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MG MGA - Rubbing seat shoulders

Hi all,

having just repurchased my MGA Mark I 1600 roadster, I am doing some overdue fettling. One of the problems is that the hood frame mountings rub on the outside shoulders of the seats, with the result that the leather has been damaged. Whilst this is repairable, I am concerned that unless I do something to change the shape of the seat frame or the way that the hood mounts, I will simply repeat the problem. Has anyone else suffered from this problem?

The width of the seats of the herd is a maximum of 21 inches, but the point at which they rub they have a width of 20 inches.

I'm sure I have seen somewhere seats with a scallop shaped cut out on the outside shoulder to preclude this, but can't find anyone who is prepared to reshape the seat frame, though there are plenty of upholsterers who are happy to do the leather repair.

If you have e experienced this issue, I would really appreciate learning how to fix it, so that I can avoid doing more damage to my lovely old leather seats.

Many thanks, Chris
CJ Charman

Chris, my seat shoulders are close but not touching the hood frame on my 1600 roadster.

Are you sure that a previous owner has not mixed up the driver & passenger seats backs as I understand that the shaping is different between the two.

Richard
R A Evans

Good call Richard,

I should have said this was the first thing I checked,
and the lower shoulders are to the outside - which is the correct position according to my workshop book.

Cheers for the thought, Chris

CJ Charman

I have between 3/4" and 1" between the hood frame anchors and the side of the seat backs on my '59.


David Werblow

Picture of the top frame so you can compare. Good luck Duncan


A Dickinson

LIke David I have plenty of clearance even with the seat all the way back.


A Dickinson

Chris

Have you checked the seat mounting positions through the floorboards? The easiest solution might be to move the seat rails closer to the tunnel. Then you wont have to mess with the actual seats.
John Francis

I'm also interested in the solution to this problem - my 1600 fram rubs on the seats in the same way as Chris' car.
M Wellard

I have the same problem too. The car is stored for the winter and I don't have access to it, but I was thinking of maybe place a 0.5 - 1 mm (~ .02 - .04") aluminium bar under the outside seat rails. This might create enough space at the top, but the seats may look or feel like they are tilting? Have anyone done something simular? I don't like the idea of drilling new holes in the floor...
Kenneth G

Sorry for my English, but by writing "tilting" in the last post, I of course meant "leaning" towards the center of the car.
Kenneth G

I have packed my seat rails not so much to cure seat rubbing but to correct the out of horizontal floor boards.
If you put an X" thick strip under the outer rail then you would get a roughly 2X" movement of the seat back towards the car centre.
For example if you used a strip of 3/8" thick (e.g. old floorboarding, length 19" by 1" wide) ply the top of seat movement would be about 3/4" and the tilt would be less than 2 degrees; you probably wouldn't notice it. The seat back would of course be closer to and might interfere with the arm rest but it's easy job to try.

When I fit my newly upholstered seats during restoration I was surprised at how little sideways room there was in the car and I wondered whether the new upholstery sponge made the seats a bit wider than they were before. I even had to move the rail holes on my new floorboards on one side to give free movement of the seat bottom. For this I removed the T-nuts, drilled the original holes out to 1/2", glued in lengths of 1/2" dowel and repositioned the holes ...................Mike
m.j. moore

I see that the figures I posted also are wrong. It should have been 0.5 - 1 CM (~ 0.2 - 0.4").

Thanks for your estimate, Mike! It seems that my thought was not too far off and I will try this when the spring is coming.
Kenneth G

If you do not have the spare tire in place, the frame sits in the wrong position and pokes into the seat.

The spare tire holds it up a bit off of the battery shelf and it changes the geometry quite a bit.


JIM in NH
AJ Mail

Chris,

How close are your seats to the centre tunnel?

My seats miss the hood frame, not by a lot, but the seat back is hard up to the centre armrest.

Malcolm
Malcolm Asquith

My seat touched the top frame. With it in the car you can bend it over until it clears. Your seat back is bent too "flat" Bend that corner in so the back is more curved.
R J Brown

This thread was discussed between 05/01/2013 and 07/01/2013

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