New Seat Covers for the Plymouth Sport Fury - Part II

I didn't intend on making a second blog entry for the seats but as I was recovering the rear seat, I thought of a few things I'd like to mention. First off, the tools I found most helpful in removing the old hog rings are shown here (L to R: nippers, needle nose pliers, side cutters, awl):

The nippers were the most helpful as I could usually grab a part of the old hog ring and rock the nippers to the side and the hog ring is pried out.

The only time I couldn't use the nippers was when the rings were too tight against the vinyl. Then I'd have to resort to prying the ring usually with the awl and/or pliers.

One tip on the hog ring pliers, if they come with a spring to keep the jaws open, take the spring out. I was doing this project by myself and with the spring out of the pliers, I could pre-load a hog ring into the pliers, stretch the vinyl tight and hold it with one hand, then pick up the pliers/ring in the other and install the ring. With spring-loaded pliers, you need two hands to load in a ring and then hold it in place with one hand.

The foam on the rear seat bottom had a couple things written on it, "Beatles" and "Juan". I'm thinking the guys that did the recovering job in Tijuana did this. I wonder where Juan is now, 40 years later.

The foam was original to the car, as it has the part number still legible on the bottom.

When I was done with the first bucket seat, I figured all the seats would be about the same difficulty. Nope. The back seat bottom was nearly the end of me. I followed the directions by fastening the back of the new seat cover to the seat frame. The directions then say to roll the front and sides over the edges of the frame. Well, my seat cover was made too small or I fastened the back too tightly. It just would not fit. I spent days, a couple hours at a time, trying to stretch the vinyl over the frame. It just wasn't working. In fact, I pulled so hard on the last corner that it stretched the stitching. I finally did get the cover stretched over the frame though, but not until I undid one hog ring on each corner of the back edge.

As you can see, the frame and cover seam aren't lined up where they should be.

Here is the opposite corner. It went on first so looks much better. I spent a lot of time working the vinyl down around the frame and finally did get the both corners close to where they should be.

Here is the back seat all done. I might adjust the back corners of the bottom cushion to get the wrinkles out better. There isn't much to grab onto though, so it might not be possible.