I had a free minute and some friends eager to help, so we removed the front seat cushions. The bottom cushion is easy; it just lifts up. The top cushion is held by 3 screws 7/16" at the base and hooks at the top. It was stuck at the top but came off with gently coaxing.

Both the front and rear seats have covers that look like they were installed a long time ago. There were a few splits in the covers to show the original seats, and we were curious how good the originals might be.
We removed the covers and learned some portions of the cover were solid and some were "see-through". The solid portions did a splendid job. The "see-through" sections protected the original fabric but allowed dirt to pass.
Once the worst of the dirt was vacuumed up, the original seats, although still dirty, show no tears or wear. I will arrange for a professional cleaning.

The seat springs and burlap are in great shape. We found a tag that says the seats were built by Murray. That is the same company that built car bodies for Chrysler in that era.

I took the rear seat upper cushion over to the local detail shop. He worked his magic.
Pretty near perfect for a 74 year old interior piece.

The brakes on all 4 wheels were stuck. DeSoto used nice big 3/4" adjuster nuts on the back of the brake plate so there is a lot for the wrench to grab. I was able to move all adjusters to the slack position. On the driver front, this was enough to free the shoes but on the passenger front, the shoes didn't retract enough. I removed the wheel cover and found this contraption. I've never seen one before but from the weights and the calibrated tracks, my guess is this in an old form of wheel balance.

I removed the wheel and hub as an assembly and was able to tap the frozen wheel cylinders back into their cylinders enough so the shoes retracted. The driver rear was next. The shoes wouldn't retract so I pulled the hub. DeSoto was still using lug bolts in 1950 (right hand thread on the passenger side, left hand on the driver) which makes a hub puller a little tougher to install. I used all 5 legs to pull since this car hasn't been touched since 1970 at least. With some effort, the hub came off. The brake shoes had to come off on this one since the brake pistons would not retract.

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