Re-padding bucket seats

John,

Since comfort is a relative term, I suggest that you experiment to see what works for you.  I am assuming you are satisfied with the seat frames, just not the comfort.  Start with the padding you may consider minimum, and ride for a few hours, or however long you think a longish trip may be for you.  Of course, you may realize that the level of padding is not right within a few minutes of driving.  Adjust accordingly.  You may get to a level that feels too soft.  That's the easy part, as you just decrease one level.

I also suggest that you actually drive the car to see what works for you.  Don't just sit in the seat with a book to pass the time.  Buckle up and drive under normal conditions.  That's the only way I have found to find my comfort level.  Best of luck.

Trust me, if you have seats from VS or CMC, the padding is nothing special.  It also looks (from both builders) that the foam padding is not cut with a wire (the lines are not that smooth) but with a reciprocating electric carving knife, like this to a pattern.  Again, nothing special, there.  Use your old padding as the pattern.

That aside, if you go to a fabric store like Joanne's or maybe even your local Walmart in the fabric department, you'll find lots of padding. Usually they stock two or three different densities; White is average, light blue is a bit stiffer and yellow is a bit softer.

As Jim stated, play with them in the store and decide which one you want to try.  Generally, the stuff isn't all that expensive so you can try different densities til you get one you like.  

Or find old foam couch or chair and cut pieces from there.  Most Speedsters seem to have fiberglass formed buckets as the seat base.  On FF/CMC, and I suspect others, the vinyl/leather is glued to back/sides of this fiberglass bucket with DAP contact cement or 3M adhesive.

 The Walmarts only carry generic cushion foam in my experience.   

I feel you are better to goto a real upholstery shop, preferably someone that does automotive and see the type they have on hand.  Reason is that the durability and durometer rating afffect how comfortable you are after a few hours and that is what counts.  After all you don't want to do it twice for a modicum of extra expense. 

I went to a local upholstery shop with a 12 pack of beer and traded it for enough scrap foam to redo my seats and now they feel great.

...and now they' feel great ...... The upholstery shop with the beer ?  :~)

Beer will get your foot in the door and get stuff done pronto at most any shop, I still provide my paint guy and machine shop friend with "beverages".

One of my late neighbors, "Rabbit" LaFlamme, had about the best single shop around here.  He repaired trucks for the local UPS depot for 20 years and then quit and opened his own place at his house and had plenty to keep him busy, once word got around, especially on light to medium trucks.  If you were to visit, everyone knew that the fridge at the back of the shop was full of Bud, just waiting for an excuse.  I didn't need him much to fix stuff, but my Dad went there for all of his car service once he got too old to do it himself.  Once in a while I would need 'Rab's' 600 lb. impact wrench or his 40 ton press for getting things apart or back together, and other times I would stop by (often on my bike) just to say hi! and sometimes share a beer and talk about stuff.  

I am NOT a big Bud fan, and I suppose my facial expressions showed that, because one time I stopped in for a visit a couple of years before he died and 'Rab' said "Hey!  Go grab a couple of beers - yours are in the back."  So now, with peeked interest, I wander to the fridge, grab a Bud for 'Rab' from the front and, looking waaay back in there, behind everything else, is a 4-pack of Guinness Stout.  "I heard you like that English mud but I didn't have the heart to leave it out in the shop to warm up!"  All this said with a wink from his eye that had a scar running across it from a long past motorcycle accident.  He was a handsome guy, even with the scar.

'Rab' got lung cancer a few years back, which quickly spread all over the place and he quickly died.  His son is in the shop now, building custom chopper motorcycles - nice ones, too.  And the fridge is still stocked with Bud, just as it should be...