Started my interior revamp.

[autobonrun]

One of my winter projects is to restore my interior. A big part of this is the seats but I'm still trying to decide which direction to take on them. In the meantime, I started on the other interior improvement items on my list with a goal of restoring (as much as is reasonable) the car to its 1979 look. The first was to improve the look of the carpet. I started by scrubbing the carpet with a combination of carpet cleaner and Oxi Clean. This got all the dirt and grease out. I knew the carpet had faded after 25 years but I did not realize by how much. I decided to dye the carpet and started by practicing on one of the floor mats. They may end up being replaced anyway. I verified that the new tint was close to the original carpet tint by comparing it to a section of carpet that had mostly remained covered and had faded very little. In the first photo, you can see the tinted floor mat is very close to the original color down at the bottom of the side carpet.




With some confidence built up in using the dye and confidence that the tint was correct, I decided to start on the carpet atop the rear seats. The second photo how faded the rear carpet had become.




The third photo shows how the carpet looks after one side had been dyed. I decided to just tape off the area around the carpet rather than trying to remove it.




I'll do the remaining carpet when I remove the seats. Hopefully this will happen within the next couple weeks. After the carpet, I plan to rewrap my steering wheel, fix my sagging side panels, add an aluminum dead pedal and possibly the other pedals as well, replace the sun visors, and add an aluminum "SC" door sill. I'll post a shot of the finished product when I'm done.

Anyway, back to work; still a few good hours left before I turn in.

[epbrown]

Looks good - it's amazing how much the original carpets faded!

Emanuel

[dickster]

superb results, what dye did you use?

[autobonrun]

Originally posted by dickster
superb results, what dye did you use?

Thanks. I bought the dye from Leather World. It only took about 3 days to receive. I bought 16 ounces to make sure I had enough, although 8 ounces will probably cover the entire car. I think it was around $21 per 8 oz bottle.

The salesman was confident that he could match the original color without a sample if I knew the factory name for my interior's color. I was doubtful, but he knew what he was talking about. The dye is a perfect match.

[dickster]

i agree, it looks like new in the pics.