Removing leather seat cover for restauration

[mac70]

I am currently considering to clean the leather seats of my Elan. Therefore I would like to remove the leather cover and send it to somebody for restauration.
Does andybody have experience with removing the cover and can give me advice how to take off the cover. It looks to me that some parts of the seat have to be removed first.

Thanks

Stefan

[theelanman]

stefan
spoke to lotus last week and you can have them recovered by lotus for about £350 per seat or you can buy the original lotus kits from them for about £250 per seat.....just find out how much your restorer will charge first!!!
cheers
G

[Dave M]

If you can get the company who is restoring the seat to take it apart, it may be worth the extra few $. It is a real trick separating the leather from the foam insert. There are *many* clips that hold the leather to a wire that runs inside the foam "form". I'm sure there is a special tool to remove these, but without it it is hard to not rip the foam in places. If you do, super glue does mend it fairly well. Putting it back together is much easier and just requires a pair of pliers to bend the clips back around the wire.

It's been a while since I pulled them apart, and I only took the leather off the back of the seat (not the base). That could be a whole other story. I lost the original pics I had up on the old forum in the crash, but should have them on my home computer. I'll post a few later so you can see what the insides look like.

[Doug]

the seat heater write-up I did in the main site shows the seat disassembly, but hey for the price I'd just go for a re-trim. There's a lot of work to disassemble and reassemble if you do it yourself!

[mac70]

Thanks for the fast replys. I thought it would be very easy to remove the leather seat cover but it looks like it is not. My problem is that I am located in Germany and cannot easily directly go to Lotus. I will try some mild improvments first and will see.
Doug, I could not find the description you were referring to. Where is it exactly located.

Thanks again

Stefan

[Doug]

temporarily here:

http://www.lotuselancentral.com/lec/hotseat.htm

[LXADO63]

Does anyone know where I could find the seat pattern for the elan se turbo so that I can have new leather covers made? I was thinking of this option so that I could keep the originals on my car (they are in really good condition- just thinking about a color change) so I can keep driving the car while new covers are made. One post mentioned that Lotus has a seat kit for the elan- is this available in any color or strictly the raven grey?