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Midnight_Raven's Build

Just received my roll of black alcantara from Jeff@Carbon6. Never felt alcantara before and I must say it's very nice. Doesn't feel as rough as some suede that I've felt in the past. Either way I started working on the long rear panel today. First attempt was bad. I tried to glue the fabric and foam together and then apply the precut fabric/foam piece to the panel. When I did that the fabric would crease wherever the foam would naturally crease. It looked bad so I scrapped that setup. The second attempt I decided I was just going to glue the foam to the panel and then the fabric to the foam/panel piece. Worked much better and the creases are now hidden/gone.

Here's the picture of the first complete panel. (Hard to see detail since it's black but take my word it looks smooth)




:)

Very happy with the outcome and can't wait to start doing the other pieces. Will also start sewing test pieces tonight to see if the color combo of the stitch and fabric is something that I want. I'll update with more to come as the project progresses.
 
Looking very nice. Curious how the color matched your steering wheel.
 
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Thanks Jeff. It's actually very close match. The steering wheel is a slightly darker black than the one you sold me but it's close enough you can't tell if you didn't have them side by side comparing. Here is a quick picture I took to show you guys.

First picture is with fabric pushed one way (looks darker this way). Second is opposite direction and what looks similar to the alcantara shade of black.




- - - Updated - - -

My last update for the night. I started sewing test samples trying to figure out how to best make the seams and to use this new sewing machine I bought just for this project.

First couple of attempts lead me to this result... not pretty and looked bad.




After figuring out how to properly set up the tensioner on the sewing machine and practicing a little I ended up with my perfect sample for the interior. I can't wait to do the rest :D




Color of thread is Nickel Silver. Has a nice shine to it.
 
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Update. So far I've done 4 of the 6 rear panels on the car. The last two are the hardest. I tried sewing together some fabric in the shape of the panel because it's impossible to do it in one piece. I think I'm going to leave that for a little later and work on the center arm rest compartment panels. Those are simple and easy to do.

I laid everything down how it should be going together and it's looking good so far.




Update 2:
I finished making the panels for the center arm rest compartment. Came out good and liking the look so far.


Here how it looks with the rest of the stuff.



Now I'm contemplating something. I would prefer to have anything that gets regular usage to be made of leather on the car (only exception would be the steering wheel because racecar :p), So I thought why not leave those weird panels as leather. Additionally I would leave the glove box in leather, the arm rest cover in leather, the arm rest for the doors in leather and the knee bolster in leather as well. What do you guys think? Would it be strange to have leather and alcantara mixed in the interior? If I do it that way I would end up only having to do the doors and the dash and that would be it.
 
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Made some more progress today. I took the passenger side door off this morning and started taking it apart. This afternoon into this evening I've been working on creating exact templates of the lower half leather used on the door and sewing them together. Here are the pics so far.

Pictures of decorative stitching.


Preview of how the door will look so far



Tomorrow I plan to do the top half of the door and then start putting it all together. Hopefully I don't screw up and it comes out perfect. :)
 
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Hey Bzyrice,

I don't know what you mean by the bottom half of the dash? Do you mean the strip of fabric between the carpet and the top fabric section of the dash?

Last update for 2013 :)

I am about 95% done with the passenger side door. I did mess up I think on one thing, which I'm going to have to account for with the dash. I might of offset the bottom section of the door panel by about 1/8" too high. I don't think the decorative stitching on the door and the dash will line up anymore because of my mistake. I'll test it out another day but if not I'll just modify the dash stitching so it gets close enough.

Below is some pics I snapped while in the process of working on the door today.

Yesterday I mentioned I needed to make the templates for the top section of the door. I used some pin things to hold the two fabrics together and a sharpie to trace it out.


When I finished stitching the top piece I put them together to test it out to give me a preview of the end result.


Below is the door panel partially assembled. I'm waiting for the glue to dry before I start to cut opening for the the speaker cover, lights, vents, etc. I also need to buy myself some 4mm staples to give it the final bit of fastening that it needs. It's coming together.



In the end the wrinkled leather panels will be silver alcantara to complement the silver stitching.

Either way I'm done for the day so I guess have a Happy New Year guys!
 
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Update:

After dealing with my winter car that wouldn't start, I bought myself a stapler and 6mm staples to finish securing the fabric to the door. I then reassembled everything back to the door. Liking the look so far. :)



Here is a picture of a regular panel to compare. As you can see there are some differences which I think account for the fact that I'm am amateur at this but I guess if I follow the same process for the driver side door it should all work out either way.
57342783.jpg


Now it's time to go and take the drive side door off.
 
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Completed door #2. Started on it last night and completed it at 6:30PM today.

Now that I've done this I can see why it cost so much to do these. It takes some time to do each piece. My stuff is not perfect since there are certain faults I made which I didn't fix. Overall I'm happy with it though since I'm okay with the small errors.

Final pictures of doors assembled and ready to install.



