My Junky Pilothouse Seats . . . . . .

[grey beard]

What I am about to say will make real auto upholstery men shiver in disgust.

It just happens that late nineties Ford F-150 front seat upholstery comes pretty close to fitting Dodge Pilothouse seat frames. I used junk yard upholstery and put it directly over my old seats. This upholstery is not just material, but rather a composite pad made up of several layers of material, padding, foam and backing – about an inch thick. The two seat upholstery pieces weighed about 20 pounds once separated from their foam pads.

I used none of the foam padding I got with these upholstery covers. It may have been possible to do a better job by adding soime padding, but I didn’t want to sit any higher or further front, so I omitted the option of the extra padding.

The trick to doing this seat job is to use real hog rings – not those little things upholsterers use, but real HOG RINGS like you put on the ears of bacon makers. These are the size of a quarter and are large enough to clamp over the upholstery plastic J-molding and still catch the metal seat frame. The results sort of speak for themselves. I like this much better than vinyl, and it’s hard to beat the price. JMHO:)

[Bob_Koch]

First of all, I find it interesting that almost 60 years later, the F150 seat is the same size as our dodge. Secondly, you've done us all a favor by figuring this out. It makes finding seat covers so much easier. Thanks for your creative work on this.

[Merle Coggins]

Looks good Dave. Job well done.

By the way... hog rings aren't used in the pig's ear, they are put across the top of a pig's nose to stop it from rootin' around.

[grey beard]

Merle,

In Pennsylvania hardware stores they come in three sizes - guess mebby the largest size would work for snouts. I'm using ear tag-size that are about the diameter of a quarter. Guess these would fit into small noses . . .. .. whatever.