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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Seat foam pads

One can buy replacement foam pads for the seats. But how good are they?
I have the original seat pads for my frog, they are more or less intact but, at least when not fitted, they are very floppy, and they are after all, nearly 60 years old. New foam seat bases may be the answer but foam seats in household furniture don't last that well so l wonder about these. Has anyone got experience of replacement foam seat bases after a few years' use?
GuyW

Guy the old 'foam' was probably a rubber based material - 'Dunlopillow' i think was a trade name from the past.

I've found that the foam mattress on the boat only lasted about 15 years and started to loose its 'bounce' and lost support and needed replacement - not had a problem with the midget ones as get.

R.
richard b

Guy, I just used the old foam bases and beefed them up with a layer of rubberised horsehair and then a layer of thin foam over that the last time I did some seats. Worked fine and lasted well.
Paul MkIMkIV

Yes Richard, the original is a sort of "expanded" foam rubber. Somewhere I have seen a suggestion of stuffing the holes in it with rolled-up bits of carpet, to give them a bit more "body". I guess modern dense foam carpet underlay would do much the same thing, and I just happen to have some of that!

I think I will save the planet's resources and reuse what I have.
GuyW

Guy I had the original Dunlopillow seat pads and i restored mine using horsehair and a thin layer of foam.I recovered them with leather faced seat covers. They looked good but were disintigrating so I found lots of dunlopillow 'crumbs' on the carpet after use. Both seats were stolen when the car was vandalised. The replacement seat bases use foam and they are more 'full' than the old dunlopillow. They do absorb more and are actually quite comfortable. No signs of collapse but they are only a year old. The seat bases are much lighter than before.
Bob Beaumont

Interesting thread Guy.
Mine are a mere 46 years old, a whole moody teenager younger than yours but have lost their absorption so need a refurb or replacing.

Bob when you say replacements are 'fuller' do you mean more 'dense' and do they still fit (relatively) easily under the seat covering?
Jeremy MkIII

Another good reason to re-use what I have!
Moss ransom demand for a foam seat pad kit is £111 per seat. That gets you the foam block, the "horsehair" and a couple of pieces of thin felt. Add in the replacement clips, and that would come to £240 for the foam and padding for a pair of frogeye seats.

Maybe I am penny pinching, but I don't see the point in throwing money at what was always intended as a cheap sports car. I don't mind paying for quality where I can see the value in it, but where I can I prefer to keep my costs down. There are enough opportunities to spend on worthwhile and necessary parts as it is!
GuyW

Guy, I bought new ones, together with covers, from Frogeye Spares (bit of discount as shell is from them and I call in now and then) but not fitted yet. I've renovated one of the original seat bases - bit of welding and new metal needed. I considered re-using the old foam but it seems a bit tired.
Bill Bretherton

I have had good service from PJM Motors and they list this for a Frogeye

http://www.pjm-motors.com/spritemidget/1-frogeye#&gid=1&pid=1

R.
richard b

Jeremy,
I mean they pack out the seat covering. The original seats after I restored them were lower than the foam ones I have now.but when you sit in them the actual height is about the same. I would add the replacement seats were restored professionally as it was an insurance claim.
Bob Beaumont

Guy, looking again at PJM's site I think the £96.60 is for a pair and clips @ £4.60.

Worth giving them a bell maybe ?
richard b

I have bought nice quality hoods from PJM in the past. They are a good company to deal with so I will think about that. Its certainly a much more reasonable price if that is for two seats. The other prices on that page are for a two-seat set so I presume it is but I will check with them. Thanks Richard.
GuyW

The original foam on my Frog had become brittle and was crumbling away and the original cover were slowly coming apart so 5 or 6 years ago I got replacements from Austin Healey Spares since they offered the covers in black with black piping (I never liked the white piping). I took the old covers off, cleaned up the frames and put on the new ones in an afternoon and so far I have no complaints. I don't remember the cost but with shipping across the pond it was very competitive.
Martin

Thanks for the clarity Bob.
May try a new one to check its comfort levels!
MGB Hive have them at £23.95 for the 1275 Midgets which is ok :) especially compared to Moss.
Jeremy MkIII

Richard,
I checked with PJM. Unfortunately their price quoted online is per seat, unlike the adjoining pricing on seat covers, which is for a pair as one would expect.
GuyW

I bought some high density foam rubber from a general upholstery supplier and cut it to shape using the old cushions as templates with an electric carving knife (the catering variety). 30 years later and they are still good.
Simon Wood

Simon,
Yes that is now my current thinking. I also read somewhere that someone did it by saturating the foam and then freezing it so it maitains its shape whist carving.

