Recovering 1987 Porsche 944 Front Seats

By Rodney Boehm

I started this project because the original seat bolsters had worn out and the driver’s seat bottom had split. I did not want to spend the money on leather seats, so I decided to recover them with a vinyl kit that I purchased. I am very happy with the results and the fit has exceeded my expectations. This is defiantly a something that I would do again.

Below, I have included pictures with hints that will help you in your project. It does take patience and time. Don’t rush through it and don’t get frustrated. It helps tremendously to have someone help you with this. You will need help stretching the upholstery and getting the hog rings to hold properly. Plus it helps to talk through ideas when you get stuck. Set aside about 3 to 4 hours to compete each seat and you will be very happy with the results.

A couple of items to note. Get hog ring pliers and the smaller hog rings. Don’t get the ones used to hold chain link fences together. They are too big and will not pull the fabric close enough to the frame. You will use these at every stage to hold the vinyl to the frame of the seat. Take your time in placing them and put one every place you removed one from the original seat. We also used a variety of other pliers including channel locks to hold the old rings to remove them. Don’t try to use the old rings. New ones are very inexpensive and the old rings will only frustrate you further. Same with trying to save money by not purchasing hog ring pliers. When you remove the original hog rings, clamp on to them with the channel locks and use another pliers to pull them apart.

Another item to note when you are taking the seat apart is that the hog rings actually go through the upholstery in some places that wires have been threaded through slots that are stitched in the upholstery. Keep these wires and use them in the new kit when you put it back together. These wires are important because the hog rings will pull through the material in these places because of the stresses involved. Not every place you use hog rings will need these wires, but where they are used on the original upholstery, use them in the same place on the new one.

The next thing you will need is a staple gun that spreads the staples apart at the end as it is shooting them out of the gun. This type of gun does not need to be backed. These staples will be used to cover the center foam piece. It is actually a separate piece that gets covered with a vinyl covering that has perforated holes in it. You will see the type of staples when you take the seat apart.

In this procedure, I have tried to indicate tips that go along with the pictures. Hopefully your seat looks like the one I recovered and you can use these tips. If yours looks slightly different, then improvise and try to use a different technique. Please add to this tutorial so we can help each other.

