Trying to keep from rebuilding entire seat while I recover them. One of my bucket seats has a "helper" piece of plastic reinforced with metal that connects the individual seat spring to itself. It is about 10 inches long. It looks like it adds strength back to a tired S spring. Anyone know what they are called or where to get them? Thanks

 

Pictures

 

Hi,
I have a spring question too and figured I would ask it here instead of starting a new thread. We are not planning on replacing our seat upholstery but the sides of our splint bench seat lean towards the door. The springs I guess have given way to countless entrances and exits. How can we support the sides to keep them from dipping while sitting so we don't feel like we are leaning towards the door.

 

are you talking about the bottom cushion springs?

Most likely you have broken side support springs.
The way the seats were designed, you have 2 or 3 springs bent into a sort of Z shape on each side that hold you up and a row of about 20 z shape springs along the front edge that hold it up. The rest of the seat springs (in the bottom cushion anyway) are just flat zig-zag springs that go from the front edge to teh back edge and cushion the pad... its those front & side springs that do all the real work.

If any of them brake, the seat will feel like you're in a low rider.

The side support springs can be purchased at most restoration suppliers for about $20- but you will need to take the seat out and the lower cover off to replace them.

You can also get yourself som lengths of "Medium Coil" zig-zag or No-Sag spring at an upholstery shop & some bwclips or 3 prong clips, and attempt to sister in a repair over the break- this can sometimes be done w/o taking the cover off, but its pretty challenging.

First thing to do is to pull your bench seat out of teh car, flip it over and take a close look at those side support springs to see whats up.

 

unfortunatly i don't have a good pic of the side support springs...
this pic shows a stripped down 66 bench lower seat frame- look to the very edges and you'll see a cloth covered spot- thats the side support springs... from the bottom you'll want to probe this area to see if it has any noticeable breaks in one of the springs.

Its also not unheard of the side border wire near the back to break, which could also cause it to lean way out like you describe. That would also require stripping the seat down to fix... but wouldn't be that hard, just get some new 9ga wire from a HW store, bend it up and sister it in with some BW clips from an upholstery shop.

 

Hi Rambow,

Thanks for your response. I will print this out and show it to my hubby and his friends who are working on the car.