Rapom's Rocket - just another Duster build thread
Been doing a bit of amateur upholstery work the last couple of days. The factory paint on my package tray panel was extremely sun baked and deteriorated. I sanded it down and tried three different black paints (gloss, satin and a fine textured semi flat) all of which looked like crap. The wife suggested we visit some local fabric stores to look for something to cover it with. I found a roll of headliner material in the clearance rack at one store which looked very promising. I went home to verify the 56" width of the roll would be wide enough (actually perfect) and went back the next day and bought a yard. I should have gotten the whole roll as it was marked down from the clearance price which came to roughly $9 a yard. I'm a total newb when it comes to working with upholstery so I reviewed some Youtube videos on how to repair headliners for some tips. The biggest takeaway I got from this was to take extreme care to protect the fabric side of the material from the spray adhesive. Boy were they right. It is so easy to get one little glob of that stuff on the fabric and it's ruined. I spent half of yesterday just doing this one panel. Nothing is difficult about the process but you have to slow yourself waaaayyyy down and ensure every step is checked and checked again before continuing. So this is what $9 worth of foam and a half can of spray adhesive I had laying around resulted in.
Pic 1 Start point: repainted panel
Pic 2 Cut out pattern, I bought enough material to be able to do it twice in case of a screw up.
Pic 3 Cleaned up bottom side of panel with factory felt. I used a razor blade to scrape down the old fiber board along the edges so the contact cement would have a clean surface to adhere to. I left the pattern about 1.25" wide on all sides so there would be plenty to wrap around the edges.
Pic 4 Done and looking fantastic. The metal trim pieces were repainted with Rustoleum fine textured black. It looks like factory and I think this is what I'm going to use as a finish around the wheel tubs and former back seat areas
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Been doing a bit of amateur upholstery work the last couple of days. The factory paint on my package tray panel was extremely sun baked and deteriorated. I sanded it down and tried three different black paints (gloss, satin and a fine textured semi flat) all of which looked like crap. The wife suggested we visit some local fabric stores to look for something to cover it with. I found a roll of headliner material in the clearance rack at one store which looked very promising. I went home to verify the 56" width of the roll would be wide enough (actually perfect) and went back the next day and bought a yard. I should have gotten the whole roll as it was marked down from the clearance price which came to roughly $9 a yard. I'm a total newb when it comes to working with upholstery so I reviewed some Youtube videos on how to repair headliners for some tips. The biggest takeaway I got from this was to take extreme care to protect the fabric side of the material from the spray adhesive. Boy were they right. It is so easy to get one little glob of that stuff on the fabric and it's ruined. I spent half of yesterday just doing this one panel. Nothing is difficult about the process but you have to slow yourself waaaayyyy down and ensure every step is checked and checked again before continuing. So this is what $9 worth of foam and a half can of spray adhesive I had laying around resulted in.
Pic 1 Start point: repainted panel
Pic 2 Cut out pattern, I bought enough material to be able to do it twice in case of a screw up.
Pic 3 Cleaned up bottom side of panel with factory felt. I used a razor blade to scrape down the old fiber board along the edges so the contact cement would have a clean surface to adhere to. I left the pattern about 1.25" wide on all sides so there would be plenty to wrap around the edges.
Pic 4 Done and looking fantastic. The metal trim pieces were repainted with Rustoleum fine textured black. It looks like factory and I think this is what I'm going to use as a finish around the wheel tubs and former back seat areas