Seats

Remember this pile of rust?

The seat frames, although rusted, bent and broken were actually in decent shape. After a bit of welding to repair the attachment points and straightening the back braces where someone had jumped? on them, they were ready for blasting and paint.

On the MGA roadster the seat backs are "sided", the curve at the top matches the curve of the body., the low side to the outside of the car.

The 3/8" plywood on the old cushion bases were broken and unusable, except as a template for new ones.These are also sided, mirrors of each other.

The small tabs on the bottom of the bases hold them in place against lateral movement, so they need to be hard wood.

I took the opportunity to reuse the risers from the original seats, they are still in great shape.

 The mesh baskets were also reusable. After a bit of wire brushing and painting they were ready for final assembly..

The original MGAs had a choice of interior material  of either the standard Vynide "leather" cloth or optional real leather (leather on wearing parts). Colour was also a choice although limited depending on body colour. The 1500 choices were grey, black, red, or green, The 1600 replaced grey and green with beige and tan. The Black seats also had the choice of different colour piping, red, grey, green, white and blue.


My interior material was purchased from a trimmer in England and is ALL leather including the rail caps. All the panel pieces come assembled using new panel material.
The seat covers are presewn ready to be mounted on the frames and stapled in position, and like the original cars they have the different colour piping.

The new backing material was temperately taped in place for a few weeks to form the proper shape.New wood tacking stripes were also attached.

The backing was then cut to fit and taped permanently into place

Horsehair pad was glued in place

Then more padding is trimmed and glued into place.

OPPS! this padding should go on the back of the seat, after a small struggle I got it straightened out.
...Finally a bit of cotton batting is laid on the top of the seat and the seat cover is pulled on and stapled into position.

The bottom sections were slightly easier, but it's crucial that the seams line up on the seat backs and seat bottoms. The bottoms were assembled last since it's easier to adjust the bottoms to match the backs.
Here the foam is marked before being glued into place

 

Then it's just a matter of test fitting the bottom and comparing with the back for the proper alignment and stapling into place.

Here you can see the profile of the seat back, showing that it's a right hand seat.The seat adjuster lever can also be seen, these should go on the "door" side of each seat.