Need some help and advice from those who have experience with doing seat covers and foam.

These are GTA seats for reference. I have taken them all apart and got the foam off the frame but can't get the covers off the foam. There appears to be more hog rings or something down underneath the cover holding it to the foam. How do you get the cover off.

Also, the foam is cracked in some spots and one bolster in dead. I notice cords or something actually in the foam that I think the hog rings attach to. Is this unique to the GTA seats or is this standard practice to hold down the seams? HOw do you go about replacing the foam then??

thanks.

 

I was told by the fabric shop that the foam was not supposed to come off the frame. Remove all the hog rings and the seat cover will come off. Be careful as the cover is held in place by velcro. The seats in my Trans Am are from a GTA and from all 4 seats (2 GTA and 2 Trans Am) I built two good front seats. Good Luck.

 

So how do you get the hog rings out from under the material, holding it directly to the foam, without chewing things up?

Are hog ring pliers only for installing hog rings??

 

I used 2 pairs of pliers, one to hold each side of the hog ring and bent it enough to slide it out of the hole and around the rope/cord holding the cover in place.
Yes hog ring pliers are for installation not removal.

 

I don't know if other TA seats are different, but for the front GTA seats the foam can come off of the frames(if all the hog rings are removed first). They have to be able to so that you can put in the lumbar devices and wires for the seat backs, and the wires for the controls for the seat bottoms of the front seats. I just redid all of my GTA seats the last couple weeks and took the foam off the seat frames and painted them to clean them up a bit. As far as the covers not comming off of the cusion, there are flaps at the seems (as well as the velco) that also have hog rings holding it to the fabric. I just slowly pulled the fabric back and use some long wire cutter to cut the hog rings to get the fabric off, then used needle nose pliers to fish out the hog rings before recovering teh seats. Also eddie email me or PM, I may still have a few spare parts laying around if you need them for the GTA seats. Good luck.

 

correction, there are not hog rings on the velcro as it seams in the first message, but the extra flaps hold it down with hog rings as well as the velcro.