My interior refresh build thread

[94stangfan]

All,

I have been toying around with the idea of putting a new interior in my car. I have gone thru the different processes of figuring out what kit should I buy, how am I going to make the door panels match, etc, etc, etc.

Well, I think I may have gone plum loco now. I have decided to build my own upholstery.

Yes, that means sewing all of the seat covers and everything myself.

Originally I was going to go with a charcoal grey interior like it originally had, but I stumbled on some black material that I really like the feel of. It will make the seats oh so comfortable.

Wish me luck. I will post pics soon.

 

[VibrantRedGT]

I'd give you a grey interior for black. I have being able to see everything on Ford's dull grey interior. Sewing huh? Good luck with that.

 

[Riverart]

Good luck. If it comes out well I bet you'll have members asking for help on their projects!

 

[Boss 351]

Cool, should be an interesting project. Are you buying all the equipment too?

 

[TMIproducts]

G'luck - let me know if you have any questions for the pros

(which of course isn't me - but i can def. ask the right people here

 

[94stangfan]

Which equipment are you referring to?

I will have a sewing machine, hog ring tool, and material to make the covers. I am not sure of any other equipment that is needed. Please fill in my void here. Going in blind on this.

Cool, should be an interesting project. Are you buying all the equipment too?

 

[94stangfan]

I also have an auto upholstry book that will guide me in making this stuff. In the book it didn't refer to any other tools either.

Which equipment are you referring to?

I will have a sewing machine, hog ring tool, and material to make the covers. I am not sure of any other equipment that is needed. Please fill in my void here. Going in blind on this.

 

[94stangfan]

Here is a link to my current interior. I am going to start with the seats and panels and work my way to converting the entire interior to be black. I am flirting with the idea of keeping the grey dash and console as the two tone of my car also has that grey in it. I am not sold on that yet, but we will see when I get that far..

Pictures by lions_fan25 - Photobucket

I am assuming it is better to put the pics on an external site and then reference them that way. If anyone else has a suggestion, please feel free to let me know.

 

[94stangfan]

I have started the building of the interior. This weekend I have removed all of my seats from the mustang and have broken down the rear seat and the front passenger seat to make a pattern out of the current seat.

This is proving to be a lot of work.

Here are the materials you are going to need to do this...

1. Fabric for seats.
2. 1/2 inch polyfoam for the padding patterns
3. unbleached muslin to back the padding
4. UV safe thread
5. spray glue
6. lots of patience

I have also used the following tools...

1. Sewing machine (make sure it has all metal gears or you will shear them)
2. cutting board
3. roller cutter thing (looks like a pizza cutter)
4. Heavy duty needles (I am sewing a vinyl) (a bunch of them they bend and break)
5. Hand sewing needles (for the mounts at the bottom of seat)
6. a white wipe off marking pen.
7. scissors
8. box cutter/stitch remover (used both, the box cutter was better on old material)
9. bobbins
10. Heavy duty needles (to hold material in place when you sew)

I will eventually need a hog ring tool and hog rings when I go to put the seats back in, but have not fully installed them on the seat bottom yet. I have only verified that they fit properly without securing them down.

I have a pic posted of the first bottom of the seat. It took all weekend to get it stripped down and to learn how to use the sewing machine.

Please check the pic out at: http://photobucket.com/MustangSeatsAfter I will keep this site updated as I make progress with the seat.

Thanks,

Keith

 

[94stangfan]

It has been a while since I have posted an update.

I have finished the seats and have them installed on the foam. I have not put them in the car yet, but they look good none the less.

Here is the head rest cover:

This is making part of the back seat. I have a side by side piece showing.

This is the middle section of the back seat bottom:

This is the back seat bottom just sitting on the foam to make sure everything looks good.

This is the back seat bottom after I have put the hog rings on it.

The bottoms of the front bucket seats

This is just an example of the materials I used to make everything. I am trying to demonstrate this was not a kit.

This is the back seat all installed on the seat foam.

This is the bucket with the bottom intalled on the foam, but the seat back just slid over the foam making sure everything fits right.

 

[94stangfan]

Here are some more pics...

This is what my bucket seat looked like before...

This is what it looked like after. (I have a hog ring clamped wrong, but I will fix that before it goes in the car that is why there looks to be a flaw on the left side)

side by side shot. The old one still has the seat rails on it so it sits a bit higher.

Drivers and passenger seats done...

Shot of the back seat again...

Shot of all 3 seats.

