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The Cobra Roadster 7 look nice, but the construction quality is questionable at best. After 6500 miles the driver seat broke in two. I’m very happy the nice SVA man insisted on the seat belt bar as one of the major fail points on the first pass at the SVA test:
I took the vinyl and padding completely off the base, the back rest I only removed about 1/2 as it looked it was going to be difficult to get it all back in the orignal positions:
Just welding the pipe back together would likely have resulted in a failure quite quickly. Therefore I added extra metal inside the tubes for strengthening, here before being cut to length checking for fitment, the one other otherside as a bend due to the position in the break:
I then drilled some holes through the tube for welding the metal to the tube, the extra metal is visible through them:
Time to fire up the welder:
I welded in the extra metal to the tube through the holes, and around the tube to join it back up again:
In addition to the metal in the tubes I also added plates either side of the seat over the whole bend:
Both sides completed with some paint over the top
Finally the seat needed reassembly, the vinyl stapled to the wood backing
Getting the vinyl back in place with the least amount of wrinkles was a bit of challenge
Next sides went on, these are connect with hog rings. I bought a specific set of pliers for installing the hot rings but it was still quite challenging to get them in place.
Finally I install the seat back in the car, this one will be the passenger seat for now:
I'm still considering completely replacing these with something else, but that's a bigger project. I suspect I'll be taking the other one to bits at some point in the future to repair it too, it's still OK at the moment, but feels less strong than the repaired one.
(My welding still sucks, but mild steel is easier than stainless)
I took the vinyl and padding completely off the base, the back rest I only removed about 1/2 as it looked it was going to be difficult to get it all back in the orignal positions:
Just welding the pipe back together would likely have resulted in a failure quite quickly. Therefore I added extra metal inside the tubes for strengthening, here before being cut to length checking for fitment, the one other otherside as a bend due to the position in the break:
I then drilled some holes through the tube for welding the metal to the tube, the extra metal is visible through them:
Time to fire up the welder:
I welded in the extra metal to the tube through the holes, and around the tube to join it back up again:
In addition to the metal in the tubes I also added plates either side of the seat over the whole bend:
Both sides completed with some paint over the top
Finally the seat needed reassembly, the vinyl stapled to the wood backing
Getting the vinyl back in place with the least amount of wrinkles was a bit of challenge
Next sides went on, these are connect with hog rings. I bought a specific set of pliers for installing the hot rings but it was still quite challenging to get them in place.
Finally I install the seat back in the car, this one will be the passenger seat for now:
I'm still considering completely replacing these with something else, but that's a bigger project. I suspect I'll be taking the other one to bits at some point in the future to repair it too, it's still OK at the moment, but feels less strong than the repaired one.
(My welding still sucks, but mild steel is easier than stainless)