1963 Riviera front driver seat fixup

SwedeDownUnderR63 · January 10, 2016

I thought it was possible to do a minor weekend job before moving into the dual MC conversation so I selected to go for the front driver seat bucket bottom.

Ha, there are no minor jobs when working with old cars even when they are a good survivor. I have bought new upholstery and foam for the bottom from Clarks Corvair together with hog rings, pliers. I also got burlap, webbing and spring wire but I didn’t expect the springs to be completely gone in some areas (this is the first seat that I have ever tried to do this on which might explain my optimism) and many of them also broken as the seat felt just a little bit sagging.

The seat has been worked on before and it had been “specially built up” using extra “lose” foam as in the attached picture for spring substitutes. I have just ordered some “No Sag Spring 9 gauge” (http://www.diyupholsterysupplies.com.au) which I hope is the correct one to use here together with W Clips and a No Sag Spring Bender.

Could someone let me know if I need something else? YouTube is good but nothing beats real experience which isn’t something that I have in this area…

Edited January 10, 2016 by Jan Norback (see edit history)

Seafoam65 · January 11, 2016

I would assume that you can fix the springs, but if it was me I would source a passenger bucket seat

from someones parts car. Usually the passenger seats will have good springs and foam since they aren't sat in nearly as often, and

usually women ride on that side, and they don't weigh near as much. Aftermarket foam doesn t sit nearly as nice as original foam.

I would guess that your car was driven by a very overwieght person in the past, which caused all the damage.

SwedeDownUnderR63 · January 11, 2016

I would assume that you can fix the springs, but if it was me I would source a passenger bucket seat
from someones parts car. Usually the passenger seats will have good springs and foam since they aren't sat in nearly as often, and
usually women ride on that side, and they don't weigh near as much. Aftermarket foam doesn t sit nearly as nice as original foam.
I would guess that your car was driven by a very overwieght person in the past, which caused all the damage.

Hi Winston,

Yes, I have done this seat switch on a Volvo 940 that is my daily runner but that was easy as there are plenty of Volvos in Australia and they are not expensive (I have 2 running 940s and a parts car).

Not that many Rivieras here and importing a seat from USA from a spare car would be rather expensive so I will try to fix the spring first.

RivNut · January 11, 2016

NEW auto upholstery springs are available. Visit you local upholstery jobber, your buddy who owns an upholstery shop, or visit the internet. As are clips and other parts necessary to build a new foundation. Not your frames though. Those you'll need to repair of find good used ones. The attached link is but one example of what's out there.

http://www.diyupholsterysupply.com/upholstery-spring.html

Ed

SwedeDownUnderR63 · January 18, 2016

The renovation of the driver seat bottom is done. New springs was added in the middle of the seat and the old (mostly bad) springs from the middle was reused to repair/replace the side springs and also to recreate one extra spring for the entrance side for added strength (it seemed to have been one there once). It was a little bit of a guess work as the seat had been “repaired” poorly before with foam. It would have been great if someone (Clark’s Corvair maybe?) could have provided an example of an unmolested seat without the foam and burlap but I think what you see in the picture is a pretty good way as it feels good to sit on the finished seat.

We had to use spring wire (thicker than the original) to repair a lot too. One could possibly have selected to use new springs all over but as there were some dimension issues then it would have been harder to fit (and more job), using the new springs only in the middle made it good anyway with balance on the sides.

For this we used:

Spring Wire 8 gauge (thicker than the originals)
No Sag Spring 9 Gauge (thicker than the originals and not exactly the same size, maybe the exact same size as the original is available in the USA)
W Clips

With the springs in place the Hessian 18oz was used as Burlap (I doubled it to get it thicker) and also Jute webbing for extra protection around the border of the springs.

The new seat buns (cushions) was then put in place on top and the leather bucket bottom (both from Clark’s Corvair) was then put on around it all.

The are several good YouTube videos on how to do this but I couldn’t find one for a Riviera seat which was different to the Camaro and Mustang videos that seems to be common.

We reused as much of the wire that I could from the old seat, used the new spring wire when possible and also a long, easier to bend wire, that my welding wife had to go around the bottom of the bucket bottom. Lots of hog rings was used to fasten this and some manual pushing was used to get the leather nicely on top of the seat buns.

We started with hog rings in the middle of the seat to get it in place (first using a temporary thin steel wire to position the seat buns), put it on, push it in place, continue with the end part in the bottom (a new spring wire was put in place in the bottom over the 5 middle springs to connect the seat upholstery bottom end part). The long wire was then used to connect the lowest part of the seat upholstery around the seat.

The buttons were finally added and tight onto the springs through the sea buns.

Sorry if my explanation is a little poor but I hope that the pictures can help the next one to do this (maybe even to get a video made that I didn’t have time to do), the material from Clark’s Corvair was excellent but, as mentioned, it would be great with a YouTube video on this.

There are probably better ways of doing a seat renovation, however I am very happy with how the seat feels (not too hard for me but I guess that is a matter of taste). Once again a lot of this was done by the better half of my family: Ann-Kristin.