'79 240D carpet and seat padding

If you find a upholstery shop in your area, see if they can order the original style carpet. I did a 72' 115 (220 gas) and it had the same problems where the inner rocker carpets were bad. The replacement was identical to the original but it was expensive. You will just need to make sure you get enough length to run the entire length since the width of the carpet usually is smaller than you would need for something like this. When I did mine I also re-covered the rear deck with the left-over.

Regarding the seats, the bottoms are usually held on to the seat frame with hog hooks. I know of people that have ordered replacement horse hair seat pads if that is the style you have. Something I did for a friends 450SLC was to take high density upholstery foam and using a electric kitchen knife, cut the foam down to form the same shape as the original pad. If you are careful you can re-use the hog hooks when you stick it back together. One thing to be careful of is that seat pleats are sown to a backer canvas. If this stitching is week you may end up making more work for yourself as you do the pad replacement. If you tackle the seats yourself, plan a good day or two to do it since it involves removing the seats and doing some disassembly on them just to get started.

Regarding the back seat upper, you will need to stitch in a replacement backer that holds the seat material tight.

Hope that helps and good luck.

You might try a wrecking yard. I see lots of these cars for parts near me. Craiglist also. You can pull parts off a passenger seat to use for your drivers seat. The seats on my 85 were really easy to work on, no hog hooks to deal with.

Since it was wet you may have a problem getting the seats out. The bolts that hold the seats in may be rusted tight to the nut. If so you'll have to drill the head off. The nut is held to a sheet metal bracket. You can get a replacement at the wrecking yard.

Very helpful, thank you. With regard to the seat pleats, when you say I could make more work for myself, do you mean because the backer canvas may fall apart as seemed to have happend with my rear seat back? Or just that I might pull out the stitching? And any advice on how I can do the work carefully?

Regarding the stitching on the backer, yes the fabric may be worn so just be aware. If it is in good condition then it will take a lot of abuse. If it is torn and weak it won't matter how much care you take. If your pleats are all nice and tight the chances are you don't have anything to worry about. Once I actually was able to sew a new backer on and then pull the stuffing pieces back into the pleats with a home made fish wire. If you are up to the challenge I'm sure you'll do ok.

RUNBIODIESEL's comment on the bolts is right on if they are rusty. I've was done that path once. However I would recommend ordering new nut clips or you might want to try a home improvement store like lowe's or a good hardware store for the nut clips if needed.

Sorry for my misstatement above, COMMUTER commented on the possible rusty bolts.

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