This ended up taking a while. I started working on them because I wanted something that was distinct - I could start it and see the finished part at the end. As it turns out, that is what Sasha and Peter did with their build not too long ago, and what Yeol and Chad did as well. I guess we hit the same point at about the same time - we wanted to score a win that was visible!
This was not as straightforward as it could have been. First of all, I was missing the pin assembly, so I couldn't actually finish the seat bottom. That's OK, because I was able to do the entire front seat back and the base, but not the locking mechanism. I did do enough of the locking mechanism to see how it all went together, though. Not bad, but some tough parts due to tight tolerance fits.
The instructions were not clear on a line of rivets on the headrest. It is the line that attaches the front of the headrest skin, where your head would go if there were no upholstery, to the thick metal back. All the other rivets go into the hidden spacers, but for this, I needed to make a decision as to where the smooth heads of the rivets would go and where the bulgy tails of the rivets would go. Since there will be upholstery on the front and not on the back, I opted to put the smooth rivet heads on the back. You can see that in the pictures.
There is an AN bolt that holds the round plastic pieces that will eventually pull the wire of the locking mechanism. The AN bolt has a nylock nut on it, so I decided to torque it correctly and even put Torquestripe on it. Once it is sealed up, I expect that no one will ever see that again, but I wanted the stripe on it just to be thorough. And, in case I need to open it up at some point, to have a reminder that I did do it right to start with!
Yeol suggested getting the seat backs powdercoated, since the back side of the backs do not get covered with the standard Sling upholstery. I found a place that we used at my previous job and got pricing from them, and since there is a bit of a "lot charge," it is much les expensive to do it (per piece) with larger numbers. So, I talked with Yeol, Sasha, and Peter, and we decided to get all 6 seat backs powder coated. That'll show up in a later post, when we actually do it and see the results.
The electronic instructions had an update that wasn't in the paper ones that Yeol was kind enough to point out. When I go get the locking pins, I now know that I need to use the washer and cotter pins for them. Also, the instructions say to use the 8mm long 3.2mm rivets all around on the locking mechanism, but I see that I need to use the 12mm long rivets for the very front, to hold the plastic in place. Luckily, Sling supplied the rivets. They just didn't update the instructions to say to use them. C'st la vie.
Aside from all that, these were pretty straightforward to build. It was exactly what I hoped for - relatively fast build with very clear results at the end. An easy win!