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Vinyl repair

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Y

Yeoman

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It's too darn cold to work on the body of my '71 Midget out in the garage, so I brought the driver's seat into my cellar to see what I can do about a couple of splits in the bottom cushion. I'm not yet ready to invest in new vinyl, and the foam's in good shape.

The splits are in the center of the bottom and the front outer edge. I'd like to try to patch them using a flexible contact cement and a patch material. I bought a tube of Pliobond. I have some vinyl that I could use as the patching material, but I figure that anything strong, flexible, and very thin will work for this "temporary" repair.

Any suggestions as to adhesives or backing materials?

Thanks.
 
I with coldplugs!!!! It is one of those things that you really have to do right (replace the cover) or just mickey mouse it until you can afford to do it right!!
lol.gif
 
I bought a tube of "Flexible Vinyl Mender" from Ace hardware awhile back (it isn't a contact cement at all) to try and fix a few problems with the boot cover on my TD replica. I didn't expect much but... I got some vinyl material to use as a backing (pretty heavy stuff, cloth on one side vinyl on the other), then cleaned it and the original vinyl material really well with alcohol.

I ended up masking off the torn area on the boot with tape so I had about a 1/4" wide stripe with the tear in the middle, carefully lined the tear up and taped it the best I could from the back and applied the "mender" over the tear, pulling the mask away leaving a nice clean edge. When dry the mended tear held together really well, better than I ever expected. I smeared a good layer of the "mender" over the backing vinyl then laid it over the tear on the backside of the boot cover - holding it in place with masking tape. The final repair has held up well to being held taught over the collapsed top on the MG.

I did a similar repair to a tear that was forming along the stitching on one of the side curtains, that too worked out well.

The "mender" seems to do a pretty good job keeping the damaged vinyl together while the backing material takes any further pulling stresses off the tear so the repair doesn't pull apart. I don't know how it works on seats, but it might be worth a shot.
 
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