friday and I got to see it! As I said in my last post I got to hang out and witness the head rest repair and recover.

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And add a little hand stitching to close up the bottoms, ready to install.


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Head rest installed with silicone on the post shafts


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What a great experience! I highly recommend his work!

Escondido Custom Upholstery
Oscar Reyes
520 N. Quince St. Suite 2
Escondido CA 92025
760.755.7015

My seats are going home! They Are Perfect!


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They did turn out "crazy nice" Now to install them!
Thanks for looking in!

Terrific looking seats.

I have seat envy!

I think an upgrade to my stock seats is in my future!

Beautiful seats.
It is a pleasure to see a craftsman at work, and with pride in the work he/she does.
I think it is our responsibility in the automotive hobby to keep craftsman like Oscar busy with work to help preserve the craftsmanship.
I have two seats that need redoing; too bad that I am at the other end of the country. Will have to find someone in the Daytona area to do the work.
Bill.

He did a great job on those seats. Interesting to see how ugly the bare metal frames are on those seats.

Congratulations Jim on making these seats better than new.
So happy to see all your efforts paying off. Love your positive attitude.

Congrats to Oscar (upholsterer) as well, great workmanship!!!
He must be a cool dude with a name like that.

Thanks! Hey I don't know where you are on seats for your car but Oscar is certainly one option. Oscar is Kent level on seats.
Other shops in the area (who shall remain nameless) bring the difficult stuff to Oscar but I doubt they would ever admit it.

You have to be getting close to paint on your car, it sure is looking good!

Thanks Bill, they really did come out well and I couldn't be happier with them.

As for your seats, there may be someone as thorough in your area, but you could ship them to Oscar. U-Haul wardrobe box works for great for this, fitting both seats clam shell like. Might be worth the cost of shipping. Tell you what, if you do, I will personally look in on them once in a while for you, he is about 15 minutes from my house.

Interesting what you said about preserving craftsmanship because on one of my visits to the shop he was telling me that he "is old school" meaning no cut corners and takes to time to do it right, giving several examples of how many do seats that look good but aren't really underneath.

Best of luck with whatever you choose to do.
Thanks for looking in

Yes those frames are not much to look at for sure! And it wasn't until after they were in process at Oscar's that it came to mind that I should have made more detailed drawings and measurements to copy those frames.

You probably saw all the "fun" I went through to make the two frames look the same.

Wanting to install the seats today, I ran into more "fun". Wish I'd paid more attention when I removed the 914 seat rails that were installed on the seats when they arrived. I thought all was good. Turns out one seat had much smaller bolts than the 6mm they should have had. So that meant drill and tap the 8 seat frame holes. No biggie. But wish I'd caught it before upholstery.

Okay, then I saw the track rails had been modified with elongated holes because the frame holes were not necessarily located in the right location. How do you mess that up?
Wait, it gets better, the rails when mounted did not line up, fore and aft, hence the need for the square shown. More hole elongation was then needed to properly match up the tracks! Does it ever end?


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With the extra time spent today rectifying "issues" with the driver seat I was able to get it installed. That's right, only one seat today, but it was so cool to sit in the darn thing after all this work. Way better and it feels so "right".

Stephen, when you see the pictures below of the original next to the beautifully done Scheel it is an amazing comparison and you are really going to have "seat envy". You sit on the stock seat and in the Scheel. If you can swing an "upgrade", I highly recommend it! Happy hunting!

Oscar kept telling me that these seats would match the door panels perfectly and he was right! (Try not to notice the saw dust I managed to get on the driver seat side shot)


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I missed the part were you removed the red roll bar. Good move. The interior looks great. I always like the backpad delete on a GT car.

Wow, my dream seats, Congrats....

Damn they look good! It's amazing what a difference the seats make in the driving experience
Looks like we might have to set up a local back roads drive here pretty soon!

Drop dead gorgeous seats.

Thank you Oscar!

He is a cool dude for sure and all the Oscar's I know are cool dudes! That would be 2 Oscar's altogether!

Cheers to Oscars's

I should have warned you about the smaller bolts to hold the tracks onto the bottom of these seats.

I had to use washers to shim because the vinyl was impeding the seats' ability to slide back and forth.

I agree on the red roll bar removal. It was in the car when I got it and in the beginning I thought I would track this car so I had it powder coated black. It was a custom made roll bar for this car, so I will hang on to it.

Pic of car with red roll bar and Sparco seats, circa 1998 I believe, in WA state. Just before it went silent for 20 some years.

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Thanks for weighing in on the interior, and the back pad delete was an easy one, as I never had one to begin with!

Thanks for the horn parts they arrived today! much appreciated!

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And in my driveway in 2010...