Having already done the passenger seat, the drivers' one should be a piece of the proverbial fox-picture shouldn't it? Now I knew what I was doing/bluffed my way through one*¹, right?
*¹
delete as applicable depending on how generous you're feelingNope.
Stripping it all down it became immediately clear it was in much worse shape. The spring frame for the seat-back was broken. Really broken. Some of the welds had sheared and some of the straps were just plain snapped
Driver seatback broken spars by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Not for the first time I was sat wishing I could weld...
also, the base frame was in a really bad way, rusted to hell and mankier than the passenger one. Weird, innit. They both came out of the same car, how come one's rotten and the other's fine?
Driver seat rust by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
OK then, we'll have to get more stuck in with this one. In the absence of welding ability or equipment, I had little choice but to repair the broken spars with some plating made from good old B&Q bracketry and some small stainless dome-heads. which to be fair wasn't a total disaster as at least it made the seat structure a lot more stronger than what it had been
Driver seatback plating by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
the gruesome weirdness of fluff and ...
matter*²... needed cleaning off with elbow grease and patience. Cos it was grim and gross and horrible
*²
this works best if you adopt a proper Withnail & I voice
Driver seat fluff mank by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
but the for the knackered paint coating I had no choice but to go right back to bare metal. Nothing I like better than hours spent with a wire wheel firing tiny prongs of steel into my face
Driver seat rust attack by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Eventually, after what seemed entirely too long, and suffering from ringing ears and numb hands from vibration white-finger, I had it all broken down and cleaned into a parts kit ready for POR15-ing
Driver seat base stripped by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
at least the spring form was in good condition (once all the
matter had been cleaned off) and was quickly looking much better in a coat of etch
Driver seat base primed by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
In places the original powdercoat still held on with an iron grip, and these bits I left since life is too short to try sanding it down perfectly. If it wouldn't come off with a wire wheel it probably wasn't going to come off... ever... once it was POR15-ed over
Driver seat back stripped by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
I figured I might as well get on with something else while waiting for paint and primer to try, so turned my attention to the rear seat back. This was the only part where the framework was all A-OK, not a trace of paint degradation or rust anywhere, so I didn't bother stripping it down. The only bit that needed attention was the weird latch bar thing that stuck out of one side, so I POR-ed it
rear seat back latch paint by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Hang on, rear seat back latch? What's that all about? My old seat didn't have one of those. There was nothing at all holding the seat back in place, it was free to just flop forwards when pulled. Which clearly wasn't great, especially when transporting live cargo in there*³. The new seat had basically a long rod that goes right across the back from one side to the other. At each end, sticking out, is a curved end that is clearly supposed to locate into some structure on the side of the car structure. Which I also didn't have. Hmmm. More research required on that, then.
*³
or "children", as it's also knownWhat the seat back also didn't have was... well, a back. My old one had a large flap of vinyl that extended from the top to bottom and covered the gap between the frame. The new one didn't, it just had a big hole almost the entire size of the back. There was nothing in the load of parts I'd got that fit, although there was a fluffy parcel shelf-style thing that was miles too small (and I still haven't found a use for). OK, then, I'll have to get all DIY on it.
