Seat refurb help

[A900ss]

All,

I want to recolour my seats with a Furniture Clinic kit so today took out the passenger seat.




The only problem is....that the underside looks like this:



Now I might be fooling myself but I am hopeful that the runners will come up OK with a wire attachment on a drill and then a new lick of paint. However what does concern me is the rusted away wire supports for the seat cushion. Can these be easily replaced? If so, what with and is it a DIY fix or does it need to go to a proper trimmer.

Alternatively am I just fooling myself and the seats are toast?

I plan to do one at a time and use the passenger seat for the drivers side whilst I am repairing the drivers seat as invariable that will be just as bad.

Any advice welcome.

[yodel]

most things are possible to DIY. If they were mine though I'd talk to my trimmer and arrange to drop them in on a Monday morning and pick them up on a Friday night.
proper job done and car off the road for as little time as possible. Seat refurbing is a lot of effort, time and trouble if you don't know what you are doing.

[A900ss]

In an ideal world I'd want a trimmer to repair the seat base and not touch the leather seat but I guess no trimmer would do just that work as they would want to do the leather work as well.

My seats have no rips or tears so I'm happy just to reprint them.

[Daggsy]

I needed the seats on my S1 refurbishing, the origional manufacturer label proved useless as they were no longer contactable (folded). I took the seats to a trimmer who took off the leather and foam, returned the seat chasis to me and after lots and lots of sourcing I completely refurbed the chasis of the seat for the trimmer to 'recover'.
End result .... great seats that ended up costing weeks and weeks as the springs took ages to locate.
Advice from me ... don't get to anal about things.

[estutjaweh]

Wow, they do look gone. Would it not be an option to get a set of second hand seats if your going to re-colour them anyway? What colour are you going for?

[A900ss]

Whilst far from perfect, the rust has mostly come off with a wire brush attachment on a drill.

Next thing to do is make a support to hold the seat cushion to replace the rusted wires and then I'll finally be able to use the Furniture Clinic kit on the coverings.

After spending so much cash on the engine, I'd really rather wait until next year before a visit to the trimmer if I can help it.

[Griffer]

I had a similar, but not as bad problem with broken wires on my Griff seats a few years back. I replaced the broken wires with garden fencing wire, pulled as tight as I could. I then got some cheap thin carpet mats and cut a square to slip in between the wires and seat foam, this stops the wires from cutting into the foams and reducing their effective thickness.

Five years later and I have had no further issues and the bases still give good support. Hope this of use to you.
Steve