[MX-5 Miata] Re-skin and restore your seats on the cheap!

[Music] hello YouTube Craig here and I am in the middle of a massive interior restoration on my 93 le but I have finished my seat so I'm going to show you how I did these irie skinned them myself they are very nice compared to my original le leather there as you can see they were pretty well what including the price of these new skins and all the tools and materials I needed to reskin them I am into this project for less than 300 bucks so that has less than the price of a crappy set of eBay seats I have a very nice restored and re skinned my factory seats so I'm going to show you how I did that alright so this is a four this is my driver seat for my Lee Miata pretty pretty bad shape the bolsters on this side especially it's common to see these bolsters pretty dilapidated the leather is in horrible shape I mean you can just tear it like cardboard so here is an after picture of my seats I think they turned out very nice and I got these @ww interior dash innovations calm I will put a link down in the description 225 bucks shipped for these covers they also offer custom embroidery for a twenty five dollar charge on these are not genuine leather I'm doing a huge interior renovation and I had to budget my money so leather just wasn't in the cards for me but I am very happy with the quality of these seat covers and I can't wait to get them in the car so before we get started I'll give you a quick overview of all the tools I used to disassemble the seats you'll need a twelve and fourteen millimeter socket or wrench as long as the phillips head screwdriver you're going to want some needlenose pliers on some small snips and you want some big metal snips these are for cutting out the hog rings nice pair of scissors a sharpie marker a to Mark's box we're going to make your holes in the cover a nice sharp razor blade or an exacto knife I use some fishing line this is just 20 pound test fishing line and this nice long needle and this was used to re-secure the wire that is inside of the seats use a revolving hole punch this is very nice it makes a nice circular hole and we have a nice circular hole like this it's far less likely to rip than a regular shaped hole or a slit and this is kind of optional I did use these these are eyelets and with these special pliers you can crimp those around the holes that you punch and just reinforce it a little bit and make it look a little bit more professional I also have a can of spray adhesive as well as a can of contact cement which is basically the same stuff that's in here I think with a brush to apply that I use some white lithium grease it's just real Oubre Kate the sliders on the bottom so it's super glue and I used a bit of this nylon fabric here it's kind of like a mesh and when this was saturated with either of these adhesives I could use it as a patch over the foam where I had a rip or a tear this is half inch poly foam I use this to pad the surfaces of the bolsters as well as the seat cushions and want a metal coat hanger or any similar type of wire and lastly to attach the seat covers from the factory they're attached with hog rings I actually ended up using zip ties and that is because I had a hard time finding upholstery hog rings locally I did find these ones a local hardware store but these are not the type that are used for upholstery these are a little bit too big and they crush into a triangle as opposed to a smaller circle so that's why I went with zip ties but if you do use hog rings you want to set a hog ring pliers to can crimp them with it's basically adverting pliers but it has a small channel on each side to hold the ring so these ones that I bought apparently our actual hog rings which farmers use to put into a pig's nose and they would just crush them through their septum like that to keep them from rooting around in the ground so pretty brutal asked me how I know and a few more things I used which were not pictured here is a few gallons of distilled white vinegar and that was used to strip the rust off of the seat pans and I use some anti rust spray paint to paint them with afterwards and just a metal brush to scrub them away and that's pretty much everything right there all right start taking out this screw here followed by these two screws here so these can kind of be a sometimes to get off because they are glued on but if you clamp some vice grips like that it'll give you a spot or you can get some leverage and push it off like so and with that panel out of the way you've got one more screw here and remove this panel all right with all that out of the way we've got four fourteen millimeters bolts two on the bottom two on the top and I recommend removing this piece with the seat folded down that way there's no tension on this big spring and with these four taking out the two halves of the seat can come apart and there's the two have separated ooh score yeah disconnected this wire which connects the two rails together so that they can both slide forward and backward together and with the rails pushed all the way back I can access these two 12 millimeter bolts and with the rails slid all the way forward I can access the two