The original seat. You can see the black tape I put over the bolster to hold it together. The final straw was that the tape started staining my clothes and the ripped bottom seat tore my wife’s hose.	Take seat out of the car by sliding it completely forward, remove the bolts holding it to the floor, slide it completely to the rear, and remove these bolts. The seat lifts out of the car. Disconnect the power to the seat adjustments if you have it.
This is the side mechanism that releases the seat. You get to this by removing the plastic cover with two screws. The plastic part will slide off toward the rear because a tab under the plastic between the bolts holds it on.	Remove the bolts in the circle and unlatch the cable. This will separate the seat back from the bottom. Pry the tabs on the sides of the seat that releases them to fold forward out with a screwdriver. They come straight out.
This is the bottom of the seat back. It shows the metal tabs that hold the upholstery down. Bend the tabs out to release the upholstery.
This picture shows the back of the seat as the upholstery is pealed back. While somewhat hard to see, you can see the hog rings that must be removed. Note the position of them as you remove them.	You will want to put rings in the same places when you install the new upholstery.
This picture shows the center piece of foam folded back on the seat as it is being taken apart. You will see that this is actually a separate piece of foam and the fabric is held to the foam by the staples.	Note also the hog rings that hold the back to the frame. The rings are actually attached to a wire that is threaded through the upholstery. Remember where this is removed and use it again when you install the new one.
This is a more complete picture of the separate foam for the back. Notice that it is folded back on the seat and the upholstery tabs are held to the foam by the staples.
After you remove the old upholstery and save the wires, it is now time to put the new upholstery on. Start at the top and put about half of the back on. Stretch at the points where you put the hog rings through the fabric and be sure to close them completely.	You will want a tight fit on these because it will hold the fabric down to the frame. Complete this about half way because you will now staple the perforated fabric to the foam center piece. Take care in placing this piece in the middle of the upholstery and staple directly into the foam.	I was careful not to press too hard with the staple gun when the foam piece was thin because I did not want to go through the upholstery. I did use a lot of staples to make sure everything held properly. At this point, fold down the foam piece and test fit it in the seat. You want to be sure that everything fits properly.
After I was happy with the foam piece, I put the hog rings in under the top of the piece (see oval). I then completed the sides of the seat on the back and added hog rings to the extra fabric that will stay behind the center insert (see circles).	I added these because the fabric on the first one I did slipped out from behind the seat when someone sat in the seat and it annoyed me. These have held up very well. Fold down the insert and put a couple of hog rings through the foam from the back to hold it down. Don’t go too deep because you don’t want to go through the upholstery. However, the foam is the thickest at this point so it is OK to push it.
Now you fold in all of the flaps at the bottom of the seat, puncture upholstery with the metal tabs and fold them down to hold the whole thing together. I then cut slots in the side of the seats where the release tabs attach.	Feeing for the metal tab that the plastic attached to I cut a small slot where the tab was located. Then I looked in the small slot to determine how to cut the rest of the slot. Insert the frame and tab.
This is the completed back. You can see a couple of wrinkles in this picture, but they have completely disappeared as the upholstery has stretched over time as I have sat in them and the heat inside the car has softened the material.	The finished product does not have any wrinkles in the bolsters at all. I did not cut the holes for the bolts at this time. I waited until I had the back completed and was able to use the frame to determine where to cut. You don’t want to cut in the wrong place!
Now it is time to attack the bottom. This picture shows the driver’s seat that has the electrical adjustment mechanism and already has the sliding frame removed. You will have to completely remove the sliding frame, but not the adjustment.	I loosened the screw gears at the four corners, but did not remove them. Actually, I did remove one of them and it took me about an hour to get it back in place. Don’t worry if the spring drive linkages slip out of the screw gears, they insert easily. Don’t turn the screw gears individually because this will get them out of alignment and the seat will be canted when you assemble it.	Remove the hog rings, bend the tabs holding the upholstery, and remove it from the seat. You will notice that there are wires inside sleeves underneath the upholstery that sits in slots on in the foam on the other side. Again, retain these wires because you will use them again.
It is now time to assemble the seat bottom. You will do this by first placing the upholstery on the bottom first using the wires that go into the slots in the foam. This picture shows the top of the foam on the seat bottom where we have attached a hog ring to the upholstery and a wire (see circle).	We threaded twine to the hog ring so we could pull it down through the foam and attach it to the springs on the other side. This takes some patience but once we got the hang of it worked surprisingly well.
This shows the seat bottom with the twine as we pulled it through to the springs on the other side. There are two side slots and one slot that goes across the back. These were attached before the sides of the upholstery were stretched over the frame.	The bottom of the seat fit too loosely right in the center between the slots in the foam. I solved this by purchasing some ½ inch foam from a craft store and inserting it between the upholstery and the original seat foam. We did this on both the front and back	portion of the seat.
Once this was complete, then we just stretched the upholstery around the sides and attached it with the tabs or hog rings as had been done originally. You will also see a thin wire that was threaded through a seam at the edge of the upholstery. We threaded this through the new one and tied it off on the springs.	Next assemble the sliding frame to the bottom of the seat. We then set the back into the frame of the bottom to determine where the holes needed to be cut for the bolts. Again, take your time in locating these because you don’t want to cut in the wrong place.	Before we finally assembled the seat back together, we located the cable and tab that hooked into the release mechanism. You will have to cut a slot to allow this to attach, but this will be covered with the plastic covers. Attach the cable, put the bolts back in, and attach the covers. Check to see that the release cables are functioning properly and that the seat releases.
This shows the completed seat. Congratulations on completing something that sounds almost impossible but we did a great job on the first try. Install the seat in the car and enjoy it!	Again, there are some wrinkles in this picture, but as you can see, they are already less than the completed back. They have completely disappeared in the month they have been installed in the car.