The Upholstery Forum

Here is what I have been working on the last couple of months. It’s a friend of mines car, he wanted to completely get rid of the stock seat springs front and back and go with custom shaped foam. The original upholstery came to me with a family of mice, which I discovered as I was tearing one of the seats apart and one fell out and ran across the floor. I caught 5 of them in total. I used symphony classic black vinyl and Deville black cloth for the materials.

I ended up having to modify the front seat frame quite a bit to get the seating position lowered and further back.

This is one of those projects that started out as just simple Factory style replacement seat covers and then snowballed into basically a full custom interior. He is supposed to be coming to get the car this weekend. I’ll be glad to get this huge car outa my garage haha.





I spent waaaay more time on this car than I had originally planned, and it’s not perfect by any means. But I learned a lot from doing it and I think he will have a one off interior he can be pretty happy with. On to the next one and refine my skills as I go.

I love your matching bag. Thanks for posting.

John

Thanks @John Long . Making the bags is good tedious sewing practice for me, and they make a cool gift to go with the job.

looks awesome, great work!!!

That came out beautiful! They will be super happy!

Thanks guys! He came and picked it up last weekend and was very happy with it. After we agreed on the design I told him I wouldn’t send him any pictures of it and he would have to wait to see it till when he came to pick it up. He is a friend of mine so it’s fun to mess with him. But it’s cool to see the reaction when they see the finished product for the first time. He said it was a lot nicer than he ever expected and is already trying to sign me up to do his next car haha

Haha be careful your going to be running a full business before you know it. Once people find out the work just doesn't stop.

Glad to hear he liked it so much!

That’s awesome work! What foam did you use? Like density etc? I always wonder what works in full foam custom seats.

@Mikesimpson , It looks great and I am impressed with the straight cuts to the foam.

Nice job, it looks professional.

If you have pictures of your seat frames modified to accept the foam I would love to see them. I'll bet there are others that would too.

John

@John As cool as I think it would be to do this as a full time business I would have to learn to do everything a lot faster to make decent money doing it. But you're exactly right about the work, I've got 4 total seat rebuilds and 2 complete interiors lined up to get done already. I just tell everyone I do this in my spare time and it will be a while before I can get it done and no one seems to care haha.

@Cody Thanks! I have been using 6" thick foam and cutting it to shape. 2.2 density and 50 pound compression. Its a little stiff at first but after you get some seat time in it the foam seems to break in and I think its pretty comfortable. Ive got to redo the seat in my wifes C10 so I may try a 35 pound compression in the backrest on hers. I think it might conform to your back a little better.

Thanks ! @BigRig I'm using a vertical band saw to cut the foam, it makes the straight cuts super easy.

This is the lower frame from the Buick. I couldn’t just make the top of it flat because it made the seating position way to high. So I had to make the areas where you actually sit drop down so I could have plenty of foam thickness.

For the backrest I was able to just remove the Factory springs and put a piece of 1/2” plywood in its place.

This is a picture of my first attempt when the bottom was flat. But it shows how I did the back part.

Awesome! Thanks for the pics. I like the lowered seat area for more foam!