jesseaco

I have a 69 442 with a dated and worn front bench seat. I was looking into swapping it out for buckets but the bench seat is growing on me. My first idea was to buy one of the nice truck sporty bench seats TMI offers but I think I can just buy the foam and leather for the sport seat and do it myself. Has anyone ever attempted any thing like this?

m371961

I commend you for wanting to keep your bench. IMO too many are removed from these cars.Ben Rambow is a member on this site and is great to deal with regarding seats.

stevengerard

its not difficult to replace the seat covers but it is an art. Some folks end up with good results the first time. I have always purchased my own covers and then had an expert do the repair.

From my experience the bench seats are way more comfortable than the bucket seats.

RandyS

X2 on Ben Rambow. He is the man when it comes to upholstery. He was able to guide me thru rebuilding and recovering the interior on my 66 Project. It is not complicated to do, but you will get a workout........

Olds64

Here are some suppliers for new upholstrey:

http://www.automotiveinteriors.com/

http://lebaronbonney.com/

https://www.yearone.com/

I bought seat covers from Daine at Automotive Interiors for my 86 f250. Their prices were much better than LeBaron Bonney.

If you want OE fabric then the only option I know of is to order fabric from SMS and have an upholsterer craft new covers for you.

https://smsautofabrics.com/

RAMBOW

Hi- I would avoid the TMI Sport bench seat like the plauge.

I have one on the my workbench now that I'm giving back to the customer to take to a traditional uhpholstery shop- it is beyond me, and I've done a LOT of seat covers.

The sport bucket cover & foam kits they sell are nice, and actually easier to install than factory bucket covers, I've done a few... but the sport BENCH covers are a different matter- they do NOT install the same as factory, and after many MANY hours working on them, I threw in the towel.

If you buy them- I would plan on having an custom upholstery shop install them, as they likely will need to CUT THEM APART AND RESEW THEM. (which defeats the purpose of buying a DIY kit right?)

Also, worth mentioning- this particular set of covers has had to be REMADE by TMI 4 times due to defects, pinches, and mistakes made on them. I've only ever had a similar experience once... oh yeah and it was also with a TMI cover made wrong multiple times.

Have i mentioned I'm not a real big fan of TMI?

:-)

JohnnyBs68S

I replaced the seat covers on my '68 bench seat a few years ago, using repro vinyl covers from The Parts Place (I believe). Having done the buckets interior on my '70 C/S 'vert many years ago, I was not afraid to try the bench myself. I will admit, that getting the covers over the bench seat-backs were alot tougher than doing the buckets with the removable plastic back. But patience, and doing it in the sun on a warm day helps soften the vinyl so it stretches over the back. The bench seat bottom and rear seats were a piece of cake. There was some trick to getting the bench seat backs off of the pivot point at the center-rear of the seat bottom that I can't remember OTOMH, but google searching found the solution.

Good luck!

RAMBOW

The TMI sport bench is not a standard bench seat cover/foam set.
They use a special extra firm bun with extra large bolsters in the top and bottom cushion. The buns have metal listing rods embedded in it, that the cover needs to get attached to similar to bucket seats to provide the "tucks" for the bolsters.

The lower cushion was not horribly difficult to do- only a bit more complicated than normal due to attaching the listings... the primary issue there was the cover was poorly made in relation to their custom bun- it required quite a bit of EXTRA stuffing to eliminate wrinkles in the lower center. Not a big deal for me, but might be for someone not used to this kind of work.

Its the upper cushions where the real issues are. Stock Bench seats do not have listing rods for tucking the bolsters- the covers just slide down.

For these, they put a single zipper in the center of the back that goes about half way up the cover. The idea is you slide the cover onto the top of the seat, then fold the cover up and reach in and attach the hogrings. These instructions came directly from TMI's support.

The problem is its just not possible to pull the cover down far enough and still be able to wrap the front of the cover up and around. The top edge looked like a loose wrinkled mass, and the bottom edges were strained nearly to the point of ripping trying to fold them open enough to reach in for the listings around the large bolsters, much less wrap around the bottom edge IF you could have attached the bolsters. a total cluster.

I've ripped covers a couple times over the years doing this, and its not a fun experience- and I know enough to know when to stop pulling because something is wrong.

The PROPER way to do this, would have been to have a pair of zippers running up the rear corners of the cover so you could fold it up properly, rather like a 64-65 bucket seat cover. Not sure why they chose this way, as its actually pretty ugly having the zipper in the center of the seatback.

If i had the equipment of a customer upholstery shop, thats exactly what i would do to modify it... THEN i could properly pad out the top of the custom bun and make it fit like it should.

The point of that is- these are meant to be a DYI project- but its simply not.

Stick to stock bench seat covers... They look great, and truely are a DYI job.

RAMBOW

The real secret to factory bench seat upper covers is to use a thin plastic sheet over the cushion, and not being afraid to compress the hell out of the cushion(a second person compressing while you pull the cover down also helps!) Doing those and the cover will slide down Sooooo easy!


to get the seat backs off, you just remove the hinge clip off the outer hinge. Fold the seat back forward, pull the hinge outward off the pin, then lift the outer edge of the cushion upward to about a 45 degree angle and pull outward.

The center hinge pin has a tab on the tip that retains it when its level- but if you lift the outer edge of the seat (like you can only do once the outer hinge has been pulled off) then it just pulls right out.

A lot easier to remove a bench seat from a car by yourself if you remove the upper cushions first!