I'm probably the wrong one to give advice on quick and easy way ..... but couldn't you have just bought some spray or brush on vinyl "dye" (actually paint) and changed color on the 914 ones?  I do like the look of Corinthian leather though.

Wait, are those Jon Voight's seats?

No, but that pencil in the glove box did belong to Jon Voigt.  You can tell from the bite marks, which we'll try to get Tim Watley to verify, except he didn't invite Jerry to his Christmas party, but you already knew that, didn't you?  Chrysler LeBaron vert episode: George kicks Jerry out of the vert, Jerry has to walk, gets mugged, yada, yada.

Yeah, I probably could have painted the 914 seats, but these others are SOOOO much more comfortable that I always wanted to use them.  It's kinda like when Cory had his old, C-130 seats in the Hoopty and then upgraded to the Recarro knock-offs that found their way to him - He still can't believe how great they feel.

So far, two hours into it, I have the back and seat base separated, the lower frame out of the base and now looking at alternative ways to make them narrower.  It's easy to make the frame narrow, but then you have to think of how best to modify the seatback frame to also get narrow at the bottom so the pivot mounts AND the recliner mechanism still work as advertised.  I'm thinking of just gently bending things, but we'll see.  One step at a time.....

Hey!  While looking for seat info I stumbled across this cartoon, perfect for the upcoming weeks, especially for all you 'puter geeks out there:

Well, things are bumbling along here at Five Cent Racing's Custom Upholstery Division.  Before I get "real" heat installed out there, I'm keeping the place toasty by occasionally running my Weber grill in short bursts.  The place gets nicely warm, but everything now smells like Barbecued Chicken.......

I have successfully finished narrowing (or, as the Hot rod guys call it; "Channeling") the passenger seat.  Somewhere in the middle of all this, I remembered what Wolfgang said about it possibly being easier (I suppose, MUCHO easier) to just paint the old seats I've been using, but these new seats are a PERFECT color match for the rest of the car!!

And so, I press on......

It seemed easier to keep the frame intact on the more complex side - the side with the recliner mechanism, so I removed the opposite side and started hacking 1/2" at a time off of the cross members until it seemed to fit into the seat well with enough extra room to accommodate everything.  In the end, I removed about 2-1/2" of width.

Having gotten the width corrected, the next step was to put it all back together and still keep the seat back hinge or pivot points intact.  That's easy on the recliner side - nothing has changed, but on the other side the pivot point has to precisely align with the recliner side or the seat back won't pivot correctly.  the recliner mechanism has a fixed pivot point on the mechanism, while the other side has a big bolt going through the seat back frame and into the seat bottom pivot bracket, which is threaded.  Those two points, 16 inches apart, have to align as two points of a hinge.

I got around this by simply buying a piece of hardware store threaded rod to run through the seat bottom pivot bracket, used a power drill to spin it and threaded it right across the seat bottom til it got to the other side where the frame (before welding) could be adjusted to perfectly align the rod with the opposite pivot point.  the rod is at the bottom of this picture.  Eventually, the frame will be welded just Northwest of the hammer head, and in the lower left corner near the vice grips holding everything together, made straight by a couple of cross-brace jigs which bolted to the original glider mounting holes on the underside of the frame:

So, once everything was lined up and the width was correct, all that was left was adding my "bird poop-looking" welds to everything and making it permanent.  I had used a spot weld drill to remove the original spot welds so I just re-welded right through the holes to the new positions.  Someday, I have just GOTTA take a night course and learn how the hell to MIG weld......That would make life SO much easier!

Anyway, bottom welds behind us, I moved on to tackling the seat back frame.  It's really difficult to totally remove the upholstery material from the back because it is hog-ringed to the frame and much of the cushion material was formed-in-place around the frame members.  A Hog Ring is simply an open ring (in the shape of a "C") of thick, stiff wire which is attached with a pair of special pliers such that the pliers close  the ring onto whatever is in their mall and hold it fast.  I must have removed about 50 hog rings to get everything apart and, on the seat back, that got me about half way there so I quit while I was ahead.  There are also complex seat cushion tensioners with VERY heavy springs holding everything together and some of those were removed as well and then the upholstery material simply folded out of the way.

