Jude 2

How to restore your vintage rear seats.. LOL.


Original VW seats kept in storage since mid 1990s!



Take your time breaking the seats down. Save the hardware.



This is the original seat molds. They still look great.. but STINK extremely bad. All new foam going back on to kill the odor. Hopefully it will work out.



A close up of the seat frame after it was cleaned and treated with Por-15.


My son helped me with this process.



Be sure to not attach the hog rings to the back springs or your might feel them when sitting.




Again, I could have used the old horsehair.. but it just smelled so bad that I decided to use sisel. Plus I already had some of this!




After the 1" padding and cover applied... we then focused on the back top seat. The bar removed from the cover I removed was installed into this one. This took a few minutes.



Then we tugged that over the bottom hooks and secured it down.



Then we had to compress and stretch the fabric over the side hooks.



Hey.. It looked pretty good. Nice and tight.



The following series of pics are of it mocked up inside. I wanted all the fabric to match from Headliner to Seats. We installed it all.










That's how you add new life to your OLD rear seat.

Nice work!

Waaaaaay cool.

Boy...what my kids could do with those white seats!

Fahrvergnügen

Thanks. I enjoy restoration. Taking something old and giving it new life. I want to pass that basic concept onto my kids.

It's not about rushing to complete it all... but the steps getting there.

More pictures for Rambo...

Headliner / back install...

WOW!!!!!

Fantastic work and teaching opportunity.

Thanks for sharing. Great pics.

For my HS Grad my mom n dad had new seat covers and headliner installed in my 65 Bug.

The Green Machine. Its what I had at TC that year.

Billy n NC wrote:Thanks for sharing. Great pics.

For my HS Grad my mom n dad had new seat covers and headliner installed in my 65 Bug.

The Green Machine. Its what I had at TC that year.

That's great. I would love to see an old picture of it. Do any exist?

More updates...




The mockup rear seat was removed and more foam was added. Apprx 2" of foam and sisel worked perfectly.




This above is the finished bottom rear seat with 2" of foam with Sisel covering the springs. Comfortable!




This shows the underside of the bottom rear seat. The original seat came with a wire instead of this pull string. So I inserted some heavy wire and this gave me something to hog ring to and really pull tight. The results speak for themselves.



To keep from fabric bumping between metal, I installed some rubber between so no cuts would result. Worked great.




This is where we cut the rear kick base for the rear seats. Currently I deleted the heater holes. May comeback later and add etc. I used cardboard to get the perfect template.




This is the rear seat mocked in place with the bottom kick panels tested. Snug and perfect.



Finally it's time for custom carpet. I never liked the kits.. so I will be installing my own. I've smoothed up the surfaces..

Front Carpet Install Begins! Tackle the tough first.
The carpet was cut and custom fit for proper placement.





This is the kick panel carpet with the binding applied to the edges





This is the kick panel carpet with the binding applied to the edge and heater hole





This is the first test fit with glue. The cover slides great and will look great after all installed.





The custom carpet was cut, fit, bound, and then glued. This took some time to get right.




We wrapped the rear seat kick areas with carpet also to make it look clean.




This is a picture of the carpet finally installed. Notice the rear seat kick panels covered and snug.





Two angles of the rear seat shown with carpet all installed. Good tight fit.




The shifter and drivers seat installed. It's starting to come together...




The pass side view of rear seat, front seats, headliner, and sunvisors all matching..




That looks like a nice place to take a rest for a while.....

Awesome job. I am definitely impressed.

Rahab wrote:Awesome job. I am definitely impressed.

Thanks. for the kind comments. It's just a hobby to tinker..