rear seats are based on grp moulded shells?

JFENG

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I had my back seat out for the 1st time so I could remove and do a little R&R on my seat belt retractors .
For those of you with the inferior 1973 and early cars, the 1974 models have the front shoulder belt retractors behind the rear upper armrests. Anyway, the rear seats didn't appear to be held in place with any fasteners, and I was surprised to see they were built up on moulded fiberglass shells. I thought BMW started this with the E24's. I've also never seen leather attached with rivets, but obviously you couldn't use hog rings..

Where the earlier E9 rear seats done in the more traditional horse hair on springs manner? One nice thing about what I found is that the slowly disintegrating horsehair padding is entirely captured within the seat sheel so there's no mess under the seats.
rear_shell.jpg rear_shell_closeup.jpg

Q: What's the big relay for (the one under the driver side rear seat base)? see last pic. Car is a carb'd model from new, so no rear fuel pump.
 

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Mal CSL 3.0

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My 1972 rear seats are also fibreglass shelled. Very lightweight actually. And no fasteners but just clip into place.

(Although the Scheel fronts are not light at all)
 

Keshav

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So it’s correct to have the cover attached with rivets?

Those covers seem to be way to short, the dark brown patches of glue show how far the covers should go and then glued to the seats. Rivets were probably necessary in this case due to the covers being short so as to hold them in place with just glue.
 

JFENG

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Keshav, of course! How unobservant of me. These are replacement covers. Maybe not unexpected given the age of our cars. But, I have to say these look moderately straight forward to reupholster despite the unavailability of new horsehair pads.

Anyone with pictures of the backside of the rear seats as they should appear?

John
 

DWMBMW

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Not original as I recovered them with a kit from WU which had enough leather to mostly just glue them (I added some staples at the top) Its been a few years but I do not rembember any rivets.

I took a pic because I wanted to remove the seat to look for the relay in your other post. Mine is a 72 grey market CSi that had to be converted to carbs when it was imported in 82. Could not find a relay or any evidence one ever existed in that location.


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Lowell Paddock

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I also took the rear seats out of my '74 for retractor R&R and took several photos of the squabs (to use the British term). The squabs were clearly slathered with glue and then some lucky individual had to wrap the covers over them. Interestingly, my covers were held in place with nails (or at least they look like nails). Given the glue lines visible from some of the recession on the cover, I believe that they have not been recovered. IMG_3322.jpg IMG_3324.jpg
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