I'm looking for an original "coconut fibre" pad for the front seat of a 68 Beetle. I think they are the same from 68-72 when the seats were low backed.

Why? Long story.

I purchased the "correct" Wolfsburg West coconut fibre pads and new TMI covers to completely refurbish my seats. The back seat and bottom front seats went without a hitch. However the pads on the backrests of the front seats were about 25mm too short. I contacted WW about the problem and they were unhelpful other than saying that I needed pads that were 25mm longer. Doh!

Everywhere in Australia and on the WW website the pad number is 113881775F for Euro Beetles with low back seats. The pads came marked as the"F" suffix. WW said I should buy the "G" suffix and they were not responsible for the listings on other websites (even if their own was not correct). The G suffix refers to the High Back seats and clearly that was not what I had.

I bought the pads some time back so returning them was not an option. They seemed too thick compared to the originals. I put this down to the originals being now 54 years old.

I managed to get the pads to fit by stretching the pads and springs and resorted to cutting a slot in the top roll but they were under substantial tension. The top roll was a good 30mm thick so I could cut a fair bit of it without exposing the springs. I had to sew the pads to the springs at the bottom to stop them from rising up. I thought I had solved the problem.

When I fitted the TMI covers is was immediately obvious that the TMI covers would not fit. Whilst the back part reached the tangs with a LOT of stretching, the front was a good 50mm too short. The only way they were going to fit was to sew in a cover vinyl at the bottom to fill the "cavity" between the front and back part of the cover.

So today I decided to remove one of the new pads and undo all the work I had done and fitted the one existing good pad I had. The driver's pad was trashed beyond salvaging. Obviously it fitted perfectly and when I installed the TMI cover, everything lined up perfectly and the vinyl could stretch from both sides to the tangs with little difficulty.

So my guess is that the WW pads were just defective/too thick/incorrectly marked and shipped.

So I am hoping someone has a good passenger side pad (due to the less wear) that they can sell me as I have no confidence even going and buying another set of WW pads. I spent days on trying to resolve. Heating the covers, using a hair dryer, stretching to point of nearly tearing out the stitching.

I'm in Sydney if that helps.

Hi Viking I was in Bunnings the other day and noticed that they have rolls of coconut fibre, it would probably take 2 or 3 layers glued together to get the thickness of the original pad but at least you could shape it like you tried with the WW one. I wonder if the pads were for the kombi as the seats were shorter due to the height. I am not sure if I still have some 1500 seat backs but if so I will let you know.

Sorry mate the padding isn't real good on them either.

OK. Thanks for looking. I'll cast the net wider.