Projects Making a Coil Spring Seat Back Thinner - Tie Them Down?

Upholstery guys: What do I need to know about tying down coil springs in a seat back to make it thinner? I need to decrease the thickness of the seat back in my Bantam roadster from 9" at the bottom to 5" to provide enough leg room to operate the pedals. I moved the pedal assembly and steering column back to allow me to install my V8-60, now I need to compensate. I checked out how the seat is built and tried compressing the springs to see if it would do the trick, and it seems like tying them down will do it. What do I need to know about doing this to do the job right? Thanks for your comments! Greg in Jax

 

I'm too big for a 23 T bucket so to gain more room I went with a 3/4" perimeter plywood frame (two holes cut in it), elastic webbing and foam. I used thicker foam on the lower part (for lower back support) and less on the upper half. Simple and comfortable. If you use firm foam the seat back doesn't really have to be very thick.

 

I'm not an upholsterer so take this with a grain of salt but tying down seat springs is exactly what I did to give me more leg room in my truck. I compressed each spring to about 1/2 of it's original height and wired them down. Don't laugh, it works.

 

I worked 15 years for an OEM supplier of seating to Ford Motor---I'd say get yourself a cheap hogring outfit and hogring coil together to get your thickness right.

 

I had the same problem in my 28 rpu. Ditched the spring back and used plywood just like the others said. Gained lots but still not enough and i'm only shy of 6 ft.

 

I done it a few times. To help tall people fit into A models.

I used seat belt material as webbing to strap down the rows of springs and then hog rings to secure the straps to the springs. droppeded 6" springs down to 4" . thus gaining 2" extra space. It all adds up

 

I used zip ties to pull the springs down on the lower cushion on my '47, really easy process.
Probably going to do both rear cushions the way it looks now.

If the ties ever appear to give trouble, easy to go back and replace them with safety wire.

I had considered hog-rings; but regular rings were too small.

 

On my old 37 Chevy truck for the seat back, I actually cut down the springs to be shorter and reattached them to the frame. Removed about 2 inches and it allowed me to lean back more, but still had slight amount of spring cushion.

 

I have a book on custom upholstery that says zip ties work fine, and a couple experienced Hambers agreed when I asked about it.


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