Vitesse seat base foam replacement

[Bobtaylor]

I have just ordered a new  seat base foam of my Mk1 Vitesse from Newtons via the club. It arrived and is in 3 pieces, the main seat base and the two separate side bits. I assumed that it would just be one piece!

I have not taken the original out yet to see how thats fitted but wanted to check before I do, should the seat foam be in one, if not how are the side bits held in place?

Bob

[ChrisJB]

If it is like a TR6 seat base the side pieces are glued to the base after the centre of the seat base cover has been fitted.  The centre of the TR seat base cover has 3 fabric flaps that are glued down onto the seat base foam to keep the centre of the cover flat.  The side (and front for TR6) bolster foams are then glued onto the base sandwiching the fabric and the sides of the cover tensioned over them.  Fairly straight forward to rebuild but what it effectively means is that you can't change the foam or cover independently as it is almost impossible to separate the joint between the foam pieces and the cloth flaps cleanly to allow reuse. The flaps are needed to hold the base of the cover down to the foam, although a work around may be to glue the centre of the cover to the base foam after the side foams have been glued in place.  This is the way the late GT6 seats are constructed with a single piece base foam.

You should be able to see the construction of the seat base by unclipping the cover around the sides.  Hopefully someone who has rebuilt Vitesse seats will respond with better model specific information.

[68vitesse]

The highback seat base cover, as fitted to 2Litre Vitesse Saloons, has a piece of foam stitched to the first seam in from the edge, this foam is glued to the base foam towards the edge and then the two seperate front to back foam pieces are glued over the top. It would be wrong just to glue these pieces to the main foam before the base cover is partialy fitted.

This is how the base cover is fitted in my seat collection, dont know if all suppliers make the base cover the same.

Dont know if the 2L Vitesse convertible low back seats are fitted differently.

Regards

Paul

[Badwolf]

If it helps at all, my Spitfire foams arrived from Park Lane as one piece (three pieces formed together), with instructions to glue the centre of the seat cover to the middle section of the foam.