Coming together-slowly
I thought I would document a little work from yesterday, to begin;
I used a sturdy but thin foam with a fabric backing to replace the deteriorated foam that was on the original black matting, I know from experience that you don't want to use anything too thick because little pieces in the strangest places will not fit correctly if you try to "improve" anything.
That foam is glued with spray glue to the matting.
Pic. 3 is the prep work for putting the rear side interior pieces in. I used a pretty thin plastic sheet as a moisture barrier held on with Wurth glue and put the felt back over the screw heads just below the wood. Again, it does not have to be OEM felt but it can't be too thick or you won't get the panel in under the wood.
Pic. 4 is the same thing on the other side. You can see I did add back the jute to replace the horse hair insulation and it did not interfere with the seat placement so while it may not be necessary it probably will help the sound a bit.
Pic. 5 As seen on TV! I sprayed the flex seal on the press board to seal and preserve- interesting fact, the sealer did a great job on the porous backing but after 6 months it was still tacky on the vinyl, so I guess the lesson here is that it needs something to soak in to to dry properly.
So next I put the panel in and it seems to fit pretty well. On a side note, I will be posting some carpet info and if you are going to replace the carpet properly all the panels should be out of the interior.
Next is the first piece of the carpet correctly installed, another note if doing the carpet is to line everything up without glue first, then spray the back of the carpet, let dry for 1 minute, spray the contact area in the interior, let dry 1 minute then put them together.
I am very lucky to have perfect carpet so it was professionally-whatever that means-cleaned and I am measuring, tracing, photographing and documenting every piece so that I can have a template and I'm also posting in a separate thread in case anyone wants to make a set, but as I mentioned earlier I may reproduce a couple of sets and see if they are received well here on the forum. As we all know, it's the carpet that is tough to find but we could find something close and the other option, if there are enough people interested is to find a small carpet mill and actually have it perfectly reproduced. Years ago I worked as production manager for a high-end Jacquard Loom company called Boris Kroll, we did stuff like that with fabric (think the incredibly ugly seats on all 70's and 80's Boeing planes), anyhow, the minimum run would probably be 100 yards, which would probably yield about 20 complete sets.
Finally, the rear seats are in, I used the recommended 2 step cleaning process from folks here on the forum, forgot the name of the product but they came out well enough, much better than the pictures show but the front seats had to be re-covered so still waiting for those. I don't plan on putting anyone in the back seat of this coupe so I hope the leather lasts-it is a bit distressed even though I treated the leather liberally.
The last picture is of the radio that I will have reconditioned by a shop down here- I'll let you know how that comes out
