cfair

Along the way Olds used seat buttons as part of their upholstery in more than a few years & models. My '66 98 convertible has 'em, as do others. I believe many other GM makes used buttons kind of confirming that some of these cars really were rolling couches.

I had my interior done a while back, but the buttons stand proud of the leather. With enough use, or abuse, the buttons pop off & it looks cr*ppy. So I've been looking for a process to replace these buttons without requiring a trip to the upholsterer (& days down) just to replace decorative buttons.

Couple of preambles:
1) When I had my '66 98 interior done, it needed 44 buttons, I think I made 100, just for spare parts. My upholstery guy lent me his button press, so I made extra. That worked great. I'm working on size #32 seat buttons & I think slightly smaller #30 on the door/quarter panels. They should probably match, but they don't. As long as the seat bottoms/backs have the same size & doors/quarters have their own size, I can live with it.

2) The process below leans heavily on my experience restringing Hunter/Douglas blinds, including parts from that process. See YouTube if you need to restring your blinds. It's not hard but costs you a few hours every few years. Cheaper than replacing blinds for broken strings, I'll tell you.

3) The tricks here are a heat gun for shaping nylon cord & 10mm nylon blinds string, plus a supply of ready-to-go PinBack buttons which match your interior. And a big *ss needle to pull it all together.

Back to the Olds problem: If your buttons sit proud of the leather or fabric, they wear, or break off. Which leaves you with nice upholstery, but missing a button or 2, or 4. Which looks cr*ppy. But you don't want to take a day or 3 at the upholstery shop, so how do you fix this at home?

Here we go.

First, get a supply of buttons that match your car's buttons. I made mine at redo-time anticipating this problem, but I believe OPGI, Classic & some of the others also make buttons for big, and well, less big Olds' of various vintages.

My first try with the replacement PinBack buttons was to simply follow the design & push the replacment button pins through the leather to hold them in place with the pin retainer. No go. My foam was too thick for the length of the pin. D*mn.

But, each pinback button had 4 holes through which I could run tie-back string, so that was an opportunity. Except pulling tiny string through tiny holes doesn't work. Cuz "you can't push string". It just folds up underneath the exit hole. Tantalizingly close to coming through.

Nylon blinds string can hold your Olds seat buttons in place.

I tried making a hook shaped needle. That failed. The ones I could bend to the right shape weren't big enough to hold the 10mm nylon cord. Then I tried tweezers to pull the string through. No go. I didn't have tweezers small enough to fit throught the pinback holes.

The "a-ha" here was using my heat gun to melt the ends of a very long (16") piece of nylon cord into a u-shape so you can "push string" through the pinback holes.

Here's a shot of the abused melted (and working) string. Once it's melted, it holds shape and defeats gravity:

Use your heat gun to melt the nylon cord into a U shape so you can press it through PinBack button holes.

For tieback buttons you don't need much more than 16" (8 X 2 sides) so if you have a 100' roll of nylon cord, who cares if you melt an inch or 2 to get it through the button holes?

Once the string has a shape, you can use the U shape to route it through the pinback button holes. Then you're in the ballpark.

In my case I routed the strings through the holes which were 180º apart for retention strength & evenness. Like this:

Cut your strings extra-long (16-20"). Mildly melting nylon cord allows you to route the string through pinback button holes.

Looking at the PinBack buttons from the rear, here's another shot that may help:

Use the center pin to place the button correctly in your upholstery, looking at it from the front (aka visible) side. Use the strings to tie it in place if the pin isn't long enough.

So I prepared a few buttons for the missing ones in my car. Yeah, it's 2.5" long.

Here are a few completed buttons:

Tie your retention strings to consistent tension to hold the buttons consistently deep in your upholstery. Check your tension for consistency. Deeper means less proud, which may mean fewer replacements.

Pulling 4 tie-back strings through your fabric/vinyl/leather will make you uncomfortable. You can back off to 2, or perhaps 1, but I was looking for strength because we use these cars, they're not showpieces.

The last thing to mention is that once you've prepared a bunch of buttons you'll need a big *ss needle to pull the retention strings through.

If you've played with restringing blinds you may have a big *ss needle. If not, here's a shot of what you'll need.

A very large needle is needed to pull all 4 strings through the upholstery, foam & backing. You might need vise-grips to pull the strings through.

The needle has to be big enough to hold all 4 string strands & long enough to penetrate the upholstery fabric, foam, & backing. Even then, I needed a vise-grip to pull all those strings through. It took more force than I would have liked.

If you're shy about tearing or damaging your interior, leave this to a professional.

If not, use the needle to pull the retention strings through and tie them off on seat springs or something underneath the seat back/bottom fabric/vinyl/leather.

The first button took me about an hour, just figuring out the process.

The next bunch will take me time because they're on the front seat and I'll need to disassemble the seat back and bottom to get to the partst where I can pull the buttons back in.

I'm expecting to have to do this again someday, I thought I'd just note it here in case it helps someone else.

Corrections, comments, criticism most welcome. I'm no pro, just looking for a way to keep the interior nice.

Cheers
Chris

Olds64

Thanks for the cool thread! Now show us pics of the install process and the finished seat.

cfair

After the successful 1st test of my (really limited) upholstery skills, I did 3 more pulled buttons back into place yesterday. With seat opening & closing and all that probably took me 4 hours. Which is questionable use of time for 3 buttons, but it's nice to have the interior look right.

I was missing 1 each on each front seat back, and had to use hog ring pliers to open the covering and get at the backside of the seat covers. So hog ring pliers and probably a supply of new hog rings are very helpful. You can open hog rings with regular pliers, but it would be a pain to punch them back in without the right tool.

My last missing button was on the drivers seat center (high use), so I chose to pull the front seat up off the seat risers using the 4 5/16"-18 screws at the corners instead of pulling up the seat from the floor bolts. These seats are heavy.

Here's a shot of how to use an upholstery needle to pull the strings through the covering so you can tie them off (under slight tension) to the springs beneath:

Use an upholstery (3") needle to pull tieback strings through the covering and tie off under tension on the backside.

Because the buttons have some depth, they stand proud of the fabric field, this means that they'll pop off again. I put my repaired buttons under slight pull string tension to make them sit more flush, but this does put more strain on the surrounding fabric & seams. If I were doing more than 1 at once, I'd try to get them all to sit equally flush for the look and to reduce the propensity for popping off under use.

Here's a shot of a repaired button under tension from my rear seat bottom:

Back to factory diamond pattern with button accents.

Not much more to say here. Hope this helps some of you. A thread about thread. Hah.

Chris