Anyway, once the seat bottom frame was channeled, the seat back had to be adjusted so it still had a pivot point in the right place.  That looked complex, but I took the same approach as with the base - made a new frame bracket to move the pivot point inboard and then used the old frame bolt and bracket to align with the new pivot point.  This picture shows the old frame pivot point bottom center, and the new frame bracket cut into the bottom frame cross-member and being located simply by using the original pivot bolt to "point" at the center of the new mounting hole.  Once everything was aligned in 3-dimensions, I simply poop-welded the new bracket to the old frame (carefully keeping all of the upholstery material away from the heat and flash with spacers and heat shields).

The new bracket is thicker than the old one (again, Home Depot flat steel stock about the same thickness and width as the original metal) and is angled over to the original frame side member and then up the side member 4" to give me lots to weld to along the side for front-to-back strength (I needed lots of length for my poop-welds).  That thing will now hold forever and three weeks.  Here is the bracket before being poopified:

So that gave me a new pivot point, and the old one on the frame side member was simply removed.  Once THAT was done, it became obvious that there was a wire-form of some sort embedded within the seat back cushion material which had to be "notched" in the lower corner of the seat back to accommodate the new pivot point, etc.  That had to be re-bent, to reposition the corner of the seat, without heat and it's a 3/16" thick steel wire so a lot of grunting with big water pump pliers ensued but it's now done.

So, the goal here was to get the seat bottom to fit the very narrow seat space in a VW pan, keep the fore-aft glides in place, allow room for the recliner mechanism to fit and still work AND get all of the color-matched trim bits back onto the seat to hide all of those ugly mechanical thingies that make it all work.  Oh!  and not make the seat bottom any taller off the deck as the original, Porsche 914 seats were (with their original glides and full-seat recliners).

This is what I ended up with:

The recliner actuator handle is right between the body sill and the seat material in the foreground, the seat sits at approximately the same height as the original (OK> it's 1" taller, more-or-less, but what the hell, that's the best I can do and retain the fore-aft glides) and everything seems to fit.  The seat backs will hang over the central tunnel about 1-1/2" from each seat, but your eye won't see anything amiss because all of the trim piping in the seat bottoms and backs will line up because only the very bottoms of the seat bases were narrowed, NOT the top of the set base cushion - pretty sneaky, that, I thought.

Sorry, but I don't yet have a side-by-side comparison of old versus new seats.  I'm cleaning up the second one now from 20 years of storage dust and may have just such a pic in a day or so, and then I'll be taking the next one apart to begin the dissection process.

This has been quite an educational and fun project so far.  PLUS, I've found a local source of the Hog Rings I need to put everything back together!!

Stay tuned!

NICE! Great job on your fabrications, Gordon! 

Excellent work, Gordon. Thanks for the update.

I love fabricating.

Well, things have been humming along ever slowly at the "Five Cent Racing Upholstery" division, slowed up a bit by the colder weather and the onset of Holiday stuff, but I wanted to show that not everything always goes well when you're fabricating or modifying something.

The first seat - the Passenger side - was my test mule for how the seat was constructed, how to modify (narrow) it and what tools and fixtures I needed to make to duplicate a mirror-image of it.

Everything went well (even my usually atrocious welding looked pretty good) and when it was all assembled all of the seams lined up and looked great.  That was too easy.......

On to the Driver's side...

"This will be a piece of cake!" went through my mind a lot, starting on the second seat, given my confidence that all went really, really well with the first seat, so "Whip-Whap!".....The seat bottom and back were separated, all of the hardware and springs were removed from the bottom, the frame was removed, welds popped and cross-rails shortened the same amount as the first seat, all done in far less than an hour.  "We're SMOKIN!"  

