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You could use a heat gun on low too. I think if you heated the material, then stretched it on the seat, the wrinkles would have gone away when the fabric cooled and contracted. Just a guess. Either way, its a lot better than sitting on rat droppings!

Those aftermarket covers are very attractive. As attractive as the factory covers imho. Who was the mfr of them? Were they a lucky eBay purchase?

Back from Boston and caught up on things, so back in the blast furnace I call a garage to get a few things done.

First order of business was stripping the front seat back down to the frame. This involved first removing the seat back ashtray and the robe rail. The robe rail need to reworked as well as the rubber hose portion split in several places and the fabric covering is toast. The interior chain is still in good shape.

Them the hog rings are removed from the bottom of the seat, and the retaining points straightened to pull the listing rods loose.

With that complete the cover was removed by basically turn it inside out. Then the layers of batting and burlap where taken off and disposed of.

The back of the seat is covered with a fiberboard similar to what the kick panels are made of. The one on there was in reasonable shape for now, so I left it alone. With the down to the basic springs, I clean it up some and then started the process of recovering it. The front was stretched with duck-clock (heavy canvas), and then hog-ringed into place. Then a 1/2 thick of layer of foam was applied next and glued in place. I left about a foot over lap on each side. The was then rolled up and stuffed in the pockets on the sides of the seat to give them a rounded off look. This mimics the original construction which was done with a huge wadding of batting. The corner were then trimmed to get the to lay flat, and round them off. Next the Dacron batting was applied over the foam. This was wrapped over the top and sides of the seat and glued in place. Next the aftermarket cover was pulled down over the batting and stretched as good as possible into place. They look pretty decent for covers that are not tailored fit for these seats.

Before the seats go back in the car, I need to address the issues with the seat tracks. The track lock cable between both sides is broken (easy fix), and 3 out of the four track springs are broken or missing. So I fixed the easy one first which was the track lock on the passenger side. It just needed a new spring which I have a box of various small springs that fit the bill. I will need to locate the actual large track springs as both of them were broken on my car. These are pretty heavy duty springs, so I will need to see what I can adapt from the local hardware store.

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The local Kragen Auto Parts had universal "Pedal Return Springs" that proved beefy enough to work as seat track springs. So with the seat tracks back in working order, the seat went back into the car as I was tired of tripping over it.

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Well some more progress today. I changed the fluid in the Diff today. Boy does that old fluid stink. I must have washed my hands 20 times and they still stink....and I was wearing gloves!

The rear was about 1/2 pint low. It took 4 1/4 pints to completely refill it.

With the rear-end fluid changed, the car was finally off the jack stands and back down on 4-tires.

Next I pulled out the rear seats. I will start the tear down and rebuild on those over the next few days just so I can finish using up all the seat foam that is laying around the garage.

I noticed with the car back on 4 tires that the front is riding a bit high. But I think this is because I have the weight of the front bumper and grille still off the car. The rear is sitting at the correct height with the bottom of the skirts sitting at the center mark on the rear wheel.

One question I have is the horn button. Is the a smaller spring of some kind of filler piece directly behind the plastic horn button? The button is a bit loose in the horn ring, so I figure there must be something behind it. The actual "horn spring" is in place thanks the a care package from Ross.

There should be a foam rubber doughnut about 1/2" thick that acts as a spring to hold the horn button in place. See photo.

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Perfect! Thanks for that info. I knew I was missing something. The horn button was missing when I got the car, and I got a replacement, but of course that foam donut was missing. I'll just make one out of some spare foam that I have.

The rear seat bottom has a tar-board/fiber-board piece that runs around the front of the seat under the fabric. Mine of course is just toast from moisture and rodents. Was this just used as a kick plate, or also for sound/heat deadening? Or just to help maintain the seat shape?

All the tar-board/fiber-board pieces in the car have to be replaced. These were used on the door panels, sail panels, B-Pillar posts, etc. Basically used as the frame work to support the body shell upholstery. After some checking the best candidate for replacement is Black Moisture Proof Panel Board (1/8"). So I am going to have a go a cutting all new pieces and removing the old decaying pieces. The actual fabric will come later. Just plain black panels will look a whole lot better than what is actually in there now. The old door panels will get stored until it's time for the real upholstery work, and then they will serve as sewing patterns for the new material on my pre-cut boards.

Now on my car, the headliner, sail panels, B-pillar panels, tops of the door panels and back of the front seat was upholstered in a coarse woven white fabric. This of course is stained and dry rotted as is all the other OEM material in the car. The thought of putting back in white fabric upholstery is not sitting well with me. Was there a solid color option on the '54s? (All blue for example?)

Or perhaps a better choice in white material that would be more resistant to staining and clean up better. I think vinyl may look to weird in that application.

The rear seat bottom has a tar-board/fiber-board piece that runs around the front of the seat under the fabric. Mine of course is just toast from moisture and rodents. Was this just used as a kick plate, or also for sound/heat deadening? Or just to help maintain the seat shape?

All the tar-board/fiber-board pieces in the car have to be replaced. These were used on the door panels, sail panels, B-Pillar posts, etc. Basically used as the frame work to support the body shell upholstery. After some checking the best candidate for replacement is Black Moisture Proof Panel Board (1/8"). So I am going to have a go a cutting all new pieces and removing the old decaying pieces. The actual fabric will come later. Just plain black panels will look a whole lot better than what is actually in there now. The old door panels will get stored until it's time for the real upholstery work, and then they will serve as sewing patterns for the new material on my pre-cut boards.

Now on my car, the headliner, sail panels, B-pillar panels, tops of the door panels and back of the front seat was upholstered in a coarse woven white fabric. This of course is stained and dry rotted as is all the other OEM material in the car. The thought of putting back in white fabric upholstery is not sitting well with me. Was there a solid color option on the '54s? (All blue for example?)

Or perhaps a better choice in white material that would be more resistant to staining and clean up better. I think vinyl may look to weird in that application.

This is what my interior is supposed to look like. Notice all the white. The only thing different is the top of the seats on my car are blue instead of white. But the striped broadcloth is the same. That broadcloth is basically unobtainable unless I am willing to have it custom milled. Which is for sure not in the budget. So I want to start looking at what the solid color options where. I think the striped broadcloth was a Clipper Deluxe thing.

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