I also wonder about buying one of the much cheaper 1275/1500 foams and reshaping it at the top/front to the earlier and simpler MK1 Sprite shape.
GuyW

being the cheapskate that I am I did what Simon suggested and carved up a pad myself. It is only ever going to be my own behind sitting in the driver's side so it's fine...Like the idea of freezing a soaked pad to give it some resistance to cutting..might take a while to dry out though?
David Cox

Another dreadful expense ahead, maybe. I am going straight out there, and up the ladder to get my seats down from the rafters.
Nick and Cherry Scoop

David, I can certainly confirm that waterlogged, and then frozen foam seats are not at all comfortable to sit on!

In fact I wonder if it would be worth sealing the foam seat inserts inside a plastic bag with taped joints before fitting the covers on, so that the foam doesn't soak up water when the car interior gets rained on. Or when the floor under the seats ends up as a shallow mobile lake.
GuyW

Does this sort of foam get waterlogged? It's a very good insulator, which would require the air spaces to be unconnected, for preference.
I know sponges get waterlogged, but maybe their structure is different. Having found today that the mice have not made nests in my seats in the last few years, I shall experiment tomorrow with the spare piece I took out a decade ago because I was sitting too high.
Nick and Cherry Scoop

Much to my Good Lady's embarrasment I spent a relaxing 10 minutes today sitting on a square of blue closed cell dense foam cushion filler on the floor of her favourite haberdashery emporium, sensitively assessing it for comfort and resiliance. A generally positive conclusion, 'though she thinks that I really needed an extra inch or so..
GuyW

Trying hard not to snigger...

😜
Greybeard

Guy
If you put the foam in a sealed plastic bag, then you would either end up sitting on a wobbly balloon, or make very rude noises if there's even a small hole in the plastic!
I'm much amused by the thought!
Peter Blockley

Peter,
<<make very rude noises>>

Yes! And I could blame it on the seats!!

Good point though! ;-)
GuyW

Guy,

When we replaced foam mattresses in the boat we made cardboard patterns and the supplier cut them to suit including angled cuts against the hull sides - they had some special vibrosaw ISTR or was it a wire ?.

The replacement foams were dual density with a softer foam on top and a harder backing foam, there was also a choice of grades to choose from.

The shop speciaised in caravan type interiors.

R.
richard b

Resurrecting this thread.
I bought a large chunk of high density upholstery foam for all of £16 - enough to do two seats. I have now cut it to shape using an ordinary bread knife and manually simulating the action of an electric carving knife. Novel idea? I also found that very light touches of a flap wheel in an angle grinder was good for final shaping and smoothing.

I bought a couple of packs of the clips that fasten the seat covering to the metal base and seat back. Packs from PJM (much cheaper than multiplying up Moss' unit prices) contain 38 in all of two types of clips, per seat. However I am not sure why there are two types, and have no clues as to how many go on the seat base, and how many on the back. Or for that matter where they are supposed to be positioned, but maybe that will become obvious as I stretch the covers into position.

If anyone feels so inclined, it would help if you could lift out a seat base and do a quick count of how many clips you can see.

edit: Its for a Frog, the simple shaped seats not the later style ones.
GuyW

Guy, just in case you aren't aware Moss have a sale on at the mo for interiors and accessories with up to 25% off. There are some good discounts and some are even on clips, fitting kits etc. Seat foams etc are included.
I've noticed that they've put the prices up of some items at the same time as discounting them though! Some of the things I need are almost as much with the discount as they are in the catalogue from a few months ago!

But that's not the case for everything so it's definitely worth a look. I think carpet sets are well discounted if you need them.

I almost ordered everything I need but unfortunately Moss don't seem to do the colour combination I want so I think I'll be going with PJM for full interior and hood.
John Payne

Thanks John,
l did see that and may look at their carpet sets, if they have the colour choice l want. But l will also need some seat belts and they are not a bad price.

I have all l need for the seats though. Even with their discount, the seat foam kits at £83 per seat are considerably more than the £16 l have got my two for!
GuyW

I have been looking without success for a two part foam that expands into a form. I can make a form that is an exact copy of an original seat (MkI and II) but I can't find a suitable expandable foam of the correct density. Has anyone had any experience doing this or know of a product that will work? I could carve a block but would rather do a poured seat.
J Bubela

My two seats are different. This is the one with more clips. It was a bit hard to see the clips, so I numbered them, and now it's the numbers that are hard to see.


