Back with the seats, mainly because it's too wet at the moment to drive the car. At the show I looked at a few seats, and took some photos as a guide on what to aim for;
Admittedly I thought I'd taken a few more than just 'two', but then looking at some of the Malvern show review videos I must have missed half the show! So much I don't remember, and it wasn't because the videos were from Sunday. I must remember next year to actually enjoy the show instead of just show off my car.
Anyway, back to seats. From the photos above the angle between seat back and base is actually quite acute, almost closer to 90 degrees than I expected. As a comparison I took my drivers seat out at the weekend;
It's quite clear to see that my seat angle isn't sufficient.
So the reason I took the seat out was to see whether I could tilt the seat back entirely. In theory it was possible, but to make any appreciable difference I'd have had to raise the front of the seat several inches. This would have put the seat back too far back which would have made it difficult to drive. It would also have made refitting it really difficult because I couldn't have got to the rear bolts. Overall I'm going to leave the seat as is.
However having the seat out is going to give me an opportunity to make things easier for me. As I was undoing the nuts I found a couple of the bolts were fixed in place. Not intentionally of course, but it really made it easier to undo the nuts under the car. I want to make the bolts captive in some way, so I'm going to add some washers that are bent up and welded to the slider. That way the bolt is still movable but won't rotate as I tighten it. It was something I should have done the first time but never got round to it. It's a small side job and will make things easier to work on. Having said that, if I don't make changes to the seat I may not to remove them very often!
It's back to seat padding now. I've cut the bottom layer and the first layer, they work together and help my back side. Now it's just leg support, and I think a couple more layers to produce a support will do the job. Although I did have to push the seat forward because with my legs now bent over the support I couldn't quite reach the pedals! One thought I did have was that for the seat I used a wooden back board and stapled the leather to it. I can't do that this time round because if I use a wood base I'm effectively undoing the padding that is on the seat already. I do need a solid base to work off though. I think what I'm going to do is use a play mat option as a reasonably flexible base. It'll be rigid enough to get the leather in the right place, but bendy enough to be comfortable. I think I'll have to glue the leather in place though, staples won't hold. That also means I'll need to make proper corners as I can't rely on tension to make the corners. Fortunately I got a leather sewing kit so I should be able to do something strong enough. Once the foam is glued up and correctly profiled I'll make a paper pattern.
