Recover Bronco Seat Upholstery
Tech article by admin and filed under Interior
Rear Seat:
- The bench seat is much much easier to reupholster! Unbolt the seat back & bottom from the frame. I chose to clean & paint my frame at this time (Figure 14).
- Examine how your old seats were assembled. Yup not a lot here! 7 hogs rings closing the top & a lot of staples on the bottom (Figure 15).
- Remove the old seat covers from the plywood & foam. The foam is glued to the plywood, so rip is off, then clean the plywood with a wire brush to remove most if not all the old glue/foam. Cut & glue new foam onto the plywood. I chose to cut my foam ½ inch wider on all dimensions for the top & bottom. This allowed for a little “wrap” of the foam over the wood.
- I again used my stand lamps to warm the vinyl & then stretched it over the foam/wood. I used less staples than Ford, and more Hog rings, but that was personal choice (Figure 16)
- Finally I cleaned & painted the old arm rests. I used the SEM products shown in Figure A, purchased from www.eastwoodco.com
. These products are fantastic, and easy to use;
Vinyl Coat Paint, Vinyl Paint Sand Free Primer
Here is a side by side comparison of before/after photos (Figure 17)!
The paint is flexible and designed for applications like this, it gets a 100% satisfaction recommendation from me!
- Here is the finished product:
Tech article by Bill Criss (MnkyBiz)
October 7th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
I found it useful to poke some wire through the channel in the seat foam (seat side), hooking the listing rods in the seat cover to the u-wire on the back of the foam. I then pulled the wire tight, aligning the upholstery listing rod and the u-wire while also pinning the two wires closer together than the foam to listing rod method above.
A further advantage of this method is that you can test fit the cover before installing hog rings. A disadvantage is that it takes longer.
I would also suggest trying to find hog rings that are a little longer and a little narrower than standard. Even using the wire trick, I had to take multiple shots at some areas as the listing rods and u-wire are difficult to catch with the hog ring.
October 23rd, 2010 at 5:31 pm
I find it hard to believe that the foam will hold the hog rings to the U-wire. I wanted to verify that is how you do it before I shred the foam.
November 6th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
After finally getting around to it, I see that the wire rides in the foam and is connected to the wire in the frame.
I followed DuctTape’s advice and just used baling wire to hold the wire in the foam to the wire in the frame and have only used the hog rings to attach the upholstery to the frame, which is turning out to be much more difficult that I expected. I don’t know if my seats aren’t purely stock or of Wild Horses sent me the wrong covers (though the box says their for a 68-69 Mustang) but I’ve had a hard time stretching the covers to fit the frame and I don’t think there is any way I can get them to cover the same area as the originals.
July 23rd, 2013 at 1:24 pm
I know this tech article is old, but I followed the instruction from here and everything went great. I would like to add a couple of comments from my experience. The covers I ordered didn’t have the plastic clips for the seat backs like the OEM did. I took new and old covers to a shop and had the guy sew them onto the new covers, cost my 25.00 and didn’t have to do some many hog ring clips. Also you have to install the U-wire inside the covers then attach to the foam inside the little channel. If your wire is like mine were they are rusted, they are really hard to slide through the pocket under the cover. After fighting with the first seat I used the white scotch tape and wrapped the U-wire and it pretty much slid in with no problem.