Still working away with things and had a better look at all of the original interior upholstery today to see what can be saved. We are confident that the rear covers can be saved and we pulled them off the frames today so I can start deep cleaning the vinyl. Once scrubbed down, they will head off to the dry cleaners to see how the fabric cleans up. From there, my upholsterer will sew new piping onto the patterns to bring them around.
The rear covers are filthy, but they really look like they will clean up.
Once the vinyl is clean, the covers will go to the dry cleaners.
The frames will be stripped down and soaked in evapo-rust to restore them before rebuilding them.
We can probably save the front vinyl too...but the drivers seat will require a couple of custom made repair panels and likely a little dye work to make it all match up once the covers are deep cleaned. I am in need of houndstooth fabric for the centers and need to flip some stones to see if I can find a set of original rear covers to graft some original cloth from
(anyone know of a set or original rear seat covers???). The rear patterns should fit the bucket inserts so I am really hoping someone has kept an old set of rear covers that I can purchase?
If that fails then new fabric will be used for the centers and the vinyl will then be rebuilt as mentioned above. Also found a couple used seat backs that will dye up nicely to match the yellow vinyl after its all cleaned and restored.
If I can find another set of rear covers, the material can graft into these buckets???
These frames will also be cleaned up once the covers are off to be worked on! Someone has already done some clean up on the slides. I'll make them better!
Found these rear seat backs in the upholsterers pile of spare parts. These will dye rather nicely and should be easily matched up.
Once all the tedious work is done, these will head over to Chad at Fibrenew. He's a vinyl repair master craftsman who can patch and dye just about anything.