The passenger seat back in an M35 is not very comforable as it is, and when it's deteriorated, it's much worse.The seat back prys out of the frame, and is made of a steel hoop with a canvas cover stretched over it. Inside is some filler material for a pad. The material is like the bat inside an old-style evaporative cooler. In the lower right corner, there is a bow knot in a cord, that draws the cover tight around the frame and holds this all together.In this case showing that the padding has been removed, the some of the filler has turned to dust and what's left is falling apart. The green stuff is not paint, it'she dust of the decomposed filler.The filler pad was discarded. A piece of carpet was cut and placed inside the seat fabric. Behind this, a 1" thick layer of resilient foam was installed. Some new "duck" cloth was cut so that it would cover the existing fabric with enough around the edges to wrap over. 3M spray adhesive of the kind usable for automobile headliners was used to hold the new material in place over the old. Don't use too much or it will bleed through! follow the directions on the can exactly. The picture shows the stage of the work after installing the carpet and foam, and then having glued the duck cloth to the front of the seat cushion fabric.Once the new cloth was cut and glued in place, the back edges were wrapped around and glued in place to the old fabric. This way, the cover can be removed again to do more work later if necessary.Here's what it looks like. Not bad for a first attempt at this sort of thing. The seat bottom was so bad the springs were showing through, so a piece of carpet was cut and glued over the seat cushion for now. Later, the seat cushion can be removed and covered with the new cloth like the back was. The reason that carpet was used is straightforward: The carpet, actually small 'throw rugs' has a backing that is woven very solid with nylon. This gives extra strength to the job and a good substrate to bond the torn and weakened old canvas to. If your passengers have a habit of eating alot of beans, you might want to throw in a layer of kevlar as well..