Nick and Cherry Scoop


I got my seat foams from Frogeye Spares:

https://www.frogeyespares.co.uk/item.asp?cID=6&scID=12&iID=217&page=Austin_Healey_Sprite_Foam+Seat+Cushion

Not a bad price (got mine a while back and paid less as part of a deal) but still quite a bit more than you Guy!
Bill Bretherton

Thanks Nick,
So you have 14 clips there. Were there no clips across the rear edge or does the fabric just pull over and hook onto those spurs stamped out of the seat base?
GuyW

Should be 14, but one's missing on the left. Nothing at the back on either seat, and I don't know what's proper. My vinyl stops right there, and it's never been a problem.
Nick and Cherry Scoop

Nick, I've just checked the seat base I haven't stripped yet and it only has 11 but I presume some are missing so 14 sounds ok. None at the back, like yours.
Bill Bretherton

My other seat has 11, Bill. There's something in the back of my failing memory that tells me the back might be loose because when the seat back comes down it crushes the very tail of the squab, whose cover must give a little.

Probably my imagination, because it don't seem right somehow.
Nick and Cherry Scoop

In the Lindsay Porter book it looks like they clip it at the rear. It says you must be prepared to remove and replace clips until it looks right. Could be a frustrating task.....
Bill Bretherton

The clip sets l bought from pjm contain 28 small clips and 10 large ones, supposedly what is needed for 1 seat. Moss site confirms this with info that lists large clips for seat back (20 needed per car) and small clips (56 needed per car) implying that the small clips are all needed for the seat base. But at 28 per seat that is exactly twice as many as you are finding on your original bottoms.

As l seem to have many more than l should have l will just keep adding them until the covers are secure and look properly tensioned. It's not that I am bothered about that degree of originality, I just want the covers to fit and stay fitted!
GuyW

Well I have been having a go at fitting my new DIY seat base foam that I had cut, and then fitting the new covers. The seat I have done looks quite good, nice and plump, just as I like 'em! But I don't yet have the full compliment of 14 clips holding the cover as I am not sure how firmly to pull down on the fabric befor clipping it. At the moment, to me it still looks a bit too tall at the front.

Could someone be kind enough to take a measurement of the height from the lower edge of the metal seat base to the level of the piping at the front centre of a seat?
GuyW

Has no one been near their frog with a tape measure today?
Please?
GuyW

Mine's like this, Guy.


Nick and Cherry Scoop

Thanks Nick. That's lower than l expected. I will need to pull the cover down tighter or l will be looking over the top of the screen!
GuyW

Exactly! What I've shown here is my passenger seat. The driver's seat is lower, because I took one of the foam pads out 15 years ago; still got it, and haven't decided whether to go high again (I may have shrunk).
Nick and Cherry Scoop

Thanks Nick.
The front, forward sloping part of the metal seat base is 4". The seat foam I made adds a further 4" when uncompressed, so 8" in total. I copied the old Dunloppilow pad but added about 1" to make up for compaction of 58 years. I expected the covers to ull the foam down by about 1" to give me an overall height to the level of the piping of around 7". Though that will be as measured up the forward facing slope. True vertical will be a little less.

As I was typing that, it occured to me that there is no real reason why the height should be greatly different on a later style seat, so I have just measured the same on my '71 car. 7" exactly as measured vertically from the floor. But then l need to allow for the height of the frame under the seat base.
GuyW

Yes, mine was about 6 1/8" as the crow flies - a surprisong amount more, or perhapws I bent it round that forward projection.

Was your original foam one piece? Mine was two.
Nick and Cherry Scoop

Nick,
Sorry, l forgot to answer your question. My car seats came to me disassembled, with the remnants of the covers and the foam pads in a bin liner! The seat pads are both the same Dunlopillo type pads, but one had an extra piece of foam sponge glued to the top of it, about 1 1/2" thick. I don't know if they should both have had that, or if it was an earlier modification by a PO. I suspect the latter.
GuyW

In case anyone is interested, here are the foam seat pads I made for my frog. Cut from a £16 block of upholstery quality foam. Almost finished - they just needed a little final shaping. The seat bases had also needed some new metal welding in.


GuyW

That was a while ago.
Now with covers fitted, they look a bit smarter!
The shape and a PFT (posterior feel test) is much improoved with the addition of a layer of felt and then wrapping in wadding.

Next task is to learn how the seat backs go together!


GuyW

This thread was discussed between 02/04/2018 and 11/06/2018

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

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