My Experience with Bench Seat Upholstery Installation

[pjmoreland]

I received a PM about the seat I reupholstered recently, so I figured it made sense to make a post about it.

I ordered the upholstery kit from USA 1 Interiors. Took about three weeks for them to make it.

https://www.usa1interiors.com/1967-6...ch-pleats.html

I went with seat foam from American Cushions Industries. It is available from GMCPauls, although I ordered it from NPD because they had it in stock.

One thing about the upholstery set is that it has some foam backing sewn into it that ends up making the seat bottom slightly taller than stock. This creates some interference between the bottom cushion and the back rest. I actually had to push down pretty hard on the back to get the pivot bolts in. This makes it somewhat difficult to tilt the seat forward. I had to tilt the back forward to get the seat belts through, so it does tilt, but not easily.

It is kind of challenging to get the back upholstery onto the seat frame while trying to keep the foam in place. Took lots of pulling and adjusting, but it did eventually get there. I got a small separation of the stitching in one spot on the back upholstery down at the lower corner that I had to stitch back up. Be careful about tugging too hard on it when wrestling it onto the frame. It really is a tight fit.

I didn't do a good job of centering the bottom upholstery perfectly left to right. I should have measured and marked the center line of the cushion and upholstery to make sure they were lined up during assembly. The houndstooth panels on the bottom and back cushions don't line up perfectly with each other as a result. It's only a slight misalignment though, so I'm going to live with it. Since the lower upholstery is held on mostly with clips as opposed to hog rings, I could remove them and adjust the upholstery, if needed. I ordered the clips from ClassicParts.com. I used hog rings and pliers I had left over from reupholstering some 350Z seats a few years ago.

Here are some photos of the seat in its original form that I took as a reference for attaching the new upholstery.