Leather Seats

[w3wilkes]

Just finishing up my leather seats from Interior Innovations. I acquired some 1977 280Z seats so I could have the full forward tilt control, the springs in the 77 seat bottoms is also a nice upgrade from the straps in the 71 seat bottoms. I think it raises you in the car by an inch or so with the new foam and 77 seats. A comment on the seat cover bottoms. They come with a cotton cord as a draw string. I was concerned that the cotton would stretch and would probably break under the constant pulling over time. My friend helped me pull wire through the channel where the cord was. This is much more like the way Datsun did the seat covers and I believe will hold up better over time.

Edited July 17, 2018 by w3wilkes

[Patcon]

More pics!!!

[S30Driver]

Did you use new foams for the seats?  

You were correct to use wire inside the seam where the cord runs.  Since I have completed 2 sets of the same leather seat covers, I am interested to know if you also ran into a problem with the material being too short to close the rear of the bottoms & the seat back.  If you did not use new foams, I can see it being easy.   Yes, more pics...

Hope you put the seat heaters in while they were apart,  it gets cold in Layton Utah....?

[w3wilkes]

Here's more pics and I did use new foam from MSA. The leather fit fine as shipped. MSA told me I'd have to trim the foam for a 77 seat back, but that wasn't the case it seemed to fit perfect. There was an issue with the seat bottom foam. The mold halves appeared to be offset front to back so that there was an overhang on the top front of the seat bottom foam. We cut the foam back with an electric knife so the contour of the top half of the cushion matched the bottom half. It looked like the mold top half of the shell had slipped about an inch or so forward on the top. Sorry, no picture of the foam issue. We just drilled out the track nuts in the seat frame so they were large enough to mount the 71 floor rails to the bottom or the seat, they dropped right in and lined up just fine with the floor mounts in the cabin.

You can see that we haven't pulled down the seat back leather to hook on the spikes yet. A steamer helped with fitting the leather. No seat heaters, leather is much warmer than Naugahyde in the winter. For the last 2 weeks we've been between 95 and 102, need to get my A/C hooked back up!

 

Edited July 17, 2018 by w3wilkes

[w3wilkes]

Here's the finished product. These go in tonight.

[w3wilkes]

Finished and in the car. I think they turned out very nice. The spring bottoms in the '77 seat bottoms vs the old 47 year old straps in the '71 seat bottoms raises you about 1.5 in. which is noticeable. I can now comfortably put my elbow out the open window.

 

Edited July 18, 2018 by w3wilkes

[Car54280ZX]

These look awesome!

I’m trying to figure out how to fix my seats. I have the seats, carpet and dash out. Very smelly from sitting in a damp garage for 15 years. 

Seats and carpet are in very good condition and the seats have been air-ing out since November but they still stink. 

I’m thinking about taking the seats to a fire restoration company to get the smell out. 

Do you know of any success or failure stories of others that did this to get the stink out?