Recently I decided to re-upholster the seats in the Bug. Thus far I’ve made it through the two front seats. It’s been about 16+ hours of labor so far.

The Parts

The process is basically:

  • Take out seat
  • Strip seats to frame
  • Make repairs to frame/spring

In this case I had to weld the backrest spring back together.

  • Put new cover on spring
  • Put new cushion on
  • Cover cushion with felt
  • Put cover on seat
  • Attach buttons on backrest

This was interesting because I didn’t have new buttons to attach. The original seats were red and the new seats would be black. I decided I’d keep a little bit of the old car in there by keeping the faded, red buttons on the black seats. It adds a bit of uniqueness to the car.

  • Put seat in car

The seat on the left is the re-upholstered passenger seat.

The full gallery of images is here.