seat foam

[simplyconnected]

Reshaping foams shouldn't be expensive. Jed Zimmerman simply used a turkey knife and a 80-grit sanding disk. The knife carved out the rough and the disk smoothed it out.

[Tbird1044]

One would think that is the case, however not with my upholstery guy. Had I known how much he was going to charge for the reshaping, I might have tried to return the preforms and just had him make new ones from scratch. Unfortunately, I didn't have the original packaging for the foam. I'm glad I'm finally over the hill with having to buy things. It gets a little disappointing with some of the quality considering the prices we pay.
Nyles

[partsetal]

I've done all the seats in two cars using foam from another vendor, and have had a difficult time (never done this before) pulling the covers, but turned out good results. I've sold foam sets to others (3 sets) and one person came back and said his upholstery guy could not make the rear covers fit. I showed him my results and I've not heard from him since. The covers are difficult to fit, but persistence and a lot of hand work will give good results.
I would not take my foam to an upholstery shop and ask them to fit the covers as this job is difficult and any problems they had would be blamed on the foam. Let the shop buy the foam or fabricate it.
Similar situation with convertible tops. Most shops are familiar with a certain brand of top, and if you bring one with which they are not familiar, any problems they have will be blamed on the top.
Carl

[simplyconnected]

On a smaller scale, I reupholstered two Amphicars last summer. I sewed the seats using the old covers as patterns, reconditioned the frames and I assembled the foams using spray adhesive, the turkey knife and the disk sander. I might also add, there were a few calls into Jed Zimmerman for a bit of direction since this was my first rodeo as well.

I quickly learned, no two seat covers are identical, ever. Since this is not an exact science, foams are meant to be 'adjusted' to the covers. That means, you can always add or cut foam in areas that need it.

My foams came out surprisingly good considering the original seats were from 1965, European, and nearly gone. The original seat covers featured channels with foam inside... but they were flat as a pancake and the old rubber poured out of each channel.

I studied the quality of different foams for the seat and back, which ones would last long and those that only last a few short years. It's natural that someone making money from this job will buy cheaper foam because in years to come, well, we'll talk about it then. Right now we want to get done, get paid, and get product OUT. So my job cost a bit more for the good stuff, using foam with a high percentage of real rubber. What a difference it made.

Check it out a few before and after pictures. The first picture is the car and the last picture is a brochure showing all the factory paint colors w/interiors those colors came with, so this is the bottom choice...