I've been looking for any leads on who makes the foam for a 69 RIV strato bench seat with the armrest?? Does anyone know of some places?? I mainly need just the base/bottom foam.
Hi, I recently finished my interior on my 68 Riviera and I can tell you that no one makes the foam. That's the bad news, the good news is my upholstery guy was able to match the original foam. The seat foam for the bucket backs was purchased through OPGI. The upholstery was a different story. I have "custom" factory interior which you can buy from OPGI but they don't sell the front strato bench upholstery. They do sell the custom interior for bucket seats so I had to buy the complete set but I only used the backs. the strato bench upholstery was made buy my guy using Madrid grain vinyl then he stitched the pleats off of the old bench vinyl onto the new vinyl. Hope this helps. Let me know if you need any other info. Michael
Thank you Michale I appreciate the info! My interior is in good shape and I dyed it from the buckskin colour to black. My main issue is the bottom portion of the front bench is dried out and crumbling. I'm looking at any ideas/leads to replace it. Upholstery shops up here (Canada) want a fortune to replace the foam. Any other model cars have the same style of bench bottom that I can maybe shape to match mine?? My backs and armrest are good.
At the end of the day, foam is foam, but your going to want new foam. You don't want to put old foam from another car on yours, you will have the same problem. If you take the bench out of your car, take off the bucket seat backs and then take it to the upholstery guy it should'nt cost an arm and a leg. Hope it works out. M-
Back in the day, when I was doing upholstery, we often had seats with decent foam contours on the top but the bottom edges were crumbling due to contact with the air under the seats. Almost always the owners didn't want to do anything about it, so we ended up installing plastic sheeting under the seat foams to catch all the crumbles, or used a bag on the buckets. That did 2 things, 1 was to keep the air away from the foam to stop additional damage, and 2 it kept everything off the carpet. We often took foam cushions from other good donor seats and used them.............and often did the "plastic" trick to keep them nice before installing the covers. Now this was years ago, It would depend on the amount of damage you see if this method would be possible. I still have some original foam cushions I saved that are bagged in plastic and look like the day they were made. Duane
Yes I was definitely looking to put new foam in so I would not have the same problem again in a couple years. I was just more so thinking if a bench seat from a Chevelle or something could be carved/ shaped to match what I have now closely. My current foam is too far gone to do the bag trick as every time you sit down pieces fall to the floor and you can start to feel the springs through the vinyl. Oddly enough the driver side is okay it is the passenger side that has the most decay. So far the best quote I have gotten to replace the foam is $300 and that's me disassembling the seat entirely and just bringing him the old foam to template from and me reinstalling everything myself. That's just for the front bench base ONLY!
I don't think a Chevelle seat bottom would work. The Riv seats are wider, you can tell because the center armrest is bigger. You might be able to piece it, by cutting it in half and adding a piece to the middle, but that's it. It might even be a little bigger front to back, never checked that. Duane
I was just using the chevelle as an figuratively speaking example. What I meant is just find a bench base with the same dimensions and just shape it a bit. I may just have to buy a big slab of foam and carve it out by hand? I was hoping someone ran into this scenario before and would say " oh hey order this such and such of base and trim down the sides and it will work" lol
