Project Boondoggle (or, so I went and bought a Z!)

[charliekwin]

One seat back down, one to go!  Special thanks to @Hardway for his excellent writeup on installing these things; I referred to it a number of times.  I think the back actually was easier than the bottom.  A few hopefully helpful things I did in addition to Hardway's writeup:

• Glued the headrest foam to the seat back, which kept it from moving around.  I didn't glue the rest of the foam, but may try that for the second one.
• A plastic garbage back on the headrest lets the cover slide on very easily.  Cut across the top of it and the bag can slide out after  it's positioned.
• Plastic sheet on the rest of the seat made it pretty easy to slide the cover all the way down.  Not really needed on the front face, though.

Quite a tight fit when it's all said and done.  There's a little more strain on left tangs than I'd like, so I hope things stretch out and relax a bit over time.  

[charliekwin]

Knocked out the seats and the headliner over the last week!  I'm really, really happy with the way the seats came out.  I ended up not pulling the cover all the way down on the reclining mechanism side.  That meant I didn't have to cut anything, and I figure if something comes loose, I can always go back and pull it down.  Everything got a coat of black, including all the bolts, and the seats look better than new -- not bad for my first upholstery job.  Only blemish is the missing mechanism cover.  I may try to mold something at some point.

And the headliner, for all I was dreading it, actually turned out to be not that bad.  I made my own from perforated headliner fabric that I backed up with 1/4" foam.  I was too busy running around to take pictures during installation.  But what I did was masked off an 8" strip down the middle of the headliner from front to back and the matching strip on the roof, then sprayed with contact cement.  The middle of the headliner was marked with tape, that I used to center it in the car.  Applied the headliner from the middle out, stretching any wrinkles along the way.  Then I just let the edges hang down, sprayed glue on the headliner and roof on the passenger side and continued working towards the edges.  A panel removal tool tucked everything under the edges.  Repeated the process on the driver side.  Sweaty and uncomfortable work, sure, but nothing that's going on my Never Again List.

Tomorrow, seats go back in!

[Captain Obvious]

Looks great, but now you've gone and done it... Now you have to do something about those ugly asss sun visors.

They probably looked just fine before you did the headliner, but now they don't look fine anymore! 

[charliekwin]

They're onions, Cap! The flash made them look worse than they actually are, but yes, they're pretty shabby. I think they're "real" sun visors - not something a PO pieced together - which doesn't speak highly of the quality of those things. I'm not sure if restoring is a good option. They might just be something that's better to remake from scratch.

[Captain Obvious]

Onions. I understand completely.

I don't have pics, but I have seen the visor with it's skin off. IIRC, it's just a wire frame outline with a vinyl skin heat sealed around it. Should be pretty easy for someone of your skill to recover. I think if I were taking on the project, I would try to come up with a way to fill in the wire frame center with a piece of some kind of rigid sheet. Thin wood? Sheet metal? Something.

[charliekwin]

Slowly but surely the interior is getting pieced back together.  The seats are back in and look pretty great, but I do miss having the extra headroom that I used to have!  At about 6'2", things are a little more cramped than they used to be.  I hope the new foam settles in over the next few months and I can get maybe an inch back.

I got the remaining quarter window trim and the overhead trim covered and reinstalled, so the back half of the car is almost done now.  The overhead piece sags a bit on the edges, partly because of the vinyl wrapped around the underside, but I don't know if it bothers me enough yet to pull it out.  It looks good from the inside, though.

Yesterday's little project: the dome light lens has totally fallen apart over the years.  I had some acrylic sheet left over from an old project (mild hoarding proclivities pay off yet again!), so I cut that to fit housing, then roughed it up with sandpaper.  The push switch doesn't work anymore, but that switch wasn't working anyway, so no functionality is lost there.

[sweatybetty]

where did you get the carpet?

[charliekwin]

Rock Auto: http://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=5997639&cc=1209260&jnid=412&jpid=5

As best as I could tell, ACC is making the kit that all the vendors out there are selling, so if you want molded it makes sense to buy on price.

[Dave WM]

I have a seat foam kit as well. 6'3" here, so after reading your post about lost cabin ceiling clearance I was wondering if you think it would make since to slice off 1" from the bottom of the foam before doing the install? I have a hot wire foam cutter but not sure how it would work on this foam, I used it for cutting Styrofoam for wing cores on model airplanes.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Dave WM

[charliekwin]

It might be worth a shot.  The biggest potential problem I could see would be an odd fit of the cover...there might be some slack on the sides when cinching it down.  Of course, if it doesn't work you could just glue the slice back on with a bit of contact cement.

[Dave WM]

2 hours ago, charliekwin said:

It might be worth a shot.  The biggest potential problem I could see would be an odd fit of the cover...there might be some slack on the sides when cinching it down.  Of course, if it doesn't work you could just glue the slice back on with a bit of contact cement.

good point about being able to glue back. From the look of the pics, the bottom looks to be really tight on the sides so I was thinking it would not hurt to remove some foam there. I can tack glue some guides the sides and pull a very neat cut with the foam cutter.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Dave WM

[charliekwin]

I'm not sure what year you have, but if you have a later one like mine, you'll also want to make sure the corners of the cover don't get in the way of mounting the seat rails.  I believe the earlier years have a different style where it isn't a concern.  I did hog ring the front of the seats but didn't do the sides.  If you cut the foam down, that might be something to look at doing to tighten things up.