Would like your opinions on upholstery,kits vs. shop done?? I am building a driver so great is not what i need. What have you done?

 

Lots of times in our shop, we get people who get a late model "take out" seat or seats. And build an interior around it. You can get plastic to make your door panels out of and cover them yourself, and do your carpet too. You can get a repro headliner or an ABS moulded headliner (NICE) and have a real decent daily driver. This is of course kind of over simplified, but for a driver, you get the picture.

I hope this helps. Feel free to P.M. me for more.

 

I built mine as a driver too, and I did my interior myself, with the help of my old man.

The door and kick panels are cut from 1/8" ABS, covered with foam, and upholstered with vinyl & tweed. The headliner is the basically the same, but i bought the abs headliner from roddoors. I recovered the seat with a pre-sewn cover from mid fifty. I also bought foam from them, but if I did it again I'd probably buy foam from a local upholstery shop and built it up/shape it more to my desire. I bought all my fabric from mid fifty so that it'd match.

I bought the carpet from an online place as a 'hot rod' kit. It's not shaped or pre-cut to my truck at all. I chose that kit since i wanted to carpet all the way back underneath the seat and also up the firewall, which none of the kits sold for a '55 offered.

You can see pictures of my interior in my galleries.

 

If you plan on keeping the truck and want to have it make a statement that this is my truck and I'm proud of it I would go for a custom interior. You can do it yourself and have good results with all the materials out there to accomplish the project. It is all in your imagination. I do interiors for a living and when I go to shows I am amazed at how consistantly owners tend to the mechanics, wheels and tires, and paint but don't really do much with the interior. There are plenty of suppliers out there that provide what I refer to as cooky cutter interiors. Don't get me wrong, some of them are well thought out and look nice when done but to me when you put your creative mind to the challenge and the project is complete there is nothing more awsome. Good luck

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