The inner of the Car
Inner view from the driver.jpg (20454 bytes) inner view from the codriver.jpg (22907 bytes)
Problems Overhauling the seats of Fulvia Coupe

I believe that some of the most important items that have to be in very good condition in a car with the character of Fulvia Coupe are the seats. The reasons that advocate my opinion are the followings

The car because of his Italian descent and the very offensive character has very hard suspensions . The result about the holding of the car is very effective but as a compensation every little hole of the road ( in Greece unfortunately there are a lot ) creates a big rattling that imparted to drivers body . It is not so easy for someone to get used of these rattling especially if before Fulvia drives a French car.
The front seats are too low ,almost touches the floor so if are flat because of the years the problem became bigger
The bottom part of the seat is much shorter than the seats of younger cars and if someone is quite tall (like me , I am 1.85) the seat ends at the half of his leg and creates problems for driving the car. If the seat is flat that problem became bigger.
The original seats of Fulvia coupe I don’t think that offers support for the side accelerations and if have problems to the points that are screwed to the floor then every time you are turning the steering wheel you can here a very annoying noise "klik -klak" as the whole seat is moving right-left on his base.

My front seats when I bought the car are in very bad condition and had the following problems.

  1. The black plastic cover of the seats had many holes on it.
  2. The thickness of the bottom part of the seats had extremely decreased because of the years.
  3. The middle part of the back of the seat was broken so that item was moving between the back and the bottom part of the seat
  4. The drivers seat cannot be moved front or back because of its rusty base and the co-drivers seat cannot stopped for moving front or back because the two items that stops that movement in its base are missing.
  5. Every screw on the mechanism that moves the back of the seat in front to give passage to the rear little seat was rusty or unregulated and the result of that was not only strange noises when I was moving the back of the seat but very big free play of that even when it was in the normal position
  6. Between the bottom part of the seat and the metallic base that is fitted on , there is a rubber along the edge of the bottom part of the seat that protects the seat cover from destruction in its touch with the metallic base .That rubber was missing so the seat cover was totally cut at the edge of the seat.

After all these problems the best and more economical solution is the replacing of the two seats with others but it is not so easy to find good original Fulvia seats in our days , and the replacing with other modern seats I didn’t think that was a good idea so I decided to try to overhaul these seats. A big part of that overhauling was job of a professional upholsterer because I didn’t have the technique to do it by myself so if someone decide to do the same it is good to remember that the upholsterers work is too expensive.

The actions that I did for all these problems are the followings

  1. I unscrew one way or another the rusty screws that keep the seats screwed to the metallic rails and I put out the two seats from the car. Between the seat’s base and the metallic rails there are two kylindrical rubbers that are trapped there to make easiest the movement of the seat to the front or back so if someone wants to do the same job has to be careful not to lose these little rubbers. After that I unscrew the metallic rails from the car body and I put these out. I strip off the paint from the whole metallic surface of the seat and the rails and I paint these again first with antirust paint and after with a black paint.
  2. I gave the bottom part of the seats to upholster to fix it because was too flat. He replace the inner of these and the cover with new black plastic surface. After that overhauling that part of the seats were a few centimeters taller.
  3. I gave the back of the seat to upholsterer too , to overhauling it in the same way he did with the bottom part of the seats .
  4. I found the two rubbers that are along the edge of the bottom part of the seats which protects the seat cover from destruction , in a store with second hand parts , and I bought from Omicron the little items of the base of the seat witch stops the movement of the seat from back to front.
  5. The problem with the free play of the back of the seat was not so easy to be fixed so I change the whole mechanism with another that I found in a store with second hand parts.