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You can now lay it with the foam side up and cover it with some whisper plastic, to help the seat cover slip over easier. I used a dry cleaning garment bag, taping it to the springs on the other side to keep it in place.

Place the cover over the foam and plastic, fitting the top edge across over the frame. Make note of the center mark on the inside of the cover again, and where it aligns with the center of the frame. Staple the cover in the middle there and one on each corner of the top.

Then flip it over right side up again, and stretch the bottom corners over the foam and frame. Once this is complete, you can flip it with the spring side up again and use the board to kneel on to compress the springs, stapling the center bottom and those bottom corners in place.

Once you make sure that everything is centered you can begin stapling the remainder of the top, sides and bottom. It doesn’t hurt to be flipping it back-and-forth quite a bit, making sure that you are stretching evenly and not creating any wrinkles.

I forgot to mention, I was working in a fairly cold basement here, so used a small heater and hairdryer to warm the cover material at times to help make the material more plyable and for stretching.

I propped the seats up together to check the total look, and I’m quite happy with the way it turned out!

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Once again, times got busy and I don’t keep up with updates here. Trust me, I’m not standing still! Even on the days when it was -10 I was trying to stay busy with work in the basement shop. Dashboard and gauge resto was a fun time!

Blew it all apart cause I needed to replace components that needed AC vents, as my ‘73 donor didn’t have this. Biggest challenge was punching the 2” holes in the gauge bezel without screwing it up!

The gauges needed serious cleaning and lens polishing also.

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Taping up and clamping firm to bench with a board under is a must. Don’t want things to move. I found a nice used fine tooth holesaw worked better than a brand new carbide tip one. That thing started to jump around and almost blew it!

Thankfully it cleaned up nice with a dremel tool and sanding drum. Put it all back together and it fit and looked great! That new Milwaukee Tool precision blower is fantastic for cleaning and drying off parts!

Had lots of small paint spatter specks from drywall painting overspray by my house builders back in 1995 which I didn’t realize until now! Thankful it all came off!

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Polished up lenses and gauges looked great! Looks so much better that the toasted, faded 70 dash was after all the fun CA sun exposure!

This 73 dash only saw 7 years of WI service before I stripped that car down. It’s been in 4 different apartments and two houses in its 46 year hiatus!

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Another fun basement project… restoring this hornets nest ‘73 wiring harness! Went through it one section at a time, scrubbing and re-wrapping. Replaced connectors as necessary, like the differences between the parking lamp sockets in these two years.

This mesh style wrap is so nice to work with, much better that the plastic corrugated stuff I used back in ‘82!

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Next I decided it was warm enough to do short projects back out in the garage, so I installing new front speakers. These dual kickers should work nice up there!

Put an additional soundproof matting on rear trunk wall, before reinstalling rear seats. Oldest grandson got to be the initial quality control agent, and he approved both the seats and lap belts!

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Next, I had to restore some additional parts to complete the dash. Having to convert from a non-AC dash, needed to paint match donor parts with black. This satin black works quite well. Gotta have a nice clean ash tray, so nobody will ever smoke in it!