Back Seats are Done!!!

Dateline - Week of April 24, 2017 -  Spent every night last week sewing upholstery for the back seats.  Honestly, I'm gland I'm done for a while.  That was a lot of work!  Here are the seat pieces fully done.

Next was installation.  Easy to say, not so easy to do!  The plan was to mount the bottom bolsters, mount the back bolsters, glue Velcro strips on the the bolster frames then put in the cushions.  Easy! NOT! The outside bottom bolsters were pretty easy.  Position, mark, drill bolt down.  The inside bolsters, different story.  They are directly over the mufflers!  I had about 1.5" to get my hands into.  Not fun.  Plus, I had to reach the top of the bolts too.  So I took a long screwdriver and zip stripped the wrench to it so I could reach!

The back bolsters were easier to install, but I still had the reach issue because I had to reach in the car and into the trunk.  So, lots of extensions on the socket wrench and the extension on the wrench got the job done.

Passenger back seat installed

Passenger back seat deal

Last was epoxying the Velcro and letting it dry.  Since I had already sewn the opposite side of the the Velcro the to cushions, all I had to do was mark were the Velcro needed to be and glue it down.  Here is the result:

Driver side back seat showing Velcro glued to the seat frames

And finally, installation of the cushions:

Back seats installed

Back seats installed

I still have to figure out what I'm going to do with the area between the seats and the open area along the wheel well hump.  But I think that will wait. I'm doing with upholstery, at least for a week.

On Sunday I worked on some odds and ends.  There are panels that needed to be installed in the front wheel wells that I thought I would install.  Unfortunately, I needed to do some more prep work in the wheel wells first, so they didn't get installed.  But the hardware did get sand blasted and tin plated (I really like my tin plating setup!).

While I had the front tires off, I took some time to clean up the front headlight/side marker wiring.

Finally, I did some work on the fender cross members.  There are bars that run from the middle of the firewall to each fender to keep the fenders and front scuttle from shaking.  These are right in plan view but are some of the worst welding done on the car.  Sharp edges, nasty welds...yuk!  So I got out the angle grinder and my metal files and went to work cleaning them up.  I also put both through the sandblaster.  I still don't like the welds, so I think I'm going to treat them to some bondo.  No since doing all the nice work in engine bay to slap on a couple of nasty looking pieces of metal!

So, next weekend is the scheduled first drive!  Very exciting!