rear seat back template by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
A while ago I would have tried making a template out of paper or card but I'd picked up a Top Tip from watching
Home Built By Jeff (if you haven't seen his channel on YouTube then watch it, it's an inspiration to all us bumbling
cretins enthusiasts who blunder along optimistically in our garages lurching randomly from mistake to serendipity). Now, blindingly obvious as it may seem, if you make such stencil things from clear plastic then you have the massive advantage that you can actually see what the hell you're doing which makes finding boltholes and such a hell of a sight easier! And so, transferred to some 3mm ply and after getting jiggy with the errrr, jigsaw, I had a seat back.... umm, back buck
rear seat back buck by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
although to be fair, it didn't look unadulteratedly beautiful in raw plywood. Hmmm, some kind of covering was probably needed. Good job I've got those knackerdy doorcards with the speaker holes cut through them, then. Ooooh, goody. more staple removal.And if the sidepanels had a lot of staples, the doorcards had a
LOT
more doorcard stripping by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Because that was really boring, it gave me the required motivation to get on with reassembling the now dry drivers' seat components. The seat back frame didn't look too beautiful with my bodgey B&Q brackets, but it was a damned sight stronger than it had been and wasn't likely to rust before the rest of the car fell to bits
Driver seatback plated up by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Once the tedious job of tapping out the adjuster widgets for those crazy "bolt" things was dispensed with, reassembling the tilt mechanisms was a lot easier now I knew how to do it, but no less fiddly because evolution had annoyingly failed to speed itself up and provide me with the requisite four hands needed for the job. But it did look all much nicer once back together
Driver seat base detail by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Again I was lucky in as much as the hair/coconut padding and foam was undamaged and in good condition; I was half expecting it to be gross and rotted, given the state of the frames. But it was all good so the frames married back up with the springforms neatly
Driver seat base finished by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
and it was an easy encore to re-cover them with the cleaned vinyl. All without snapping any of the piranha tangs again. Winning
Driver seat reassembled by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Hard to believe this is the same gruesome rusty old seat I started with, even if I do say so myself
Driver seat reassembled d by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
and so back to the seat back back buck then. Try saying
that out loud without sounding like Twiki the robot from
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century 
. I had the doorcards stripped of their vinyl, but didn't need to unstitch it from the scrim foam as I wanted to use that too, which saved a lot of faffing about. I imposed on the better nature of a friend who owns an industrial sewing machine, and she was all too happy to help as I'd spent an afternoon rolling around under her leaky old camper sorting out fitting proper seatbelts to the rear bench. It was the work of mere seconds to join the old doorcard vinyl together along the straight edges and bolt it through to the seat back back buck
rear seat back cover embryo by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Either because I'm one of the greatest unsung geniuses of our time or (more likely) through sheer blind luck, all the bits with the speaker holes and door release lever holes were off the edge of the buck, so they were trimmed off leaving enough of an edge to fold behind, and then I contact glued it to the ply
rear seat back glue by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
and then it was the fairly straightforward task of stretching it over the back and stapling the edges down. The only snag being that my proper staple gun was too strong and the ply too thin, so it fired the staples right through so they poked through the other side
I was forced to snaffle the household staple and do them all the hard way. Which after a few hundred staples starts to make the heel of your hand hurt rather!
rear seat back stapling by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Once it was all done and the pockety bits trimmed off, though, it was worth it. No dodgy pointy bits on the curves and it fitted nice and flush against the seat back and even all the holes lined up, thanks to my Jeff-inspired accurate seethrough template
rear seat back stapled by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
OK, maybe there were a
couple of slightly creased bits.
wrinkle freee curves by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
and yeah, you can see the imprint of where the old doorhandle went. But it really doesn't matter; this is behind the rear seat making up one wall of the package tray area and the parcel shelf covers it, so it'll only ever be seen when the seatback is folded down. And it's very much in keeping with my personal ethos of whenever possible re-using old stuff that would otherwise be binned. So all that was left was to ad a bit of Betty
betty by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
because no-one will
ever see it, unless they actually unbolt it from the seat back. And that makes me happy. Because I'm weird.
And screw it to the seat back with nice dome-head allen bolts.
rear seat back backed by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
I cleaned up and replaced the plastic pull strap to activate the release latch mechanism. Apparently these
always snap, so I was quite pleased to have fluked one that seems in really good condition
rear seat back latch strap by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
But that latch... what the hell did the pivoting rod part in the seat actually latch to? The old sidepanels had imprints where something had been screwed on, but I had no idea what or how and the panels in the car had no hints to the mystery item... there was nothing there at all. My weak google-fu finally turned up the missing widgets, but the problem is no-one re-manufactures them. Or at least no-one I could locate, anyway. After much trawling of eBay, with sporadic returns to the Samba to try and work out exactly what the hell they were called so I could actually search coherently for the right thing, I turned up a pair
[/url
]receptacles by
Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Christ, all that for a pair of little cast ally doohickeys
Twenty-five quid too, but I had no choice as they were apparently the only pair for sale in the UK. And at least I had the moral high ground in that a seemingly identical pair of Karmann Ghia ones were on offer at fifty quid plus postage
Right, so the interior stuff is all done, then? We can crack on with swapping it all over, yeah?
well, not quite...
. I had the doorcards stripped of their vinyl, but didn't need to unstitch it from the scrim foam as I wanted to use that too, which saved a lot of faffing about. I imposed on the better nature of a friend who owns an industrial sewing machine, and she was all too happy to help as I'd spent an afternoon rolling around under her leaky old camper sorting out fitting proper seatbelts to the rear bench. It was the work of mere seconds to join the old doorcard vinyl together along the straight edges and bolt it through to the seat back back buck
