View single post by Tom Bradley
 Posted: 06-08-2014 02:46 am
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Tom Bradley

 

Joined: 07-15-2013
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 I finally got the rebuilt seats back in. I decided to go with repairing the JH seats instead of replacing them with Miata seats for two reasons: one was that the prices I found for used Miata seats were too high, the second was that, since the Miata seats are metric dimensions I was not sure what kind of mods were going to be necessary to get them to bolt on.

I got the new seat bottom cushions from Delta. New seat covers were not available and the passenger seat was in very good shape anyhow, so I decided to patch the driver seat with vinyl and cover everything with sheepskin seat covers.

The new cushions are somewhat bigger (see comparison below) so I also had to glue some vinyl extensions to the bottom of the seats to reattach them to the seat frame. I also glued some of the vinyl to the bottom of the new cushions to better distribute the weight between the cushions and the straps on the bottom of the seat frame.

I went with a much lighter color for the seats to keep down on the heating in the hot San Diego sun (see below). Eventually the whole interior is going to be about this color.

Between the bigger cushions and the sheepskin, the added bulk made getting the seats back in a tad difficult, to say the least. Cleaning up the thread of the bolts and mounting nuts with taps and dies helped a lot. I also found that a 5.5mm metric allen key fits slightly loosely in the bolts which makes turning the bolts in the tight space easier. The final tightening with 7/32" key is not that big a deal.

The replacement made a huge improvement in the drive-ability. The old cushions were crushed down to nothing, so I was pretty much just sitting on the seat-bottom straps. Now I am sitting about 2-3 inches higher, so the visibility is greatly improved. Ride comfort is also far better. Before the change I was considering renaming my car to "Teddy Roosevelt" (the Rough Rider), but I think I will keep it as-is. I still have a good spots-car feel for the raod, but it is not constantly jolting me like before.

Next up will be replacing the interior vinyl once I find something I like. In the meantime it is back to having fun...

Attachment: new and old cushions reduced.JPG (Downloaded 201 times)