Now that all of this is done I am working on switching the entire interior color to black from that charcoal grey color.

 

[MikeH686]

That looks awesome how helpful was the auto upholstery book?

 

[94stangfan]

That looks awesome how helpful was the auto upholstery book?

Thanks! The most important piece I learned from the book was what equipment and materials I was going to need. Without reading that, I would have had a cheap sewing machine and I would have ripped through the gears in no time at all trying to sew this. I also learned a lot about how the designs are put in the seats by reading the upholstery book. That and when it comes time to redo my door panels, it described how to make your own. Outside of that, most of it was able to be found on the internet in other threads where people did the same as I did.

The thing that I found is that everyone who did this always used cloth for their seats. I am sure this would have been much faster had I done that. Since this is a vinyl/faux leather material, I went through a ton of needles and it was not easy to sew at all.

My recommendation for you is if you are going to do cloth, you should be fine and dandy for this, but if you want either vinyl, faux leather, or even leather buy a kit. Only do it yourself if you are going pure custom design that you can't buy anywhere. The reason I say this is that you need an industrial grade sewing machine in order to sew this stuff. I used an old 70s model Sears machine that had metal gears, but because it wasn't quite powerful enough, I went through about 50-55 needles. These needles are about $1 each. So that will get into your budget a bit.

 

[MikeH686]

so how much money were you able to save from doing this, if i do this i would do a suede interior or something along those lines maybe something like the color of my interior

 

[94stangfan]

I have between about $500 invested in this project plus my time. That includes all materials and tools. It also includes all the paint and dye for the interior. If I were to buy just a set of vinyl seat covers, that would be what you would pay for those. I decided on a material that is a faux leather. It looks and feels like leather and isn't hard like vinyl. I also bought enough material so that I can recover my door panels to match as well as the back quarter interior panels for the convertible. So it is hard to say exactly how much I saved. I know buying new door panels are about $250 each as well as the rear quarter panels are the same. We will see how those turn out when I am done though.

My problem came in when I was originally trying to match the grey of the interior so that it would be just a seat upgrade and go. But I really like the black interior color and wanted to go with that instead. When I looked up the seat covers for the cars, I could get the sport seats in leather, but the convertible seats only came in vinyl. So in order to get the leather look and feel, I would have either had to order a custom set or make them myself.

The better question would be... Keith would you do this again knowing what you know now? My answer would be no. It took a lot of time to do what I did. Before attempting this, I had never sewn anything in my life. I had to add the learning curve of how to use a sewing machine as well as how to sew all of this stuff. This isn't a weekend job. I took two 5 day weekends worth of work on them. My wife's aunt came to help for those 2 weekends. She is the one that taught me how to use the machine. That included time to remove the seats, seperate the material, trace a pattern of the material and then sew them together. After that I had another 2 weekends into this putting them back together and they aren't even in the car yet. The problem is that the consumer machines are just not made to sew thru leather, foam, and muslin together. Then when you have to do 2 or 3 layers of it, forget it. If I had an industrial grade machine, it would have been much much faster and them maybe I would consider it. But truthfully if these seats don't hold up, I will be buying a kit. Not having the correct tools for the job means a lot of addtional headache when trying to sew this stuff together.

Some gotchas for this project. It will take 2 people to accomplish this task. Your material will be so thick that you will need someone on the other side of the machine to help guide the material out the other end. You could do it by yourself, but it makes it that much more difficult. I honestly think it was the foam that caused most of my headache. Maybe I should have gotten a 1/4 in foam instead of half. But then I wouldn't have as much definition on the lines in the seats though. Again, this would be made that much easier by having the industrial grade sewing machine.

If you are doing cloth, it may be easier.

 

[94stangfan]

Please don't mis-understand. I really like the way the seats came out. You can make them however you want. I am very proud of what I accomplished. I enjoyed doing it. I just think it takes a lot more time than I thought and wouldn't do it again because of the time commitment and not being able to drive the car during the process. I also don't like that it required me to rely on another person to do the outline pieces.

 

[RacEoHolic330]

Looks great! I'm looking forward to the finished product when they are all installed.

 

[94stangfan]

Here are some before pics... I am sure you can all figure out what they are. I will post some of the after shots when I start reassembly.

 

[old_blue]

they look awesome. For those of us wanting to do it ourselves, what book are you talking about? and what is muslin?

 

[NIKwoaC]

Looks great Keith, can't wait to see the finished job in person!