Initially I had hoped that this was just a matter of resewing the seam, but close examination showed that this was not the case. The vinyl itself was torn. What to do?
Twenty years before - back when I was doing the original restoration - I had purchased a "Professional" vinyl repair kit that consisted on about a dozen small containers of a soft vinyl-like paste in a variety of colors. These, supposedly, could be mixed together to match almost any color, and indeed, professionals did just that. This paste was then applied to the torn vinyl with a small amount of overlap, and heat was applied through a sheet of textured coated paper that hardened the paste into a truly vinyl-like material. If the job was done right both the color and the texture would blend in and the repair would be nearly invisible.
I had watched a professional do just this on a Toyota back in the late `70s and the result was superb. My own attempts, using that purchased kit, had been good if not quite professional. And amazingly those repairs had held up as well as the original material over all the intervening years. Thus with new upholstery kits in the original color unavailable (or very costly), and my twenty two year old reupholstering still good except for that one torn seam, it seemed time to give that old technique another try.
I found a similar but far more 'amateur' kit available at the local NAPA. Then, while digging thorough my old Spider parts box I found that original "professional" kit and found that the paste materials were still soft and apparently unharmed by the passage of time. (This is doubly amazing considering that kit had been stored for almost ten years in the basement of an unheated cottage!)
Anyhow, using materials from the old and new kit and the superior electric heat unit of the former I yesterday gave it a shot. Here are the results...
Before...
And after...
Not quite perfect, but so all but. Upholstery problem solved.
Here is the modern iteration of the kit:
-don