Rebuilding seat bases

After carefully measuring higth, width, and angles of original 1963 Ski Nautique seats I came up with this Autocad drawing.



Here is a couple of pics of the fabricated aluminum frame setting next to a wally world seat for reference:





Here is a link to a large zip file containing original seats with measurements:

Early seats with measurements

Let me know if you would like the Autocad drawing.

Ok I'll give it a shot, I rebuilt my deluxe interior int he 81 a few years ago and it is holding up without any issues.

I used 1/2 exterior plywood.

Biscuit joined all corners, used polyurethane waterproof glue like Gorilla Glue and predrilled counter sunk stainless steel screws. After everything set up I sanded all the corners and coated everything with epoxy and put on 2 strips of cloth on all corners.

If I was doing this today I would go with CPES instead of the epoxy coating but I would still put a few strips of cloth at each corner.

I think my method is pure overkill but they are solid as a rock and completely sealed from taking on any water.

C-Bass wrote: Dang Alan, those look nice. Well done. Do you think it'd hold up well with just the glue & c-sunk screws? I don't have a biscuit joiner and don't see me getting much use out of one if I buy one. I assume you stapled your vinyl to the seat bases...anything special there? Just stainless staples, or did you try to seal the staple holes too?

To be honest with you I like the biscuits because they help keep everything lined up while you're assembling. Are the essential? probably not but the do add quite a bit of glue surface.

I did use stainless staples and did not seal them.

One thing I would do differently is I wrapped all my foam in plastic to try to keep the foam dry but the wrap I used was a little too heavy and it is noisy. When you sit in the drivers seat you can hear the plastic wrap make a little crumpling noise so I would go with something a little thinner next time. Also any creases in the plastic wrap will show through your finished vinyl so you need to be nice and neat there as well.

Yeah for now the seat base will be wrapped in the old (original) vinyl until I take the big plunge (stringers, floor, carpet, & vinyl). Great advice though on the corners. That seems like something easily overlooked until the covers start ripping through.

Thanks for the help

I rebuilt my seat bases out of Azek and screwed it all together with stainless screws on the 85. The only stuff that is wood in the 85 now after full restore in stringer/floor stuff is the vinyl parts of the seats and removable floor piece behind the doghouse. I do not have measurements anymore though. I had gotten leftover Azek from my companies store exterior remodel/face-lift.

cscfootballx72,

Send me an email at jim@drivesys.com and I will reply with the files attached.

jim