Attwater's Interior Retrofit with pics!!!

[attwater]

Well after all of the work on the outside of the car, the interior became unbearable. 13 years of peoples *ss-sweat is not fun to sit on. The carpet was stained terribly, the seats were developing large wear holes, the glue down fabric was all bunched up, the smell was something like a locker room, etc... It took me some time to draw up the designs for the interior. Upon completetion I brought them to the upholstery shop and got a nice surprise. The owner of the shop laughed when he saw the car. Apparently these 240's are known to the upholstery community as they were some of the poorest interiors ever to come out of a factory. The seats are cheap with no structure, the fabric is cr*p and glued down, and so on. When these cars were new, the owner of the shop went under contract with most every dealership in IL and did somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 240SXs for them (along with a few verts). Alas, he knew the car well and people in the shop were happy to see it. (Point of interest, he mentioned a trailer in the back with hundreds of unused original 240sx seat fabrics that had been stripped off and have been sitting there locked up for the last decade - in case anyone is looking...)

Anyhow:- all side upholstery and seats were done in leather- I added a stitch pattern to the seats - the seats were stripped to frame and re-padded/foamed to be nice and supportive (I chose to keep them, they had potential... and yes, it was possible to make good seats out of them)- the side bolsters were built out (note: we were going to add shoulder bolsters but scrapped the idea at the end due to time constraints, summer gets busy, it can be done though)- 3-way carbon-fiber seat heaters were placed all throughout both front seats (the fiance is very pleased)- carpet was replaced (the molded carpet kits on the market really don't fit well on the verts. I know some of you have done it, but he has never been happy with it. So, he ended up custom making the carpet. Yep, the shop was fantastic!)- I gave the back seat the waterfall effect- I've had the aluminum dash kit in there for awhile, I'm still happy with it - The floor mats were custom made from an internet company. They are crazy shaped to actually fit our goofy floorpans. Worthwhile purchase.

Pics momentarily.


Modified by attwater at 11:28 AM 8/21/2006

[attwater]

I took these shortly after leaving the shop. The leather has since had a chance to bake in the sun and completely smooth out. I've also since cleaned all of the shop dust out of there.

[attwater]

The red leather actually matches the paint perfectly.

[attwater]

I prefer to work on the car myself, but I have no idea how to upholster. Fortunately, the owner of the shop was willing to let me hang out and have my say with the details the interior. Good learning experience...



Modified by attwater at 8:29 AM 8/17/2006
Modified by attwater at 9:10 AM 8/21/2006

[attwater]

and here's the car. Bomex kit is still sitting in the garage. Next summer... interior took precedence.


Modified by attwater at 9:55 AM 8/17/2006

[mossking]

Wow, home run.

[Eikon]

Wow buddy!!! That turned out fantastic! Spectacular!

So, can I ask the question that I'm sure most of us are wondering...??

How much did you lay out for all this work? Whatever it was.. sure was worth it. Man it must feel like a brand new car.

Awesome Awesome car!!!

[attwater]

Sorry, I'll fix the pictures in a little while. Need to get some work done in the office this morning.Thank you for the comments! ...makes it all worthwhile. I figured the money question would come up. In the end, the basics wese in the ballpark of 2K. Yeah that's a few bucks for something that doesn't help speed, but I've always wanted to make this into the car that Nissan should have built. I try to make things look clean and natural as if the car came out of the factory that way. Everyone has different goals and a different outlook. That is mine. Best of all, the car feels and SMELLS brand new! Furthermore, all the new padding got rid of all the old-car sqeaks and road noise. I had completely stopped putting the top down due to ugly interior. Now, finally, it is top down every day.
Modified by attwater at 9:11 AM 8/21/2006

[KA-Te]

Looks so niceeee! Love the red & black appeal.

Also, is your rear window tinted? Is that even plastic?! It looks so clean!

[attwater]

Thanks! Yep, the rear window is the charcoal black window. The tinted plastic stays much cleaner looking. I also use Plexus on it pretty regularly. The guy that helped put the new top and window on, really knew what he was doing.

[Eikon]

I fixed the links for you. Your a busy guy!All I did was go to the gallery, then right click on the picture, then click on properties... then copy the url. Then go back to the original post and click edit. In the edit screen, simply click the little yellow mountain picture to insert img tags... then paste the url in between them. Voila!

Anyhow... very much worth it! That is the nicest S13 interior I can remember seeing. You should post in 240sx general as well to show it off.

[AZhitman]

attwater, that looks FANTASTIC!

I hope you're not upset when I do mine identical - That's the idea I had in mind for some time, and since my car's theme is now red/black, I now see it'll look great.

I'm VERY curious as to how they got the material to work on the door panel inserts. There are some compound curves in there that don't seem to take upholstery well.

Any chance I could get some pics of those up close, especially the edges?

Again, GORGEOUS vert brotha.

[attwater]

Thanks AZ! Yeah, go for it. Maybe we can tweak the design a bit and come up with some unique touches for yours. I'll shoot some close up pics in the next day or so.

...and thanks for fixing that Eikon! I'll post that way from now on.

[mossking]

So what did that cost you?

How much did you do yourself.

Wow.

[slip69]

that is ****ing nice !!!!!!!!im in the same boat as azhitman, i was thinking of doing the same interior but without the red on the seats. i hope you dont mind or think i wan't to steal your idea??? again , that is freaking nice!!!!!!

[nissanconvert]

W O W !I wish I had the money, my moldy gray tweed just doesn't have the same effectOut of curiosity, is the carpet color black or charcol? I know when the time comes i don't want to get gray again but there are a lot of dark carpet colors available and its hard to know what they look like installed. I like shade in your car!

[attwater]

Feel free to borrow ideas. Our verts deserve to look good with the top down. The carpet is a dark charcoal. The plastic in the interior isn't a true black, so it was determined that black carpet wouldn't be the optimal choice. Ask for larger samples before you choose your color. The charcoal was almost indistinguishable from some of the other colors while looking at the little tiny samples. We ordered bigger samples and the colors were much easier to differentiate.

[dahandyman22]

Very nice my man! I did something silmilar with mine but not nearly as nice, but if someone wants to clean up their interior this is an alternative that will run you under $100 total.

[GoinTopless240]

Awesome interior!... Clean and it pops just enough to say LOOK AT ME... I know the wooes of bad seats and carpets.. living it now, but looking for similar look (except blue and black).. Kudos to you man on a job well done..

[Glyph]

OMG, that's beautiful. I just finished the door pillar mod and replaced my old panels with ones I picked up at the local junkyard. Since the material parts were totally worn I cut them out to replace the material. I ended up going with a red vinyl (fake leather) to match my exterior as well. Being done by an amateur (me) they didn't come out quite as nice as yours. On the other hand, it cost considerably less lol. I'll be posting pics soon even though it'll probably anticlimatic now that you've posted yours. Again, props to you and the shop that did it. She's a beauty. -Glyph

[adrianfromthecastle]

dam son!!! your interior looks good... showroom quality. i'm loving the color scheme. so... umm... wanna do mines?