Thinking about replacing my hair seat pads and keeping/refitting the seat covers I have.

Are there any special tools required ?

Also any hints, tips and advise would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Hi, I managed to replace a bench seat cover using just pliers to bend the tabs on the frame.

I cut my fingers a bit and regretted not using glue to keep the wadding in place on the horsehair pad (it moved a bit and bunched up in places, not noticeable to the naked eye but shows up in photos).
Also while trying to stand on the seat to compress it and tugging the cover over, I needed a helper to stand on it.

I doubt this is what the professionals do lol

Thanks JacksHereR input appreciated

Cover the springs with an old tough piece of material (like an old curtain) before putting on the new pad. This is to stop the springs breaking it up over time and keep the shape for longer.

Repair as many of the broken tabs as possible, they will break when you take the covers off.

Use a really strong nylon string as the tensioner at the bottoms.

Replace any rusty metal bars in the covers with some old head liner bows cut to length

Rich

The seat pads on a bench seat and base were originally wired to the frame with pieces of soft iron wire through the hair pad.
If your covers are good enough to reuse, maybe your hair pads are good too!
If you go to a seat upholsterer they sell fibre wadding which you can use to plump up the base and back.
The back edge of the seat base cover is sometimes (often?) held to the seat frame with a cardboard edge which slips into a channel on your frame. There is a picture on a thread on here.

If you have not yet taken the cover off...then there may be a chance it has hardened over the years.
Mine on my 62 looked OK but had been very damp and the springs and frame and edge of the spring pad at the front were very rusty and the hair pads and the cover were stuck by rust to the frame.
I managed to avoid breaking the tabs but the very edge of the cover deformed slightly. The edge is held to the spring pad by something like soft iron wire which had rusted badly and had marked the cover badly. I took the stitching out of the edge seam at the bottom to take the rusty wire out.
My cover had come unstitched and the white beading had come out but it is not torn at all.
The hair pad was quite stained and yet was surprisingly full and not saggy. i have shot blasted and had the frames powder coated and have the springs lightly dusted in metal ready and eventually light prime and black paint

My 62 is a 62RHD hump back bench and I am tempted to clean the cover and attempt to re-use. It has pleats stiched into it whereas the TMI covers have heat seams. Between the cover and the hair pad there was a little upholstery padding but there was also some thick fabric and padding glued to the cover in the area that was stiched.
I want to make a bench seat westy style cot but the hump will determine which way the upper cot (seat back) is used as a cot!

When I refurbished my 64 1/3 2/3 seats there were a number of springs broken which have been replaced. These are reasonably easy to replace. I used eight springs from a donor seat. The blood on the frame has dried nicely now
We used soft iron wire round the base to tension the cover.
For the 64 I bought new hair pads from VW Heritage and I was pleased with these! On the OG seats they put hessian between the springs and the hair pad on the base but not on the back. The seat frame had gone through the pad and the cover on my driver's seat.

Thanks seablue67 & type21f

Found a couple of good threads on samba.com.

Gona think very hard before I pull my existing cover off

If it is a seamless cover and not stitched i would agree. On the 61/2 microbus the pleats, stitching rots and you get the cover pleats opening.
Mine was Ok but quite rotten stitching. Job for long winter's night...soak the cover and attempt to dissolve the rust out of it and then slowly restitch.
On our 65 camper the cover was stained and the beading edge stitching was coming apart. On that i manage to take the cover off clean it and restitch the edge - took a long time and ended up OK but hand stitched.
My forebears were sail makers...I kid you not...and kilt makers..so I learned sowing at a very early age! I have finished Lotus two seater tonneau covers which were attempted on a machine and then hand finished by me by hand...much to the admiration of all. Grandma seamstress included. She did a sterling job with the machine but broke so many needles we finished by me stitching.

You can clean the cover on the frame but do it in the summer when it will dry out...I did that on the rear bench and it did clean up well and stayed nice too..smell much fresher!
if you do this make sure it is on a very warm summers day or have the facility to dry it (walk in airing cupboard etc or it will stay damp and go musty and smell awfull!)

really fresher air gives a lot of energy. nice thread thanks for sharing that with us.
new fresh air by ecoquest

^^^^ LOL at random post of the year!