It was about this time that "Cockiness" crept into the situation.

Moved on to the seat back and quickly figured out where the new pivot tab had to be to line up with the narrowed bottom and got that installed, ready for welding.  Used my special fixtures and put the frame back together just like the first one, everything lined right up and got welded and I didn't even have to grind 75% of any over-weld off!!

Then, because of the cold and the fact that heating my garage with my gas grill puts some sort of greasy film on the windows of my wife's car (making the wipers streak when used and causing much tongue-lashing) I moved everything into my nice-warm "Rolex-Cave" in the house to get all of the vinyl warm prior to assembly.   Finally got it all back together and stood back to take an admiring look. . . . . . And the seams between the back and bottom were off sideways about 1-1/2".

   WTF?   Major panic ensued......... 

So I've now had it apart several times (I've gotten really good at this and learned a couple of shortcuts), adjusted the material of the bottom more than a just a few times (always making it a better seat in the process, right?) and finally figured out that I had placed the new pivot tab onto the seat back about 1/4" too far in one direction, throwing everything off.  I managed to fix it by simply moving the seat back tab to the other side of the corresponding tab on the base frame, and moving a welded-on nut there from one side to the other, but it took a couple of part-time days to figure it all out and make everything look "factory".  

What a P-I-T-A!  

And who would-a thought that there were close dimensional tolerances - ON A SEAT!  

Well, there are, but it all looks spiffy now and I'll be final-assembling everything this morning (with locktite on all of the bolts because they've been in and out so many times, they're now polished) and doing a final test fit so I can get an interior picture for Marty.

On Donder!  On Blitzen!  

Oh, wait......That's another story!!

Enough typing already  lets see some photos.

Pictures would be good, I got lost on the pivot tab of the passenger seat.

ALL RIGHT - ALL RIGHT!!!!

First, the old seats, sheepskins and all:

And now the new look:

And the shot like Marty's:

I like the look.....  

Nice work!

Nice job, Gordon, the pivot tabs are still a mystery to me, but they sure do look nice and comfy and much better than the sheep!

Awesome work as always Gordon.  The seats look fantastic!

Gordon - you NEVER cease to amaze me, my friend! That re-do of your seats is nothing short of AWESOME! Should be even MORE comfy when you & Cathy are tooling around the highways in that bad boy! 

Beautiful work

..... also a pretty subtle way of snuggling up closer to your co-pilot ;-)

Gordon, those look great!

Nice work, they look so comfy.

Are you going to put the sheepskins back on?

Hat's off, man. Those look totally pro, really comfy and with great support. I wish my car could take mods like that and look "sorta" right. 

The folding cup-holders in the lower part of the door panel is also a convenient feature! 

Only a "boat person" would notice those, Capt. Jim...

Oh, and Bill, I only used the sheepskins because the "temporary" 914 seats were totally the wrong color and I was too cheap to get them re-upholstered in the right color.

Now that I have a nice color-match throughout the cockpit I want to show it off.

The downside is that the sheepskins are always cool in the summer and warm in the winter - something I'll have to give up for the better look of the vinyl seats.  

Gordon, great minds think alike!

Just the other day, I was thinking how we limit ourselves when modding these cars by sticking with only P-car parts for inspiration.

So, I've completely replaced my dash with these transplants from a 1957 Buick Roadmaster - the very same model year most of our Speedies are based on.

If you think lining up those tabs of yours was a PITA, this gave me major fits!

Nice photoshoppery there, Mitch.

Wow!

The best of both worlds!  Combining my two favorite cars of all time into one, and still small enough to fit into a "compact" parking space!!!!

Now....if we could blend in that big, toothy, Roadmaster grill.....

It's not really an impressive project if the Buick nailhead is not under the hood.

Over here in the TD business we'll accept a tree-fitty though.

I like that Sacto Mitch guy!

I do too. He's a good fit.

So, is your replica speedster replicating a 1957 Buick Roadmaster or the other way around? Inquiring minds want to know.  

