finishing up my 70 Dart GT interior
When we decided to paint our our long haul 1970 Dart GT cruiser plum crazy, that left us with a conundrum regarding interior color. The original green was sure out. In factory colors that left white (too hard to keep clean) and 2 more two tone factory colors (brown, blue) which wouln't go well with purple either. This left the final factory color which was black and we couldn't see ourselves cruising through the Desert Southwest or Southern California in August with an all black interior. This led me to Legendary Interior's custom seat part of their web site. You can pick any factory configuration of seat and play with various colors and the program simulates the seats for you. Since Legendary actually presses your chosen material grain into the vinyl, you can use grains in colors that were never factory offered and end up with materials that are made of vinyl with the color all the way through instead of dyed material that will wear through. You can pick any color material you want as long as it is an original color of material offered on something. We decided we wanted to keep the original grains of the factory high trim bucket seat interior for the GT package (A65) which were Coachman sides with Derma inserts. We started with the factory black seat and then changed all the Derma inserts to light metallic silver. The original 2 tone interiors were dark colored Coachman sides with light metallic inserts of the same color in Derma. A friend had some seats custom covered years ago and specified lighter piping at the seams so we tried that out in the program and liked it. The original high trim door panels (available only on Dart Customs and GTs) I knew were available because we supplied the patterns for them when we replaced the door panels on our Dart Custom several years ago so we mocked up a set in light silver metallic using Coachman grain material like originals. The custom color/grain added 25% to the interior cost above factory colors which I was able to offset with an end of the year 25% off sale! We stuck with a factory black dash, upper door and quarter trim paint, headliner (nobody made a grey one), console and trim. We found charcoal grey carpet from Factory Auto Carpet including the console carpet.
Since we were going to be driving this car for many hours a day and my hearing is already the victim of too much chainsaw operation and rock and roll music from the days when nobody heard of ear protection and I thought I would never live to see 40, we decided to really do the job when it comes to sound/heat insulation. We went with Dynamat products of various flavors, using stick on stuff for overhead surfaces (under the headliner and the inside of the cowl) and vertical surfaces (inside of doors and quarters). We used Dynapad (thick non-stick stuff) for the floors all the way up the firewall (held in place with the stripped off hardboards from factory firewall insulation). This way the areas where future work might require welding won't have me trying to pry off the stick on stuff.
Before work got started I stripped all of the interior shell and painted it with epoxy primer and Plum Crazy single stage paint from 66 Auto Color. These cans have an separate interior cartridge of hardeners which you mix into the paint before use. I used this on the entire interior shell, the trunk and the engine compartment before sending the shell off to the paint shop. The materials ain't cheap, but it saved me a bunch over having the body shop do all that.
So here are pics from start to finish (requires multiple posts)
:
Interior stripping and painting
When we decided to paint our our long haul 1970 Dart GT cruiser plum crazy, that left us with a conundrum regarding interior color. The original green was sure out. In factory colors that left white (too hard to keep clean) and 2 more two tone factory colors (brown, blue) which wouln't go well with purple either. This left the final factory color which was black and we couldn't see ourselves cruising through the Desert Southwest or Southern California in August with an all black interior. This led me to Legendary Interior's custom seat part of their web site. You can pick any factory configuration of seat and play with various colors and the program simulates the seats for you. Since Legendary actually presses your chosen material grain into the vinyl, you can use grains in colors that were never factory offered and end up with materials that are made of vinyl with the color all the way through instead of dyed material that will wear through. You can pick any color material you want as long as it is an original color of material offered on something. We decided we wanted to keep the original grains of the factory high trim bucket seat interior for the GT package (A65) which were Coachman sides with Derma inserts. We started with the factory black seat and then changed all the Derma inserts to light metallic silver. The original 2 tone interiors were dark colored Coachman sides with light metallic inserts of the same color in Derma. A friend had some seats custom covered years ago and specified lighter piping at the seams so we tried that out in the program and liked it. The original high trim door panels (available only on Dart Customs and GTs) I knew were available because we supplied the patterns for them when we replaced the door panels on our Dart Custom several years ago so we mocked up a set in light silver metallic using Coachman grain material like originals. The custom color/grain added 25% to the interior cost above factory colors which I was able to offset with an end of the year 25% off sale! We stuck with a factory black dash, upper door and quarter trim paint, headliner (nobody made a grey one), console and trim. We found charcoal grey carpet from Factory Auto Carpet including the console carpet.
Since we were going to be driving this car for many hours a day and my hearing is already the victim of too much chainsaw operation and rock and roll music from the days when nobody heard of ear protection and I thought I would never live to see 40, we decided to really do the job when it comes to sound/heat insulation. We went with Dynamat products of various flavors, using stick on stuff for overhead surfaces (under the headliner and the inside of the cowl) and vertical surfaces (inside of doors and quarters). We used Dynapad (thick non-stick stuff) for the floors all the way up the firewall (held in place with the stripped off hardboards from factory firewall insulation). This way the areas where future work might require welding won't have me trying to pry off the stick on stuff.
Before work got started I stripped all of the interior shell and painted it with epoxy primer and Plum Crazy single stage paint from 66 Auto Color. These cans have an separate interior cartridge of hardeners which you mix into the paint before use. I used this on the entire interior shell, the trunk and the engine compartment before sending the shell off to the paint shop. The materials ain't cheap, but it saved me a bunch over having the body shop do all that.
So here are pics from start to finish (requires multiple posts)
Interior stripping and painting