The 'E' Type Forum

Received my interior trim kit from BAS yesterday - looks very nice. Was rather hoping though for some instructions or guidance notes, especially for the seats ! I couldn't find anything searching on the forum, does anyone know of anything online to help me ?

Regards,

Neil

Chris Rooke?s book comes to mind....

Carsten

Thanks Carsten, I forget about those paper things bound with cardboard these days - I actually have that book. Sadly though it doesn't show the S1 seats although will help with some of the other bits.

Neil

are you redoing they glove box?.if so use stream to soften the outer edges of the box so you can bend it without cracking the card?.


Jonathan

My main concern with doing the seats is how to get the foams installed correctly, especially to get them to taper to the edges & meet the wood in the centre correctly. After much searching I found a link which shows part of the process. Unfortunately for me its not an OTS seat, but it gives me some idea of what to do.

http://classicjaguar.com/cj/av.html

Cheers,

Neil

Neil, glue the horse shoe foam to the seat frame making sure the centre wooden panel will fit in properly. Then shape the foam crudely with an electric carving knife. Finally using a 4.5 '' angle grinder (best used without the guard - careful) and a sanding disc very, very lightly (!) carve the foam to shape - do not be tempted to press or the wheel will dig in and ruin the foam- practice on a scrap piece I would. I have found the seat base foams are too high and cut an inch or two out of them . Sacking and pirelli webbing are available on ebay or any furniture upholsterer.

regards Barrie

Hi,

I'm in the process of putting my seats back together and noticed that the rear holes in the rearmost wooden seat base don't align with the seat runner fixing holes in the seat chassis (see photos).



I could be worrying about nothing but I am concerned that this will possibly cause the base to sit on the runner bolts & thus sit a little higher than it should - as a tall driver I'm trying to get the seats as low as possible.

I spoke to Andy at Hutsons who supplied the tacking sets and he advised that they are copies of the original wooden bases, but he too was puzzled as to why the holes don't align. He spoke to BAS about it & they agreed that the holes should really be half-ovals at the back of the wooden base, although it has never caused any apparent problems.
However, on inspecting a seat Andy did find that the runner bolts are causing wear to the leather underneath, which means that the base must be sitting on them.

I'm already planning to reduce the height of the foam base and don't want to have to trim off a further 10mm or so to compensate for this. Furthermore I don't want to add further cut outs to the wooden base as this will cause weakness (as so close to the existing holes) & would possibly make trimming a bit trickier as on an edge. My best bet would be to make new bases with correct cutouts.

I don't have any runners at present (SNG out of stock) to test and see if this is really an issue so would be grateful if anyone could advise the length that the runner bolts protrude above the metal seat base ?

Cheers,

Neil

Neil

What is the serial number of your car? There were two types of runners/seat shells and the early type had the holes closer together than the later type - happened at #860580, 886092 if you check out the SPC. There is a picture of the two seat bases on page 65 of Dr Haddock's '6 Cylinder Restoration and Originality Guide'.

David,

Thanks, I hadn't realised that. Just checked in Haddocks & mine is the later seat with wider bolt spacing which allowed for greater seat adjustment. Haddocks also has a clear picture of the securing bolt & it doesn't appear to stand much higher than the metal ribbing so I don't think it's going to be too much of a problem. I don't recall my original bases looking any different (although they had pretty much disintegrated) so I'm guessing that Jaguar didn't change the wooden bases as they didn't see as a problem either. I think I'm just putting off starting on the leather work :)

Regards,

Neil

Are you using the correct spacers? : http://etypeuk.com/forum/viewtopic.php? ... sc&start=0

I am aware of the need for the spacers but my point was I don't have the runners yet (the originals were junk & SNG don't have stock at the moment) hence I didn't know what height the bolts sat at. Even with the spacers it looks to me like they will slightly foul on the underside of the seat base.

I bought a seat trim set from BAS a good few years ago at the October Jag spares day, I gave it all back to them including the seats at the March spares day and told them to get on with it no matter how much it cost!

My experience was you need 6 pairs of hands and the seat foam is 3 times too large to fit into the leather cover. I'm not saying it can't be done but when I got them back a month later they looked superb.

Talk of using a damp cloth and an iron to get any saggy bits out of the leather was all too much, somethings are better left to the pro's.
It annoyed me because I wanted to say I had done everything on my car except the final coats of paint.

Dave

Dave K wrote:I wanted to say I had done everything on my car except the final coats of paint.

Dave

That's where I'm coming from too. I do have BAS on standby should it all prove too daunting in the end (and before I cut anything) !

Neil

Good luck with it Neil, it's certainly worth a try.

Dave

I don't mind helping with advice on retrimming the car. I did mine myself and pretty much remember how i did it. It wasn't difficult just time consuming and my blog posts cover quite a lot of it