New Seat, part 1

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My special ordered leather finally arrived. While on holiday in Florida visiting my in-laws, Ron & Dottie, it came to the house after an 11 week wait.

Dayton’s interior leather isn’t made commercially anymore, 50 years later. And there aren’t too many places to get dyed-to-match custom leather these days. But SMS Fabrics of Oregon is one of them, specializing in automotive upholstery replacement materials. After a sample arrived for me to sign-off on, I was told it would take another 6-8 weeks to complete the order.

Well it took a little longer, but I’m happy I finally got it. A few days later I was off to Mark at Rudy’s Upholstery in Hollywood. Rudy’s was recommended to me but my friend Rey, who had taken several GTOs to Mark previously.

Last week I spent some time building a foundation for the new seat. I build the slats you see using Poplar wood from Loews’ Hardware on top of some old wood already there. I fashioned the slats after what is in a stock ’29 roadster. The 3/4” plywood panel in the subframe tilts up to access the battery. Not pictured is the 1/2” plywood seat base & backrest base, nor the foam I bought. Mark is stitching the leather and tacking it to the plywood bases. The bottom seat comes out, but the backrest is tacked to the beltline wood at the top.

And finally, rather then the bottom seat just sitting on the floor (the car is missing a stock seat frame), I used dowels secured into the plywood floor to lock the pad base in. My friend David and I worked on that, it turned out well.