Gary

It might have been lost on you that I bought these seats back in 1997 or so from a junk yard.....sorry..."Salvage" yard nearby.  I pulled them with everything attached - seat belts, belt inertial retractors, trim bits and all of the little plastic trim bits.

After I got them all home and discovered the width discrepancy I relegated the seats to the attic of my old shop, eventually bought out by my son who later bought the house (and thankfully didn't require us to totally empty all of our old junk out, so he "inherited" all of what was left).

Three moves and three houses later, and our son decided to upgrade from the old house to a beautiful new place and I had to empty that old attic.  Somewhere in the deep past I took the seat glides off of the driver's seat to work on it and misplaced them.  I looked everywhere today and couldn't find them.  I seriously believe that I tossed them this past Fall when I took a lot of junk stuff to the recyclers.  The next stop is to visit THE only remaining honest-to-God junkyard around (which just happens to be owned by a friend of mine) to see if I can find a pair of seat glides that will fit and do the job.

But THAT will have to wait until it stops snowing.  I really miss Beaufort, SC and Wilson's junk yard on Lady's Island.......in a warmer climate.

Warmer, maybe, but not warm.  Why I even had to scrape some front off the windows this morning.

It's only supposed to reach 60 today.  Brrrrr........

See?  You should have kept us down there.

While we lived in Beaufort it was always in the 70's right through New Years......

Very nice retrofit of those seats Gordon! You definitely have some talent, sir.

Thanks, but there is usually a lot of luck involved in my work!

Lane!

December 12th is:

National Poinsettia Day!!

And you have a Charlestonian, John Roberts Poinsett, to thank for this:

http://eatsleepplaybeaufort.co...onal-poinsettia-day/

OK, so in between playing with the grandsons, doing grocery runs and buying Christmas presents on line, I also bought a set of seat glides (tracks) from Speedway Motors for about 20% more than I would pay to rip them out myself in 28F weather in a junk yard.  They're now mounted to the seats and I've fab'd a couple of 1" square steel tube spacers (doubling as seat mount adapters) to get the seats up off the deck to the right height.  Tomorrow I'll get the spacers mounted and try the driver's seat to see what needs to be "adjusted" and then get everything bolted in before I move on to the Passenger side.

Might be able to drive over to Chris' house on Christmas!!  (if it doesn't rain like crazy as they're currently predicting).

Well, two things here:

1. I never liked the sheepskin covers, not even a little bit.

2. Looks like it took El Gordo more time to write all this work up and push it out to the SOC than to do the work.  Even w/ that said, it was way more than "a couple" of hours, I'm sure of that.

3. --OK, I lied -- What a great conversion!  And as far as I can see w/ the photos, the color is, as you have said, a pretty fine match.  What you have not said anything about so far is: have you sat in these in Pearl and decided if it all works?

PS:  Is your electric panel anywhere near your garage?  If so, install yourself a 220V receptacle and go buy a 220V fan powered space heater.  I think I got mine from Sears, or maybe Home Depot.  I'll look at the make/model if you want to know.  Run that thing for about 30 mins before you want to go in the garage, and you will be good -- and no chicken grease.  Just sayin' . . .

Not quite "el Gordo", but I met a mime at France in Epcot at Disney World once - he was doing chalk art on the sidewalk and was called "The Great Gordoone".

I sat in the passenger seat and felt that it was pretty damn good.  Not to high, plenty of moosh for the tush, all that stuff, and the seat back support is excellent, especially for longer (read that "more than an hour) trips, always the bane of Speedster seats.

Holiday stuff (or plain laziness) has delayed finishing this up.  All I need to do is a final positioning of both seats and get them bolted down, along with closing up any unused holes in the floor from the previous mounts.

Maybe I just have to take advantage of our current, un-Chicago-like, warmer weather and "just get out there and do it".

No 220 near the garage.  The main panel is 90 plus feet away.  Looks like a Propane fired " Mr. Heater" or Modine "Hot Dawg" is in my future.