67.5 SPL 14262 Red Bumper Special

[notoptoy]

Now you'll see how miserable they are!
I installed mine, and they are perfectly in the way 80% of the time!

[vorpal]

Did this during the summer 2024

Red Bumper Roadster came to me with a set of Rocket Industries Minilite/EMPI 8 knockoff wheels:

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Not bad but not great. Wanted a 3 piece look with a little color. Was looking at some hot RS Watanabe, but at $3K+ for a set, I went the budget route.

Cleaned wheels and polished the outer rims

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Mask rims

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Several coats of an acid etching primer

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Duplicolor gold wheel enamel followed with clear coating the whole wheel

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Before, not bad:

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After, definitely gives the wheel some depth

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[vorpal]

Couple of winter updates for sleeping red roadster

Installed Mike Young springs:

Stock height:

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New height... I expect it to settle more when I've driven it for a bit:

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Ordered some mats off eBay that came from Istanbul, I call them my Turkish Carpets... lol:

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[vorpal]

Seats:

I got red bumper roadster from auction complete with custom interior:

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Which in pictures actually didn't look bad, but not great on closer inspection. Pulled the seats out in November what I parked it and had a look... not pretty:

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Bottoms were completely done:

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Ordered a set of 67.5 replacement skins from Dean on a Black Friday sale. Pulled the old ones apart:

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Took the frames off to get powercoated:

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Took the rails and soaked them in Evaporust:

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Dried them off and gave them a shot of silver rust paint:

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Frames back from powdercoat:

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Now, time to start rebuilding. fortunately, none of the wire frame clips were missing:

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[vorpal]

Thanks to forum member Pjackb or his recommendations for seat webbing and foam that I could buy up here in Canada. Products came from JT's Outdoor Fabrics and were very reasonably priced. Shipping was also good!

Pulled apart the old hardware from the seat straps and only reused the wire clips to the frame:

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New compression clips:

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All webbed up:

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Pjackb recommended cutting the webbing to about 80% length for good support and 90% for softer support, I went with 80%. Some straps were a bit loose but with the compression clips, you can pry them open with a screwdriver, cut the strapping and re-crimp. Did that on a few.

[drieseck]

Nice work Rob (and Pjackb), thanks for the photos and the 80%vs90% lengths. I'm about a week behind you. My webbing is similar but has rubber strands woven into the nylon. I have the foam ordered. We'll see if my carving skills are up to the task. Thanks Dave

[ADR]

Thanks to Pjackb for the advice. Restrapping seats is in my future - and many others too. Thank goodness for 311s!

[vorpal]

Now for the fun part.... new bottom foam. Seat backs were in pretty good shape so I kept the existing foam and installed the new skins over with some test fitting to make sure they had support:

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but the bottom foam was damaged and compressed and the 'custom' skins were a completely different shape, so I had to make new ones:

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The old foam inserts were larger than the new skins from Dean so I started with them with an eye to cutting them down:

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I watched a bunch of youtube vids on seat foam install and one upholstery guy said: best tool for raw cutting of foam is a hacksaw blade... so:

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Rough side bolsters:

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Wedge cut for side definition:

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I used the new seat skins to test fit and cut down the foam:

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Starting to take shape, now I used the 3M Spray 74 to start attaching the foam cuts to the seat base:

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Used scissors and an Olfa blade to neaten up the rough cuts and shape the foam to the seat skin:

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[vorpal]

Once I was happy with the test fit that filled out the seat skin, time to neaten up the rough edges and finish it:

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fiber fill layer on the bottom

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black poly layer with foam back spray glued to the edges to smooth over the hacksaw rough cuts:

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I'd wedge cut the back to taper it, but as you will see later, it wasn't quite enough:

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Marine fabric for the bottom to replace the jute:

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And now, time to install the skin over the foam insert onto the frame:

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Nice! Front and sides filled out nicely attaching the skin to the points on the frame.

Only problem was I hadn't cut enough of a wedge on the back to attach the skin to the frame... it was too tight and as I pulled it over the skin ripped trying to hook it over the points along the back of the seat base... and worse, two of the four bending tabs failed and broke!

Yikes! Well, after some chin-scratching, I decided to break out the hog rings. Drilled two holes in the back of the frame for the hog ring ends and hooked it through the seat skin and crimped:

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So this effort took a few hours one evening... based on my trial and error efforts, second bottom took about an hour and a bit and I didn't mess up the back hooks on the seat frame:

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[notoptoy]

Top notch work, they look great!

[vorpal]

Top notch work, they look great!

Thanks! When I come in from the garage with sore aching hands and a stiff back I tell my wife: "Thank god I'm not an upholsterer for a living"

[vorpal]

Time to put them back together... but first a note on parts and hardware.

Needed to replace the old seat back bumpers, Pjackb gave me this Grainger part he's used:

https://www.grainger.ca/en/product/BUMP ... SearchTerm

Unfortunately, my local Grainger was not only out of stock for pick-up, they were projecting end of February for online orders as well. Got these from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CWL3BBRS?ref ... asin_title

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And the nylon washers that sandwich between the seat back pivot bolts were worn out. Ordered these:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0C39TJWWM?ref ... title&th=1

Had to dremel the inside a bit to fit over the bolt shank, but they worked fine.

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also, polished up all the seat back height bolts and thread-tapped all the holes as they were extremely stiff threading out:

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So, all assembled up:

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Backs have wrinkling but I'll put them in the sun for a bit in the spring and see if they flatten out.

From this:

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To this:

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And my eBay Datsun mats

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Now I need to replace the faded carpet kit...

[DAC21]

Great work, I couldn't pull it off though I will give it a shot with some early Mustang foam. The driver side looks a little overstuffed in the center section so there is no side bolster for lateral support. But sitting your buns into it should flatten it out over time. I think that was the way the 1967.5 and later car seats came but the center section tightening wire created a little nest for the buns adding some lateral support.

Not my car

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[vorpal]

Yes, the left one in the pic is a bit overstuffed... that was the first one I did. I did better on the second one. So I decided to put the overstuffed one as driver as I will probably compress it down more with my er, ahem.... anyway.

[DAC21]

Yes, the left one in the pic is a bit overstuffed... that was the first one I did. I did better on the second one. So I decided to put the overstuffed one as driver as I will probably compress it down more with my er, ahem.... anyway.