I did a "budget" restoration on my interior over the past few weeks. Using what I learned on here and some elbow grease I cleaned the old girl up some.

Headliner before:


Headliner after:


Interior before (not the best shots but the plastic was chalky and faded).




During (had to drive it like this for a couple of weeks):


After:




I spent about $65 and 6 hours of my time to get it cleaned up. It is not a good as many of the restorations on this site but considering I started with a $600 truck it does not look too bad. I removed and sanded all of the interior plastic down and painted it all with SEM interior paint. Overall it was a fairly easy project, just took time. I had to drive the truck for a couple of weeks with the interior in various stages of disassembly as it is my daily driver.

Supplies:
2 cans of SEM "Camel" - $20.00 (Eastwood, free shipping)
Headliner Kit - $40.00 (Stockinteriors.com, includes shipping)
Drivers side "B" pillar trim panel - $5.00 (JY, mine was oxidized to the point when I sanded it down I poked holes through it)

I still need to get an armrest and visor for the driver's side but I found a new JY that has 20+ Bullnose trucks ripe for the picking.

 

nice work!

 

She looks really great, ebodell - good job ! Your headliner looks new to me, and I love the tan-brown colors of your truck. Also looks like really pretty country you live in!

 

hey ebodell, how did you get your sun visors to stay up when straight across like that?

 

Thanks for the comments Galendor and Smashclash,
As for the sunvisors; in all reality only my passenger side one stays up and straight. The spring in the driver's side visor is worn out so it "flops" down. For the "after" picture I cheated and moved it out of the way so you could not see it. In the "before" picture there were a couple of sheet metal tabs that the P.O. had installed to keep the visors up. A visor and armrest are on my list for the next JY trip.
We live outside of town on a few acres. It is kind of nice not having to deal with the in-town regulations regarding number of vehicles and having them running and registered and such. We have a neighbor across the road and that is about it. Our other neighbors are of the four legged variety (cattle) and they do not complain much. I only have to answer to the wife on the number of trucks I park on the property and I have a couple of friends with farms that I can "stash" vehicles at if the better half starts to question me (not that I would stoop to that level).

 

Wow great job! I love seing these old trucks with nice clean interiors!

 

Looks Good!

 

Looks great! Its amazing what a little paint and some time can do.

My 82 is in a similar state that yours was. My headliner is gone, visors are floppy, and my door panels are sun rotted on top so I can't even paint them up. Hoping the wife commander will let my buy some new door panels soon

 

Nice work! Map pockets look nice and snug. I ended up 'tightening' them up by folding the elastic band over itself behind the pocket. As far as the door handle, short of buying a replacment, I removed the metal support / foam from an old one. Used it to trace a pattern in a block of wood, put some foam on top of it. Put it back in the the handle shell and reinstalled. Visors - you can go w/ the 87-91 style that use a center clip on each side of the rear view mirror.

 

You'll have to make two holes per clip since the 80-86 trucks didn't come with them stock. I didn't have a drill so I broke off the little alignment tabs, and I used a nail and a hammer to start a hole for the mounting screws...lol it worked, but it wasn't the proper way.

 

Looks good.

Couple of questions. Did you sand the grain out of the pieces that you sanded?(close up pics?)

What did you do with the map pockets? Paint those too?

Like said above^^ you can use 87-97 visors and their center clips to fix the sagging visor issue. I did that in my 86

 

"Camel"--so that's what that color is called. I love the improvement in your interior, especially the headliner. I think someone got tired of the one in mine and just removed it; I have bare painted metal. Someone put in a cloth dashcover to cover the cracked dash. The doorpanels, however, could use the treatment you did. Thanks for publishing this. Maybe mine will only cost $40 and 4 hours of work!

 

Very nice work! Someday I'll get to the interior on mine, and this is good reference. Thanks for the pics.

 

No that's what SEM calls it.

Ford called the original color that his truck was, in 1985 Desert Tan.

 

Looks great. I need to do mine some day but I have saying that for 10 years now.

Craig