I posted this on another forum and thought it might be useful to some folks here if you looking to renovate your existing seats: Original Seat Restoration with a modern addition... Several years back I fitted Saab seats into my van as I wanted head rests and the passenger seat had seen a welder too many times to render it usable. However one of the jobs that I have wanted to do for while is to renovate the original seats and keep the stock look.... Initially started the prep for this a while back... but placed on hold due to some other commitments http://www.justkampers.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=147669&p=2067945#p2067945 So here’s a photo guide for those of you interested in doing the same. Its worth me giving a huge shout to Jimbo_the_Westie_Man here as his step by step guide was a legendary reference point for me when I was doing mine. The only difference is that his are prototype bay seats and mine are Late Bay. His Thread: http://www.justkampers.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=141391&hilit=restoring+cab Additionally my seats didn’t have the headrest tubes in them so I found some donor seats in poor condition and had Barry (Kult Klassics) do a few simple welds for me, to position them where they needed to be. Probably the easiest Welding job he had that week! Preparation To begin with I carefully stripped down the existing seats and put to one side the metal rods, Horse Hair pads and thin wadding. The covers were completely useless and on the drivers side I had to physically cut the old cover off as it was going to come off in one piece. I repeated this for both seats and bagged the contents until I was ready to use it. At this stage I decided the best course of action was to take all the old paint off and bring back to bare metal. After 20 minutes work using Steel Wool, Sanders and my power drill, I realised that my rate of progress was slow – and would have taken days to complete. Weighing up the Time and cost arguments I opted to have the Seats shot blasted by a local firm. Not necessarily cheap, but definitely worth it, and a far better job than I could have done! So you can see a comparison to before and after: Once I had the seats back I decided to paint using Red Oxide Primer as I wanted to give the seats the best possible chance of lasting another 30 years. I applied this directly with a brush, and lightly sanded so that later layers would have a better finish My First Mistake At this point I then made my first mistake which was deciding to paint them myself rather than going down the route of professional spraying or powder coating. If I had to do seats again I would definitely try the powder coating route. It seemed that I was spraying these for ages, and sanding down between coats. Anyhow the end result was a very shiny and acceptable finish. Materials Used: Hammerite Direct to Rust Smooth Finish Aerosol (Black) (don’t buy from B&Q or Halfords unless you have to, instead find a local Hardware store or parts supplier as its a few pounds cheaper ) Halfords Wet & Dry Sanding Paper Assorted 15 Sheets (allows different grades to be used between coats) Re-padding the Seats At this point the frames were sprayed and ready to go, so I could turn my attention to the seat padding. Unlike others I really wanted to try and reuse the Horsehair padding as it wasn’t in bad shape at all. To supplement the padding I bought some Calico and some 1/4inch Foam which was to be used for a bit extra comfort. I must say that the Calico was a good call, it helped bind things together nicely and gave a great surface for my Heated Seat Pads to fix to! These pads fit on the base and the back, and are controlled by an adjustable switch. Once the pads were stuck in place, I was able to finally squeeze the base cover over and get an idea for what it would look like: At this stage it was necessary to reuse the metal rods saved from before and use Garden Wire to feed around the Vinyl covers. Jimbo gives an excellent write up on this and there’s no point explaining how to do that again. However the Straw trick didn’t work for me so instead I simply bent the garden wire back on itself so that it had a smooth edge to push through the holes at the end of the vinyl Materials Used: B&Q Heavy Duty Garden Wire Existing metal rods Seat Covers from DBRIGDEN http://www.dbcartrim.com/1101/frames.php Repeating the process for the back was easy enough, but I was very paranoid about cutting holes for the headrests! I used existing Bay Window Headrests and covered them with the new covers. Any extra spacing was padded out with a small amount of foam. In this photo you can see the connectors ready for the heated seats ready to be connected up And the passenger seat is done! The Switches The next step will be to connect up the switches and prepare for toasty bum and back (yes I know its Summer, but when better to plan for the winter!) s/Switch2.jpg" alt="" /> Doing one seat was easy enough, but seeing as the drivers seat was so different, it wasn’t as simple as I was expecting. However, with new found confidence – and some help from the missus I was able to get the drivers side all done! So here is the pair of them
Thats an excellent mod M8, any pics of the wiring? Where did you get them from & how much did they cost? 8)
Wiring was very simple. Couple of lives and 2 grounds. I wired into new fuse off leisure battery. When back on pc will dig out my wiring diagram, but it is straight forward. Check out ebay. Then search for waeco. The rotary switches are extra and on hindsight would have stuck with the supplied ones. About sixty quid I think Cheap and useful mod.. ;D
Well not sure how much the wiring diagram will help as its focussed on my van extra electrics. As I say its a live from the secondary fuse box (which runs off leisure battery), and a couple of ground connections 69 quid now (other sellers may be available on ebay) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WAECO-HEATED-SEAT-KIT-RETRO-FIT-KIT-2-SEATS-/370471873822
Wiring used was 25 Amp , peak usage of the heated seats is 7.5 amps so gives me scope to run other electrics from it if neccesary. But when I rewired extra electrics in I made sure I had loads of spare wiring for future use Hope this helps Andy
mmmm warm and toasty for the winter, a possible add to Wilma's mini resto, thanks for that, have a bit of special k!