in the rear and with rails out of the way it is now time to start snipping hog greens these are what holds and stretches the seat cover down and attaches it to the seat pan and with all those hog rings snipped and pulled out we're now going to take the seat cover and kind of fold it down and turn it inside out and pull it around the other side or in my case I guess I can pretty much just rip it right off but that will expose another set of hog rings down in here next to each bolster and along the back so pop those out and this whole cover should come right off [Music] all right so here is our seat pan separated from the foam I notice the passenger seat foam and pan are slightly different than the driver's side and it has this large indentation here in the foam and this large metal piece that fills that in I'm not sure why that's not there on the driver side maybe to make it a little bit more comfortable who knows but I'm taking this outside and I'm going to show you how to get all the rust off of it with a very very minimal amount of effort ok so here I've got a little wooden frame and I've just lined it with a trash bag and I am going to place the seat pan in there you can see everything is a little bit rusty because I already did my drivers pan in here and I have a few gallons of distilled white vinegar I'm just going to fill it up in here and leave it to sit for about 24 hours and all that rust will just wipe right off ok so I got a little over three gallons of vinegar in there and you can fill up the empty jugs afterwards with water and and set them in there and that will displace the vinegar and raise the level up so you don't have to use so much if you've got any other rusty tools or metal or anything I take the rust off of throw that in there too and I will bring it up and so I'm just going to let this sit I'm going to cover it up and check back on it tomorrow morning I guess alright so I have the seat pan soaking outside and it's vinegar bath and with a stiff nylon brush you should be able to get any of the rust transfer off of here that's transferred onto the foam why our brush is a little bit too much and will tear the foam but a heavy bristled nylon brush should do the trick so this is what I did on my driver's side seat foam these thin metal rods that run through there are what holds your hog rings in place and allows you to stretch the new seat cover over it and both of them have been ripped out on my driver's seat which is what allows the bolsters to become flat at and saggy and the seat skin is not tight so I did is glued them back in place and then using fishing line and this large needle here I've run three lines on each side that are around the wire and over onto the back and now here I just got a piece of coat hanger and I will cut wire and it will be able to stay along the bottom there and I will tie the fishing line onto that and there will be two rods holding everything in place which should hopefully make it that much stronger and less likely for those wires to be ripped out of the foam over time [Music] and if you me so this is some fabric I have left over from doing my door panels and it's basically I think eighth inch thick foam it's called headliner material or headliner fabric I purchase it at Joanns fabric and I'm going to use it to line the bottom of the seat zone so here's the bottom just covered with layer that headliner material performs pretty easily to the bottom of the foam and you won't be able to see any of the yellow foam looking through the bottom of the seat pan you could call it an unnecessary step but I think it'll just make everything look that much cleaner and if any foam falls off the bottom of the seat collecting down under there and even if no one will ever see the bottom of my seat at least I'll know it's there and know that I did the best job I could do on it so not a totally necessary step but I still felt like doing it I did it on the other one and it looks good so only took a few minutes so now I'm going to show you how I added foam to the center of the seat and to the bolsters and to do that I'm going to be using this half-inch foam [Music] in the [Music] [Applause] so what I have here is some fabric it's like a nylon mesh very strong very rugged stuff I'm going to cut a strip of it and glue it over this crack in the bolster here and it'll basically emulate what this tape is doing and hold the pieces of foam together a little bit better [Music] so there's my little patch in place I've let that dry for a bit with the adhesive gas off and dry and so I'm going to start attaching the foam to the bolsters [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] maybe you in [Music] so here's all the foam I've added glued into place I'm going to leave it for a bit so all the adhesive can gas off and dry properly um I just used some of that nylon mesh fabric to cover up the seams where I used multiple pieces of foam and basically just by making pi cuts and things you can can wrap it around and contour it pretty nicely like I said - this is very low density foam and it crushes and gets compacted easy so these edges that are not absolutely perfect it is not going to matter because it is not