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Spitfire Spitfire seats [1971]

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Dono

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Hi All,
Need help on Spit seats, restoring a 1971. The straps on the vertical frame support are dried and rotted. I cannot find a supplier. Any ideas? Would TR4-6 straps work? Any suggestions welcome. Thanks much! Don in MT
 
When I was faced with this problem on our GT6 I went straight to the Newton Commercial web site in the U.K. They had the webs/straps for us.

When I recently took the seat of our '72 Spitfire apart I found the webs were similarly nasty. I didn't want to invest in a proper rebuild of these seats at this time. So... I bought 10 feet of 1-1/2" wide nylon webbing and some pop rivets. I took the old straps apart one at a time, removed the original rivets, enlarged the holes to fit the pop rivets, and made new straps (top to bottom) using the hardware from the old straps. Will they work? Well, they won't stretch much so the seat will probably feel different. However, as I mentioned, this was a budget seat rebuild.
 
I just recently got done restoring my TR6 seats. Since both frames had badly dried rubber straps, I cut the hooks off of the dried straps and bought new rubber and had it slit to the correct width. Then it was just a matter of re-installing the hook on one end, stretching the rubber strap to find the correct point to attach the hook on the opposite side. Both seat frames came out great and I know the new rubber will last for a long, long time!
 
Hi Doug,
Thanks for the great tip. I'll look into this and probably will do similar. Thanks! Don in MT
 
Don - not sure if you have a local custom upholster in your area but they are worth checking out. Some times they will have what you need or can provide a turn-key redo at less than what the big three suppliers charge.
 
I just checked. Newton does have "squab" sets for the Spitfire (23 GBP). However, they list these as for the U.K. Spitfire. I don't know how those compare with the North American spec seats.
 
dklawson said:
I just checked. Newton does have "squab" sets for the Spitfire (23 GBP). However, they list these as for the U.K. Spitfire. I don't know how those compare with the North American spec seats.
Click to expand...
As I recall, one has to really dig around Newton's various catalogues to find bits for US-Spec. seats, but it's there. If I find same (seems to me it's buried in the "leather seats" section or something odd like that), I'll revise this reply.

UPDATE: Found my downloaded copy of the pertinent Newton Catalogue. The file name is <spitfire-lether-seats-68-73.pdf>, so that's what you'll want to look for on the Newton site. Mind you, my downloaded copy dates from 2003, so it's possible things have changed!? But yes, I did spell the above file name correctly (although Newton didn't spell one word correctly in said file name)....
 
Andrew,
Thank you for the research and support. I'll check out the Newton site. Rebuilding the webbing using nylon also sound easy. I'll check w/ the upholstery shop for material also.
Thanks! :smile: Don in Mt.
 
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