So now I need to wait. I ran out of black alcantara and Jeff is still waiting for more material from his source so for now I probably have a two week break until I start to work on the final part the dash! Next update will be in a couple of weeks.

Update 2:
I installed the door panels into the car to see how it would look and how well the stitching lines up to the dash. Driver side lines up perfectly with the dash the passenger side like I guessed sits a little offset but nothing that I don't think I can fix when I do the dash. Can't wait to finish the interior :)



 
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Thanks guys. So far everyone that has seen it has said it looks good so I think I must of did something right :). Actually my garage isn't heated hence the glove in my last pic lol.

So a semi-update. Last week I ordered some "chic grey" alcantara which I would use for the door inserts and center cushions on the bucket seats when I get them later down the road. At first when I compared the threads to the fabric I was like "Oh NO!" the grey of the fabric is quite a bit darker than the silver of the thread. So I decided to go down to my car and look at it when it's next to stitched threading on black alcantara. Maybe the spacing of single threads would look better than a solid spool of silver thread. Indeed it does. I took some pictures to show.

You can see it looks very different here.


In the car it looks like a good match when compared to stitched threading.


So now I have a dilemma. Should I wait until I get my bucket seats and do the door inserts and seat at the same time or do I do the door inserts now and the seats later? It might look out of place with only the door inserts done. It could still work because of the stitching though. What do you guys think?

Update:
Considering that the headliner and pillars are also grey and the stitching is grey I think there is enough grey in the interior to go ahead and swap the grey alcantara onto the door inserts, without it looking out of place. I'll start working on those tomorrow or this weekend.
 
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I went ahead and did the change. Looks pretty good. It's not the exact same grey as the A-pillars but it matches the stitching better so I'm happy with it.

Here's my initial assembly.


Mounted on the door.


Door closed shot.


I will do the passenger side door tomorrow.
 
I'm using some headline adhesive I picked up at Joanns. It's this stuff.
sc-Headliner.jpg


I just finished doing the passenger side door. One thing I noticed is it looks more blue than grey when inside my garage.

Update:
I drove the car today, considering it's so nice out in New England today. Now that I've seen the interior under full sunlight I really like the choices I made. Looks good and I can't wait to finish the dash. :) Hopefully weather stays warm so I can drive my car more often.

Here are the pictures of the interior so far.



Pictures showing the grey without flash. Not as bluish looking.
 
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Update:
I took the dash out today since I've received my new roll of black alcantara from Jeff.

I snapped a pic of my interior without the seats. What do you guys think of the leather/vinyl peice. Do you think I should just have that in alcantara as well?


Here is how the interior looks now.


I discovered a crack in the dashboard material so tomorrow will probably be just dedicated to bonding the pieces together and then sunday I'll probably start ripping the fabric off the dash to start making my alcantara templates. Hopefully I'll be done by the end of next week.
 
Well I guess I'm about to run out of bandwidth for this month so any pics I post/posted will not be viewable anymore until January 31st. I guess I'll just create an update stating how the progress is going.

I just finished about 10min ago stitching up the dashboard fabric. Tomorrow I'll try to start gluing/stapling the fabric to the dashboard. This is the tricky part considering the cluster piece is separate from the dash so I think I need to do the cluster fabric first then glue/staple the rest to the dash afterwards to get it to fit correctly.

Additionally I purchased a new defroster panel and to my amazement I think I cracked it just taking it out of the box.... I guess I'm going to have to try to strengthen/glue it with epoxy it before it completely splits apart and hopefully it'll hold it self better than the plastic it's made of while I install it.

I guess I have a favor to ask. Could you guys make 4 more post after this to start a new page. Maybe that way when next month hits my bandwidth usage won't be so quick because it won't be loading all the pictures I posted in page 7 when people go to see the latest update.
 
Okay so I decided to use my flickr account temporarily to upload some pics. Usually I only use it to show nice pictures but since I'm out of bandwidth on photobucket I'll just do this instead.

So I finished gluing and stapling the majority of the dash together. I ran out of glue towards the end so the project is on hold. It's almost done though.

Looking at it there are some wrinkles which I have no clue how to get rid of but I minimized it to the point that it's not too bad. It's not perfect but I think it's good enough. I just hope the decorative stitching lines up with the door's decorative stitching... I tried to get it where I think it will line up but you never know. Another thing that is strange but it appears my glove box is crooked. With the decorative stitching contrast it makes it obvious something is weird with the glove box. I'll have to see if I can fix it if not I'll just live with it I guess.

Well either way here are the pictures.


IMG_20140126_204552_339 by xXMidnight_RavenXx, on Flickr


IMG_20140126_204600_093 by xXMidnight_RavenXx, on Flickr


IMG_20140126_204608_317 by xXMidnight_RavenXx, on Flickr


IMG_20140126_204616_905 by xXMidnight_RavenXx, on Flickr
 
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synergy004 said:
Looks good so far... are you using a steamer?
Click to expand...

No I haven't used a steamer... what does a steamer do for this type of application? I'll kick myself if I have been missing one part of the process to get a better fit lol.
 

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