You can't take too many pictures!

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I can't believe I didn't take more pictures of the interior before I  ripped it all out. For some reason I have tons of them with no upholstery in the car, but only 2 from before.  Fortunately there are a number of people that have restoration websites that have taken lots of pictures of their finished product.

This week I have been working on the upholstered panels. I bought some foam from the upholstery shop just around the corner and set about covering panels. Fortunately the old vinyl, though severely faded, made for some good patterns to cut the new stuff. The foam padding I got was slightly thicker than what was used before but I like it, it seems to make it look more plush or something.  I'll get it all finished once I get the rest of the vinyl.

Here I'm working on the door panels and quarter panels

 I got the materials, carpet, vinyl, moquette, headliner, wool & leather from BAS Jaguar Interiors.  They came highly recommended and I am very pleased with the quality of the materials.  Unfortunately, I didn't order enough vinyl to cover everything I need to. Maybe, at the time, I was thinking that I wouldn't recover everything, since a lot of it was in pretty good shape.  Of course, as I've said before, I never really expected to be doing a "full blown" restoration.  Nonetheless, I have now ordered some more vinyl.  I sent a swatch off to BAS to have them match the dye lot as close as possible.


 I have never done any upholstery work in my life, I'm mostly a wrench turner. Working on the various flat panels has given me a little confidence.  I made a few minor mistakes on the instrument panel vinyl earlier, nothing I can't fix, but you live and learn.  This panel is from right behind the seats in an area they call "storage".  Ha!  Anyway, I stripped it, cleaned off all the glue and rust and painted it with Hammerite

If you ever need to remove a lot of glue, especially contact cement, this 3M General Purpose Adhesive Remover #08984 is the absolute best thing I have ever run across.  You should be able to get it at any automotive paint store. It doesn't smell, it doesn't affect a car finish at all and it doesn't leave any kind of a residue that I can detect. Not only that, it works spectacularly.

I started taking the door handles apart and discovered that some more red vinyl had been covered.  I guess this car really was red at some point in its life. The foam padding was totally disintegrated.  I'll have to shape something and pad it.

In other news... We picked Stuart's Stag from the media blaster. It's all primed and ready for a lot of body work.  Stuart, if you don't know is from Scotland and is over here on a visa that is good for only 6 months at a time.  His 6 months was up 4 days ago so he took off for Scotland and won't be back until sometime in January..  Maybe I'll work on it a little while he's gone. I have become pretty good with body filler and sand paper. ( ha ha ha  Don't hold your breath Stuart!!)
Also, Rodney's MGB is in the garage.  He and I took the carbs off and he is having Mike Darby rebuild them, new shafts and all. We'll probably get that back together sometime next week.  (No rush Mike)

I'm hoping to attempt to put in the headliner this weekend.  I have talked the guy from the local upholstery shop into stopping by and supervising.  We'll see if that comes to pass.  I'll keep ya posted.