Venerable Volvo Verbiage

by Goran Freske

Whilst sitting in your 1800, do you find yourself looking out at grasshoppers knees? Well then, it's time to examine your old seat webbing. As you may or may not know, your 1800 seats has a foam filled cushion, supported by a weave of Pirelli made webbing that spans the space between the steel tube seat framing members. Whatever your opinion is of Pirelli tires, this webbing seems to last a fairly long time, but eventually, as all rubber products tend to do, it dries up and breaks. We can not entirely blame Signor Giovanni for our troubles, since the steel wire hooks (Volvo) that hold the webbing to the frame are apt to break at the sharp bends, as well.

The simple way to eliminate both modes of failure is to cut a piece of 3/16 or 1/4 inch thick piece of good quality plywood to exactly fit over the webbing, making sure it is supported all around by the tube frame. I implemented a repair like that a long time ago, and it works great, but if I know most of the members of SDVSA, including me, you want to do a proper job of it.

Surprisingly, you can still buy the original Pirelli webbing at UFO (Upholstery Fabric Outlet) at 1918 Roosevelt Ave. in National City and 1120 N. Melrose Dr. in Vista, and no doubt other fabric retailers. At UFO, the price is 65 cents/foot. which sound pretty cheap, until you realize how much you need. Each of the front seats requires 11 feet, and the back seat another 13, for a grand total of 35 feet, or $22.75!! Now that you have all the materials on hand, the only tools that are required is an awl, or similar sharp instrument of destruction, a thin bladed screw driver, any pair of flat nosed pliers, a pair of decent scissors, and you are ready to start. ALWAYS start with the longer lengths, because it you screw up, you can always use that for the shorter pieces, thus generating less scrap and expense (hopefully) when you have to go back for more. If you do the whole car, start with the long pieces for the back seat. Measure the length of the old webbing between the hooks. Cut a piece of new webbing, adding TWO inches to your measurement to allow for the folding at both ends. Unhook the old webbing, and use the screw driver to start prying up the ends of the clamping wire that holds the two little pieces of steel that act as a clamp. The wire is pretty soft, so might be able to bend it with your fingers enough to remove the plates, otherwise use the pliers. Remove the hook and make a loop around the hook using the newly cut piece of webbing. DO NOT try to make the loop first, if you make it the same size as the old one.

The hook won't fit! Use the awl to make the holes for the clamping wire, and put everything together at one end, and hook it back onto the frame. Take the hook off the other end of the old webbing, put that hook back in the frame, and, while keeping the webbing strap taught, mark where the fold will be for the second hook. As you will have noticed by now, the webbing material doesn't stretch too willingly, so you have to be pretty accurate with your last measurement to get exactly the right tension in the strap when you finally finish both ends. You may have to do the first strap over again, but don't despair. "Alla barn I början" (All children in the beginning), as the old Swedish proverb goes. That's it. Just repeat the procedure until you don't want to even think about another piece of webbing, or 'till you finish the whole car, whichever comes first.

As you replace the webbing you may find that some of the hooks fall apart as you remove them from the frame. They are made from really hard steel wire, hence their susceptibility to fatigue. You can get piano wire in most hobby shops where they are available in three foot lengths and different diameters. The old wire measures a little over 0.080 inch in diameter, and I managed to get lengths of 0.078 and 0.098 inch diameters. If you can form the heavier wire, use that, but it takes some doing. ALWAYS wear some sort of eye protection whenever you are working with thin, especially hard, wire!! Sometimes it snaps without warning, and, according to Murphy's Law, it always ends up in your eye. I really have no hint to share how best to form the wire into hooks, it just takes patience and good pair of Vise-Grip pliers. The most important thing is to make the bends of the hook as sharp as possible, otherwise they are apt to slip out of the frame. If anyone reading this has any good ideas of how to work with hard wire, why not share it with your fellow "I Roll"-ers.

When you are down to the fundamentals of you seats, check the two seat hat sections that mount to the rails by the four bolts for cracks around the holes. Also, check the four allen head bolts that hold the rails to the floor. Recently, the forward left floor bolt nut cracked out of the floor on the driver's side on my car, so I welded it back. I used a gas welding torch, but I would certainly recommend an arc welder on that thin floor! A word of caution if the RIGHT FRONT floor bolt on the driver's side should fail. The GASOLINE supply line runs on the side frame right underneath the floor in that area, so it's NOT a good idea to get the metal too hot! Good luck.