560SL Seat Cover Gotchas

[Strife]

While doing the new seat covers on my 560SL seat covers, I discovered a "gotcha" or two worth mentioning. Most replacements discussed on boards are for 85 and earlier seat covers. The 560SL covers differed in some challenging areas:

1. There is a "skirt" of fabric on the lower cover that is to be hog ringed to the lower cushion before the outer cover is fitted to the outside rail. I think this keeps the cover centered to the seat an also holds it down. This requires probably three times the number of hog rings that 85 and earlier covers take.

2. I did wonder how the center of the top half of the seat got held down between the sides, which are much more bolstered than the earlier seats. Well, there are six metal rings that fit through holes/slots in the pads and are held with nylon plastic pieces. also, across the top center of the seat cover, there is a strap that is pulled through the pad in four places and held with a wide nylon piece. I'm not sure how a pro would handle this, but I used wire, twisted, to pull these hooks and straps through the holes and then hooked them with the nylon parts. The wire is then slid out. It takes some pretty strong wire, because the straps in particular require a lot of strength (you need several wraps around a pair of pliers or vise-grips). Maybe it could be done with a hook - but it would have to be pretty darned strong. It pays to install everything from the top of the seat downwards.

3. on my 85 seats, I didn't remove the pad when putting on the new skin for the top half of the seat. On the 86, I found it easier to remove the pad, put the skin on, and then insert the frame into the pad and skin.

I'll do the other one this week and have some pictures...It came out very, very well. I used a very high quality vinyl cover instead of leather. Given the higher complexity of the 86+ seats, I'm surprised that their covers don't cost even more than the earlier model covers!