17 December 2022
Superior crash protection legislation in the USA meant that Triumph had to improve their seats for the North American market. The result was the 'High Back Recliner' Seat' whose unusual outline lives on in many Recaro and Corbeau seats.
A last minute project before Christmas
James contacted me from the USA saying he wanted to re-foam his fixed headrest, high-back seats. Was this something I could help with?
These frames are as rare as hen's teeth in the UK. Luckily I already had a set of USA highback fixed headrest seats from Ebay. The headrest section looked tricky to trim up. Then again, I hate walking away from a challenge so went for it.
Once I started stripping a seat down it turned out that the main seat back foam is the same as the low back seats. This just left me to work out how to make the headrest piece.
Single piece Spitfire USA headrest
A quick Google showed other companies offered foams that needed to be glued together. This was not something that I wanted, a well finished foam is the base of a well finished seat.
I needed a curved front profile so developed a program for my CNC foam cutter. This supports the facing foam in the right places. The side profiles were tricky to get right so that the shape was correct while lining up all the edges. Finally cutting away where the frame protrudes.
Finished just in time
I was able to ship James a pair of prototype Spitfire headrests with the rest of his order over in the USA, just before Christmas.
Come the New Year I need to get some feedback on how they fitted his covers and come up with a plan to put them into production.
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