FH - dual seat

 After a lot of welding and modifications to the seat base to accommodate threaded fasteners, all previously shown in the blog, it's time to finish the seat. 

The first job, and this is part of painting activity, is to get the seat base coated with two-pack:

With the seat base on the bench we put some strips of double-sided tape on top of base. This is going to retain the rubber and stop it sliding about as we try to fit the cover.

This is the original foam rubber:

This is probably not the original cover, because it's PVC and not Rexine. I might be wrong of course because I don't really know when the industry stopped using Rexine for seat covers; all I can say is that my 1960s cars always had Rexine covers and not this very compliant PVC material.

The key thing with these covers is to make sure that the orientation of the seams line up with the appropriate parts of the base. Once this is done, it's sensible to retain them with as many clamps as possible. I've got a lot of these little spring clamps, which are very cheap, just for this job and a million others:

I've experimented with the different areas around the edge of the seat base to decide where I should start gluing. Some areas are much easier to access than others and some areas prevent access to other areas when folded over.

I'm using a contact adhesive from Screwfix which I use for laying lino. It seems to work very well and goes off in a couple of minutes. I've started at the front of the base and held it all in place with three large clamps. When this has dried enough to be very sticky I move backwards down both sides of the seat simultaneously.

When the sides are done I move on to the back. This is the most difficult bit, but cutting darts into the cover enables the glue joints to sit down quite nicely. You tend to go around the cover pushing the fabric into place as the glue goes off. I used a small hammer to knock the retaining spikes back because actually the glue does a far better job than those little metal spikes which are never in the right place.

That's it, finished and ready to go back on the bike.

I think it looks great. Some people think the seat looks better in black, but the tan colour is very characteristic to Ariel and I like it.