Upholstery

Seat portion of a Marina Blue 67' Camaro Seat.

The great thing about classic cars is the availability and affordability of after market and OEM parts, especially when it comes to interior components. However, just because you can order up new stuff doesn't mean you should give up on your originals.

One of the biggest changes you can make to your interior is upholstery. Not just your seats, but carpets, headliner, package tray and door panels too. These classic cars are loaded with different cloth and fibre based materials that can be easily replaced or restored. Sometimes it makes sense to refresh an old piece instead of dishing out hundreds for new ones. SEM Classic Coat Fabric and Vinyl spray was used to change the Marina Blue items (forget the carpet, it'll never work) to a classic black.

You have to take whatever item you want to spray out of the car. Unbolt the seats, remove the door panels and drop the headliner. The headliner on Turbo Camaro went through a similar process, in this article. Get them far away from your car as over spray is a nightmare.

Back portion of the seats, prepped and hanging.

Like any painting project, to ensure a quality result you must not skip the preparation. Vacuum out the seats and give them a good cleaning with a designated product line SEM Vinyl Prep. If your short on cash, Windex will work (just be sure you give it ample time to evaporate).

You can follow the directions on the Fabric/Vinyl Spray can, but consider using a finely abrasive pad on the cleaned material. Most auto stores stock 3M pads, get the finest one you can and give the item a rub down. Consider the rub a way of loosening the fibers or opening the pores. Be sure to do a test area as you'd hate to leave scuffs after all this work. Once this is done, give the item a final wipe down with your cleaner.

Get your piece into a position were you can spray the whole thing without having to stop and move it. It's alright if you have to move, but you don't want to be touching the piece at this point. You're skin grease can cause the spray to have a different

Seat portion of a 67' Camaro bench seat.

texture or just not stick. In the images shown here, the benches are on the ground and the backs of the buckets are hanging from the garage door rails. If you decide to hang anything, be very sure it's safe and secure.

Now spray them just like it says on the can, smooth light passes.Think of the first coat as a misting, second coat to obtain 70-80% coverage and a final coat (or two) to ensure full coverage. If done properly, you'll have a durable, flexible finish that looks like you spent hundreds on brand new upholstery. This is a great process and held up well for almost 5 years when the vinyl at the top of the bench seat started to crack. Unfortunately there's no spray to reverse old age. There was no way around new upholstery for the bench. Luckily the standard interior bench cover is cheap and a fairly simple design. A pair of hog ring pliers and a pile of hog rings from a local upholstery shop were the only tools required to replace the cover. You can find a ton of videos explaining how to replace seat upholstery and it's not too difficult on a bench seat.

Back portion of the same seats. 

Late 2015, it was decided the stock seats didn't offer the cushion or support desired in a daily driver. It probably had something to do with the 48 year old foam and springs in the original seats. Even though it would be easy to find new parts, the cost to bring it all into Canada outweighed the amount to buy brand new modern seats. Days were spent researching seat options and the black Scat Procar Rally 1000 Smoothback bucket seats were selected. The installation and initial review of those seats was filmed and posted here.







Turbo | Camaro