The Cab Seat

This part of the project has progressed over a few months, with work squeezed in between the fenders and hood tasks. The original cab seat was intact, although rusty and ratty. Stephanie, bless her heart, volunteered to take off the old vinyl seat upholstery and padding. Her good work exposed the springs which were coated in a layer of rust.

 I took the wire wheel to the edges and places I could reach, taking care not to let the 4,000 revolutions per minute wheel of death hook up with the springs. After my experience with the wire wheel and my polar fleece jacket, I can only imagine what would happen if they engaged. After spraying the springs and seat frame with Rust Converter I was ready to put on the seat covers.

I got on the internet and quickly ordered the bench seat rebuild kit which had the padding and clips. Selecting the seat covers was another story. All the internet parts stores had plenty of vinyl seat covers but I kept hearing the voice of Ricardo Montalban, in a compelling Latin accent saying “you owe yourself – soft Corinthian leather”. I had to settle for fine Beijing Pleather.

Since I have never re-upholstered anything, I read the rebuild kit instructions for hours, all six sentences of them. Step one, put burlap over the springs. Check. Step two, put two layers of the cotton padding over the burlap. Check. Step three, put on the seat covers. Hold the phone Kildare. What about the third type of padding in the rebuild kit? There was two yards of some kind of felty serape thingy blanket and if that wasn’t enough, there was a couple of kilometers of cotton padding left over. I started reading the instructions again.

With no new clues to be found in the instructions I went with the “make it up as you go” method. I cut the padding into bench size strips and put it on the springs until it was gone and then I put on the serape thingy.

Back to Step three, put on the gray pleather seat covers. Once again the instructions were less then helpful. I am not making this up, instruction four says “Determine which upholstery is the backrest and which is the seat bottom; they are not interchangeable.” What they left off was this statement “And just to keep you on your toes, we are not going to put anything on the seat covers to give you any help in determining which one is which.”

Believe me the seat covers look identical. Picking which one is which, is like trying to determine sex of a rattle snake. The snake knows who is who but the only way a human could tell is to put them both in a box and wait for one to start laying eggs.  I really didn’t want wait two months to see what king of eggs pleather seat covers would lay. I took an educated guess andI must have chosen wisely because the cab seats look great. Even Richardo said they were muy bueno.

The last step is to paint the steel frame and cover plates. I had selected gray seat covers, you know - your basic gray.  So off I go to The Home Depot to get the spray paint. As they did not have any cans of Old Chevy Truck gray, I had to get two cans of Martha Stewart’s signature color “Institution Gray”, it is a perfect match with the seat covers.

One night I was working in my Hillbilly garage and hung the seat cover plates from the canopy frame to spray them. I then went to the YMCA to work out. An hour later when I walked out of the gym it was raining. Crikkie, this is not good. When I got home my perfectly painted cover plates were covered with a beautiful layer of water droplets. I used a paper towel to remove the water and left them to dry in the garage, figuring I would have to sand, prime and repaint them. It turns out that while there is a slight texture to the surface no one should notice, so I am going to just use them.

I moved the cab seat into The Parts Display Room and Stephanie and I are going to sit on it and play drive in movie night.