The seat frames are done

Since I sent the Roadmaster out to the body shop to have the floor pans repaired properly, I didn’t have quite as much work to do this week as I had planned on. That let me spend much more time cleaning up my seat frame. I needed to reinstall the drivers seat to get the wagon to the body shop so that left me with just the passenger seat to work on once I had completed the carpet cleaning.

The carpet cleaning didn’t go terribly well at all. I hit the carpet with a number of commercial and household products. I was dumping out bucket after bucket of brown coloured water after cleaning but the carpet just didn’t get any cleaner. You can see what it looks like in the seat frame photos down below. I abandoned the idea of ever getting it clean enough. Since the seats and carpet are so easy to remove, I think I’ll just replace the carpet later on instead. With the floor pans repaired and the seat frames restored, I can call the job a success.

Since I had a little extra time on my hands without having to repair and coat the floor pans, I really went to town on the power seat rails as well as the seat frame. My last post showed the effectiveness of EvapoRust and that was around the half way point. I dismantled both power seat rails, cleaned up all of the rust and coated them again. I did one rail with a rust preventative primer and black paint and I did the second rail with Rust Bullet rust encapsulating coating and then shot that with black enamel. I also dismantled the motor assembly, checked the coils for corrosion, cleaned the motor brushes and then sanded and painted the motor housings. Every piece that was removed from the seats like screws, nuts, washers, springs, etc were degreased, cleaned in EvapoRust and then painted before reassembly.

The passenger seat frame was also dismantled. I did my best to get all of the loose rust scale off of the metal and then painted the entire frame with Rust Bullet coating. Rust Bullet paints on really well as it’s not quite as thick as some other coatings although I think using a roller or sprayer would be simpler. I don’t have a sprayer and the frame was too intricate for a roller so I wound up brushing it on. The frame coated well but it has a lot of brush marks and drips in it. As the point of this was to protect the metal and not make the interior frame of my seat a showpiece, I didn’t worry too much about how nice it looked. Rust Bullet strongly recommends wearing gloves while working with it. This is really worth doing as Rust Bullet does not come off of skin very easily. It took me half an hour with some steel wool to get the paint spots off of my hands when I was done. Those who are thinking of trying out Rust Bullet products have been duly warned!

Below are the final shots of the restored motor rails just before and after reinstallation. The seat is now reassembled and ready to reinstall into the wagon once it finally comes back from the body shop. I think it looks pretty good compared to the before shot of the underside of that seat when it came out of the wagon.