going to translate through um this one turned out way better than this one and this one looks just fine nice padded bolsters and this one like this one was like probably twice as many pieces of foam and and this one turned it a lot better because it's the second time I've done it but I'm pretty happy with this for now and the C pan is still out soaking in the vinegar so I am pretty much done with this bottom piece for now alright it's about 24 hours later here's the seat pan I did flip it over a few hours ago because my level of vinegar dropped down I might have had a small leak in my liner here but you can see the rust literally likes to wipe right off [Music] you see [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you and he [Music] alright so that was one light coat and then followed by two heavier coats and then I did like it's kind of a third coat just paying attention to areas with recesses and along the seams and underneath these hooks where the hall greens will go so here's my seat pan the paint is all dry here is foam and I'm just going to attach it to it with some spray adhesive alright so I'm now getting ready to put my zip ties in place instead of hog reins I'm using these and I find the easiest way to go in there is make a little hook on the tip and do it with your pliers and you can kind of just press it down and get that other end of it to pop up on the other side of the wire and just use your pliers to pull them through there's all my zip ties in place I've got one two three four five up each side and one two three four five across the back so now I'm going to stretch the cover on and using a sharpie I'm going to mark on it where I am going to have to make a hole to place an eyelet for the zip tie to go through [Music] alright now I'm going to use this revolving told punch and punch a hole everywhere I made a mark right across this piece does not have a wire in it you can see these sides have that kind of a thick plastic in there for the ring or the zip tie to go around this does not so I am just going to use a piece of leftover coat hanger wire I have and I will Bend that into shape and run it through there before I punch the holes in it [Music] [Music] ok I got all my holes punched and this makes a nice round hole which will be far less likely to rip and if you were to just cut a slit in it and this next step not 100% necessary but I like doing it because it's actually kind of fun and I just got these little eyelets and a special set of pliers and what it allows you to do is to crimp an eyelet around that hole like so and that's where the hog ringer is at I'll go and just seems a lot more rugged and you know a little more professional [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] you [Music] and [Music] so after crimping these eyelets in on some of these areas that are going to have a lot more tension put on them I just like to put a little line of superglue around the inside there and that will make sure the fabric doesn't rip or tear anywhere just a little extra precaution so there's a few across the front taken down and now moving down to the sides and just kind of massage and everything along the bolster to get everything where it ought to be and get everything nice and tight and you can just start zip ties get it where you want and then lock them down this is what I've done on this back corner and added an extra eyelet and basically we can just stitch those two parts and pull and nice and tight together so here's everything tightened down and it stretched onto the seat pan I kind of put some extra eyelets there on the corner so I'm going to stitch those pieces together this corner only did one upfront I left the tails on these zip ties on the front because when you snip the tails off with these little snippers I've got it makes kind of a sharp little edge so I'm just imagining reaching onto the seat and cutting my hand on one of those so I left the tails on the zip ties up front but they're kind of nice and flush along the seat so the top of the seat still needs a little bit of massaging just to get everything where you want it to be but the bolsters are looking nice and tight pretty satisfied with it and the next step we're going to bust out the old scalpel here and we're going to cut some holes in it so the first one was going to be right here and you can see where you can be able to push that down you can kind of feel where that's going to need to go so I just make a small spot there with sharpie you'll notice on the factory seat skins a lot more of it is cut out it's really not necessary I don't think this back foot one is exposed so you don't have to do anything there just a small hole there to fit that bolt through is enough for this rail and then on this side we're going to have to make some cuts on the side of it as well as one right there so make sure you have this stretch nice and tight and where you want it before you cut the two holes up front for the sliders for the rails on the bottom [Music] okay so I'm ready to attach my rails my rails are in pretty good shape they've just got a little bit of rust around where they bolt to the floor not too bad so I just clean them up with my nylon