The seats had old vinyl covers from
Moss Motors Ltd. The
diaphragms were shot and plywood was installed. The frames were
broken and the seats were uncomfortable as a result.
I attempted to replace the diaphragms some years ago but was
unable to locate them so they were tolerated. Now most everything
is available.
After pricing leather covers, I bought from
Prestige Autotrim (in
England) and saved a
few U.S. $$$. The color scheme is a non-standard
biscuit leather seat with a
beige carpet and Moss honey tan panel set.
Samples of the Moss honey tan is a good match to Prestige's biscuit
leather. It seems that Prestige does not yet produce a panel set for
early MGB's.
I have much
respect for tradition but I am not a purist. Any modest
non-stock changes that can be reverted without compromising the
integrity of the car are fair game in my opinion. I know the
honey tan color scheme will wrinkle some eyebrows.
Here we have the seat components after frame repairs and
paint. The seat back foam needed some 1" foam
attached for a better
shape. Using an electric knife, I cut
an inverted U-shape
and beveled the edges to build up the sides
and top panel on the face of the seats. The stock foams are too
flat for my liking.
The arrow points to a weak area of the seat design. The
carpet is stitched to the piping at this point. The carpet
backing can rip away from the stitching as the components are
inserted. I glued some leather to the carpet panel back and
stitched to the seat panel piping. This was the most difficult
detail in this installation for this amateur upholsterer.
The
seats and covers installed.
The carpeting and
panels in place ready for final installation. Beneath all the
carpeting is felt and foil insulation except for the tunnel
which has felt only because the foil doesn't contour very
well.
Beneath the carpet the felt/foil insulation
is not glued to the floor. There are oversize holes in the
insulation to allow the carpet snaps to fasten to the floor
panels. This way the insulating material can be easily removed
if it is saturated with water. This lead to the rust on the
original floor pans.
The door panels
are installed but the door cappings will have to wait until I
hit the lottery...
The wheel arches
were difficult to lay out until I realized that the adhesive
helps to contour the carpeting. Start by squaring with the back
panel and fasten to the top of the wheel arch. Then evenly
contour and fasten to the rest of the arch. I trimmed, leaving
about an inch around the bottom then fastened the small L-shaped
piece that covers the hump. The red key is a battery shut off
switch.
The passenger
side foot well.
An interior shot,
almost complete...
I found some old
door caps...
The door caps are expensive to buy new. I
needed two in a non-standard color and was fortunate to get a
box full of old caps in various stages of decomposition on Ebay.
Gorilla glue is the answer to split rails. It is great stuff!
The large holes for the pad mounting nuts are weak and I glued
oversize washers inside to strengthen them. The flat head
machine screws holding the finishers were replaced by common
hardware stock with modern t-nuts with brads to fasten them. I
could not locate original t-nuts. Slight Dremel routing eased
the fit.
I was able to salvage
two pad rails intact with secure mounting studs. The other had
10 loose studs. The thin plywood backing rots before anything
else apparently. The plywood could be replaced and the studs are
available at Moss for the rear cockpit surround. That would make
this repair considerably more tedious to be sure.
Finally I have
original style door caps. I think they might even be worth the
ridiculous $400 I see in the catalogs. It takes some massaging
to revive these old sticks. Moss supplies extra upholstery and
piping with the panel kit for this purpose.
