TR2/3/3A tr3a occasional seat padding

[deuce]

Hello Folks.. I have a TR3a post 60000. I am building an occasional seat for my car. I have found drawings for the upholstery layout. Question 1.. How thick will the padding be. My local auto upholsterer made a cover for the seat back copying from the original. There was no additional padding. What about the bench? Seems like there would be some besides the material to make the pleats. My car didn't have the bench so I have no reference. Has anyone disassembled an original? How much padding was there? LIke overall thickness? Question 2.. Would the outer border of the bench upholstery line up with the vertical seam on the seat back? Per the dimensions on the drawing it would not. Make sense? .. I hope so. Maybe the picture will help. Thanks in advance

 

[TomMull]

I have an old tattered pre 60k "occasional" seat. It seems to have very little padding or it's shrunk with age. It has a rounded front unlike yours and the rectangular seats might have had a bit more. My thought is that the amount of padding is irrelevant since the seat is pretty much useless except for small children, dogs and perhaps an inebriated college student (from long past experience). Almost totally useless with the top up.

Here is some info from John Skinner in the UK that might be helpful:
> Triumph TR3A/B - Occasional Rear Seat | John Skinner Ltd <

Tom

 

[CJD]

I bought a cushion from Moss and it came with about 2" of padding. (post 60k like your car) I do not know if that was close to original or not. Your base board is much thicker than Moss's too!

 

[deuce]

I have an old tattered pre 60k "occasional" seat. It seems to have very little padding or it's shrunk with age. It has a rounded front unlike yours and the rectangular seats might have had a bit more. My thought is that the amount of padding is irrelevant since the seat is pretty much useless except for small children, dogs and perhaps an inebriated college student (from long past experience). Almost totally useless with the top up.

Here is some info from John Skinner in the UK that might be helpful:
> Triumph TR3A/B - Occasional Rear Seat | John Skinner Ltd <

Tom

Thanks Tom.. That link to Skinners' site was helpful. Interesting reading

I bought a cushion from Moss and it came with about 2" of padding. (post 60k like your car) I do not know if that was close to original or not. Your base board is much thicker than Moss's too!

The base is 2 pieces of 3/4" plywood. Maybe I could use 1/2" for the top piece. The bottom has to clear the diff. hump. It is kind of heavy. I was going to cut some holes in the bottom layer to lighten it up. Cut down on all that horsepower loss. How thick is your new seat overall?

 

[CJD]

I think the Moss seat was a single 3/8" plywood base with 2" of foam. There was a cutout in the base and foam for the differential bubble.

 

[DavidApp]

This is a top view of the Skinner seat kit seat. The foam was at least 2" thick.

David

 

[luke44]

The Skinner seat is top quality, that's what I went with.

 

[Frank Canale]

 

[Frank Canale]

This is from a post to the British Car Forum by Randall (RIP )

 

[TomMull]

That says it all, Frank. Randall left us all a wealth of TR information.

 

[Frank Canale]

I knew I had an entire article on the occasional seat with bracket dimensions for early cars and the plywood dimensions for post 6000 cars. There is not a lot of information out there and this is the best I have found. Frank
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