brush here and lubricated them this stuff is really good for metal on metal contact it's a white lithium grease and so I lubricated and putting them back on now now you can go ahead and reconnect this wire just make sure that each slider has the same number of teeth exposed up here that will you know they're in alignment with each other so this spots pretty easy to tell you're going to cut your hole you can pretty much just line this piece up and you can feel it pretty easily through the fabric and has an additional small hole right there I'm just going to mark that dot with my sharpie and punch a small hole there because I believe a screw goes through there and instead of having it rub on the leather you can use your your hole punch and make a little hole there so I'm about to move on to doing the upper portion of the seat this is pretty much all so I put a few of the plastic pieces back on I'm going to wait to put the hinge back on until I'm done with this part so when I stretch my driver's seat fabric over one stress point I noticed is right here on each side where the bolster fabric is connected to the center fabric and those scenes could be easy to split there stretching it over so I'm just going to do a little bit of preventative maintenance and on the inside of that seam I'm just going to apply a little superglue to the threads and that will keep that area from being stressed so much and less chance of a rip or a thread popping out or anything like that [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I've got the cover pretty much stretched on where it's going to be and so I am going to punch a few holes and that piece there and put it in some eyelets and those are the three points where attaches below the headrest you want to do those ones first so I've got this side bolster right where I want it I've got this line running nice and even down that corner so I'm going to go ahead and punch my holes here pop in my eyelets and tighten down this side and with that side tighten down I'll then be able to pull and stretch over this bolster and get the back of it nice and smooth well still a little wrinkly [Music] you [Music] [Music] so I'm continuing work here on the upper portion of the passenger seat and when I stretch this over the headrest it's still a little bit loose in some areas it's not really stretched tight over it so I have actually removed that piece it's just four screws that hold it in and these ones are covered up by these foam plugs and little plastic and what I'm going to do is cover this with a new layer of foam just using my half inch green poly foam here and looking at this I think it's just deteriorated with age and maybe not as thicker as it used to be so I think another layer of foam will help you [Music] [Applause] the [Music] you you can kiss me and [Music] [Music] me [Music] okay so about to put the center cushion end I petted it additionally with that same half inch poly foam and kind of beveled the edges to make it a little bit smoother when it's in there so I have these these flaps or how it attaches so I'm going to set it on top right about where it will sit and with my zip ties already in place I will be able to see right about where it's going to be sitting and use that as a guide mark where I will make my holes and put my items I really like how these eyelet pliers are self aligning makes it pretty much impossible to mess these up just slowly work it in there and be mindful of these two points here are kind of stress points before I start to cover I did put a little bit of superglue on those just to strengthen them up a little bit [Music] so I've got this side in place and I've gone ahead and marked three holes to letter on the flap and one on this piece so I'm going to go ahead and punch those out [Music] and I think I will do something similar on this side this flap is a little bit different a pretty much same strategy [Music] [Applause] [Music] in [Music] Oh Lulu loves the new seats alright so that's it for my Miata seat guide how to reskin them look at all this I mean this is awful ease my old cover is very glad to get these out of the car um this wasn't too hard to do I had literally no experience doing this kind of stuff before and I think I was able to do a good job so definitely don't be scared to try it and like I said under 300 bucks to do this that is pretty awesome and please stay tuned because I got more interior stuff coming up I'm going to be redoing my dashboard and I've been doing a little sewing and I'll show you how I made these badass quilted door panels so stay tuned for more Miata content you

Channel: CrogDog's Garage

Views: 69,511

Rating: 4.8751345 out of 5

Keywords: miata, mx5, mx-5, mazda, haggard, ricer, eunos, crog, crogdog, garage, craig, brousseau, lulu, roadster, convertible, maine, build, project, crogdog's, crogdogs, diy, restore, seat, seats, bolster, foam, interior, innovations, interior-innovations, howto, how to, le, 93, limited, edition, upholstery, upholster, cover, leather, red, skin, re-skin, restoration, cheap, racing, ebay, mods, mod, modification

Id: _mi1HVCnRv0

Length: 38min 21sec (2301 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2017