Replace Seats???

Aloha!!  We have a 2010 PC, 2551, with the horribly peeling seats.  Surprisingly, I've not located an upholstery shop with any interest in either recovering the seats, or making slip-on seat covers.  The fact that they are 3rd party seats (from Paul's) rather than Ford OEM seems to scare them off.  It would probably require them to remove the existing seat covers, and use those for patterns.  It also would tie up the motorhome for an extended time while they do this.  Every shop I talked to says NO.
And please don't suggest going back to Paul... I tried.  He wants nothing to do with them, obviously he had a major falling out with the factory, now hates the mention of Phoenix Cruiser.  Said he has nothing to do with Phoenix Cruiser anymore, and has no desire to do so.

I've seen a few posts stating the pedestals are Ford OEM, with Ford part numbers on them.  I haven't verified this myself yet.  (We live in Hawaii and the motorhome is stored in Oregon.)
Seems like if the pedestals are from Ford, I should be able to buy original Ford seats for an E450 and bolt them on.

Has anyone out there tried this?

We took our seats out of the PC and took them to an automotive restoration shop.  Not cheap but look very nice.  We had them covered with Naugahyde instead of any leather products.  We are very pleased!

Thank you Barry & Sue!!

I've been in contact with a business in Lake Havasu, AZ [https://discountvantruck.com/] who make van and truck seats.  She said they've made many seats to replace the peeling problem, because the reupholstery is so labor intensive, it's actually more economical to simply replace the seat.  All of their seats are compatible with the Ford pedestals (which she said are made in Indiana, so even if the chassis came with a simple mount for the plastic chair, it's possible that Paul's would have used the Ford pedestal to make the original seat.)

I am coincidentally going to be traveling west on I-40 in early October, so will be passing by about 20 miles north of them... going to pursue that option.

Rick and Erika

I have read of other PC owners contacting Paul's Seating and ordering the same exact seat skins made of 100% real leather on every surface.  Apparently the real leather is holding up nicely throughout the years.  You also have the option of ordering cloth as well as ordering complete new seats from Paul's or any other seat manufacture which are direct bolt-in replacements.

Your problem is the byproduct of the 2009 recession.  The entire RV industry (not only Phoenix) RV seat manufacturers switched from "Made In USA" vinyl, to "Made In China" vinyl.  Our vinyl seats made in 2007 continue to hold up, still looking great.

Rick and Erika,

We tried to replace our seats before having them recovered.  The issue we ran into was that both of our seats swiveled and none of the seats they tried would still allow our seats to swivel.

So just a word of caution, if you have a seat that swivels make sure they check that it will still work.

Thank you Barry and Sue... I will check that... the dimensions on their seats look the same as what we have now.
Also, I've sent them photos of our pedestals, with this response:  Our passenger seat is a swivel base, she said they used to manufature the same base and virtually any Ford seat will mate up with it.  It shouldn't be a problem, unless the seatback doesn't come up to full upright.  But if it didn't swivel, I would get that seat anyway.  We virtually never use the swivel function.
The driver base (6-way power) is a standard Norco base, made in Indiana and is used in a great many of the motorhomes.  She said every one of the seat models they manufacture are a very simple bolt-on swap to our existing bases.

I'm not at all interested in dealing with Paul's, because when I talked to him last year he said "Go Away.  I can't help you."  Plus driving to Indiana would cost more for gas than purchasing new seats in the West.

I'm not at all interested in dealing with Paul's, because when I talked to him last year he said "Go Away.  I can't help you."

Wow!  That is horrible of Paul's Seating.

I took the seats out of our 2015 2552 and had an upholstery shop re-cover them and it was half the cost of new seats. The shop had my wife and I sit in them with different kind of foam in different places until they felt comfortable and then he custom fit the foam and hand made the covers. He even offered us lumbar adjustment with manual adjustment. You just need to find the right shop. I didn’t need to worry about the seats not fitting or the interlock switch for the air bags as they are the same seats.

A complication I have, which most others don't, is that we live in Hawaii.  The PC is stored (indoors) in Tualatin Oregon, south of Portland.  I had only been talking with rebuild shops in the Portland area, because we do two trips per year, spring and fall, of 6-8 weeks each.  We don't want to have to hang around Portland while the seats were being recovered, so were asking shops if we could drop off the seats at the end of one trip and pick them up again at the beginning of our next trip.  Nobody wanted to do that. 

And if we have to "hang around" while the seats are being recovered, the cost of hotel/rental car/restaurants very quickly exceeds the cost difference for new replacement seats.  When we're on the mainland, the PC is where we live.   Much easier if you live on the mainland and can find a shop near where you live.

I'm going with the place in Lake Havasu City; new seats which will be a simple swap.  I asked them about the issue Barry and Sue had posted... that the replacement seats they had looked into would not swivel.  I'm speculating that shop maybe focused on seats for cars, vans and pickup trucks, and the issue might be their seatback didn't come up to the full vertical upright.  The owner of this shop confirmed that is an issue.  Seats that are slated for an F450, for instance, don't need to come to full upright (they don't swivel) and that is necessary for them to work in the PC swivel application.  His seats all not only come to full upright, but go a little more, so the seatback is over the seat cushion during the swivel.  He said he has never had an instance of their seats having that problem (and he's been in business since 1967.)

He said with our seat bases, all we need to do is remove the seat, take the slide off the bottom of the old seat, bolt it onto the new seat, and reinstall.  There was no seat airbag in 2010 so we don't have that harness, and the seatbelt receptacle is attached to the base, not to the seat, so no issue with that harness.  Bottom line, he said the swap is "very simple."   

It was pure serendipity that we had already scheduled our fall trip to include a visit to the Grand Canyon, and go west from there, so that we will be passing by just 25 miles north of Lake Havasu.

Hello,
I am also looking to solve the flaking seat cover issue.  I appreciate what you have all written.

I do really like the comfort of the current seats (2016 model 2351). 

I have checked with one local auto re-upholestry shop here in the TUCSON area and it will be close to $2000 to recover the driver and passenger seats. 

I did contact Paul's and while they were terrible at returning calls, they eventually said a new cover would be about
$560.  I would have to install.  They said they would send fabric samples three months ago, and nothing has been heard from them since.

At that price point, replacing the seats might be less BUT would they be as comfortable?

Appreciate any thoughts!
Kathleen

To tie off my inputs on this thread, I backed off from replacing the seats.
I had done an email blast to makers of seat covers, and got a suitable reply from Covercraft... they make one generic cover for captains chairs.  Their only seatcover slated for RVs.  The seat covers are fine, they fit pretty well; the covers for the armrests are a joke.  But $118 each was preferable to $1000 each to replace seats.
[https://www.covercraft.com/product/rv-seatglove/SVR]

I also recived input from this outfit; they make custom covers to your detailed measurements.
But only in vinyl, which I am not attracted to...

[https://rvseatcovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/MEASUREMENTS.pdf]