Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Not easy to replicate with layers - I meant to say...

I went through this early in the year and don't think I posted about it.

In the end I re used my foam. Apart from the very bottom/back parts that were breaking up it seem in decent condition.

I made up new webbings to replace the rubber that had failed, then placed 1/2" of dense foam on the webbings and secured the old foam and covers to the new foam.

A bit DPO, but the seat no longer is collapsing when I sit in it.

Thanks Mark, I’m going to have a go at finding some close equivalent shaped foam, or see if I could find a foam supplier willing to cut/shape some new ones for me.

Last resort might be to build them back as you did, or last last resort fit some XJS seats.

Iain

PS first dry day here in sunny Wales for weeks!

Have ordered a set of these MGB shaped foam bases to play with, they could be a good fit for our seats, I’ll post again when I know if they are useful or not....

Well it will be interesting to hear if the BGT foams work for you. They might work for early +2 seat bases which I think use a one piece foam whereas the later +2S seat bases have a separate centre foam.
As the starter of this thread in the end I bought a set of what are supposed to be hand cut later type +2 seat foams from a company called Broadland Upholstery in Norfolk but I haven't fitted them and instead built up the existing seat bases with layers of blue type foam from a local upholstery shop.The end result is less than perfect but ok for now. I may revisit again in the future ....

Alan.

As Alan said, the mgb foam will need cutting into two pieces as the seat covers are fastened to the base/support rubber thing between the center section of the seats and outer.

I will try post a few pictures at some point but running up against forum file size limits etc so requires some work to do.

Alan / Mark,

Yes agreed, the plan is to carefully cut/remove the centre seat section so it becomes separated from the remaining 'U' shaped piece forming the two sides and front.

The seat base rubber on these later seats has a raised channel 'lip' that runs the circumference of the centre seat section to attach the centre section corduroy cloth. I think the idea was that the centre section would be independently sprung from the sides and front.

What's puzzling to me is that Lotus made such a mediocre job of designing their own seat when there must have been some good tried and tested 'off the shelf' options at the time that could have been retrimmed in Lotus materials.

Iain