Itinerant Air-Cooled

I guess this question goes under Body/Hardware since it doesn't seem to fit anyplace else.

The time has come to rebuild my bus's front seats. My friend pjalau wrote me

I got the "horse hair" padding from Wolfsburg west, and the seat covers from west coast metric. I think they both use the same supplier.

Can anybody confirm that the two sources use the same supplier? I have to order some other stuff from WW, and it might help me consolidate the order.

I need to do this too this spring.

Only one making seat vinyl these days seems to be TMI. Not sure about the horsehair.

Horsehair from Wolfsburg West, seat covers from TMI, be fierce.
Colin

Amskeptic wrote:Horsehair from Wolfsburg West, seat covers from TMI, be fierce.
Colin

TMI? Who dat? Three Mile Island? Too Much Information?

And I'm told that the "horsehair" does not come from horsies, but from cocoanuts or something like that.

Wolfsburg West is out of the bottom seat pads, but should have them back in stock in March.

Well I've got all the parts, and have commenced to re-cover. I notice that there is a bit of what looks like cotton batting on the edge of the passenger side backrests. I assume that it's important, although it doesn't seem to have been offered as a replacement part by Wolfsburg West.

Is there an on-line source for instructions on how to recover seats? The YouTube videos are horrible, one of the links on the Ratwell site is now dead, and I wasn't able to find the one on the Samba that I looked at before. I'm hoping that one of you folks may have bookmarked it for easy access, like I didn't.

JLT wrote: Is there an on-line source for instructions on how to recover seats? The YouTube videos are horrible, one of the links on the Ratwell site is now dead, and I wasn't able to find the one on the Samba that I looked at before. I'm hoping that one of you folks may have bookmarked it for easy access, like I didn't.

I cannot find a write-up on the BobD seats that I installed Wolfsburg West horsehair pads in 2011.

Thanks for the photos, Colin.

I've finished the passenger side and am starting on the driver's side now. I've noticed that, for the bottoms on both sides, the replacement covers come with string threaded into the hems, whereas the covers I've removed used galvanized wire. I have reason to suspect that these covers were the original ones, and I figured that VW must have had a reason for using wire. So I'm doing that, too. As for the batting, I found some cotton/polyester batting at a going-out-of-business sale at Hancock's, so I'm using that. PJAlou also wrote me privately that after he re-covered his seats, using the cocoanut mat stuff, he wished he'd added a little extra padding to it. So I may try to do that, if I can get the durned seat covers to actually fit over it.

JLT wrote:Thanks for the photos, Colin.

I've finished the passenger side and am starting on the driver's side now. I've noticed that, for the bottoms on both sides, the replacement covers come with string threaded into the hems, whereas the covers I've removed used galvanized wire. I have reason to suspect that these covers were the original ones, and I figured that VW must have had a reason for using wire. So I'm doing that, too. As for the batting, I found some cotton/polyester batting at a going-out-of-business sale at Hancock's, so I'm using that. PJAlou also wrote me privately that after he re-covered his seats, using the cocoanut mat stuff, he wished he'd added a little extra padding to it. So I may try to do that, if I can get the durned seat covers to actually fit over it.

I see a lot of re-upholstering that looks totally amateur from the clumsy overuse of batting. Carefully done, it can make seating more comfortable, and it can take away the metal edges that sometimes can be felt through the vinyl. Make sure the piping is below the seating edges, as VW intended.
Colin

Amskeptic wrote: I see a lot of re-upholstering that looks totally amateur from the clumsy overuse of batting. Carefully done, it can make seating more comfortable, and it can take away the metal edges that sometimes can be felt through the vinyl. Make sure the piping is below the seating edges, as VW intended.
Colin

The finished passenger side looks pretty decent, so I think I'm on the right track batting-wise. I'm certainly not over-doing it.