C3 Seats

[Pat K.]

I have a '69 Vette with ZQ4 interior. It's my understanding that the seats are constructed of two types of vinyl, madrid vinyl and the comfortweave insert panels. My seats do not have the comfortweave insert panels. The insert panels are madrid vinyl. Is it possible to have madrid vinyl inserts from the factory?

Link to seat if someone wants to view it:

[Joe L.]

Re: C3 Seats

Pat------

1969 seats had 2 types of insert material. In earlier production, the seats were the 68-style basket weave material. Later, the finer-grain, Comfort Weave was used. There was a period of time when both types were used randomly. However, I've never seen or heard of the use of all madrid-grain vinyl for the inserts. I think that I know what happened, though:

The Comfort Weave material was a real problem. It was actually a woven material and not just an embossed vinyl (although I think most of the modern reproductions of it are just embossed). Behind the Comfort Weave material was a sewn-on backing of fabric-covered foam rubber about 3/16" thick. In use, the driver's perspiration would permeate down through the woven vinyl and saturate the sewn-on backing. Eventually, the foam rubber would rot and cause a dust-like material to effuse back up through the woven vinyl and keep the car interior in a perpetual state of dust. You could have a perfectly good appearing set of seat covers, but they were "unusable" due to the dusting condition.

In this case, I think that someone probably took the seats to an automotive upholsterer and they replaced the insert material with madrid grain vinyl. This would eliminate the problems associated with the woven vinyl, albeit at the expense of "originality". Bulk madrid grain vinyl material was easily available to automotive upholsterers for many years and may still be today.

[Pat K.]

Thanks Joe *NM*

[Reba Whittington]

Re: C3 Seats

I think Joe is correct. From what I can ascertain from the picture, this is not a factory cover for any year.