Junkyard Seats to Finished Custom Interior for a '55 Ford Show Truck - Truck Tech S3, E17

from there two beautiful basket case gets a full on custom interior JB Wow's us on his new machine while LT takes care of rust the easy way that and more today on truck tech [Music] well there she says our classic 1955 Ford f-100 a project that Jeremy and I originally inherited in boxes it's now nearly complete it's been painted buffed the bed floor has been assembled and that means we're ready for the next phase of our project now last time we took care of wiring which means we can now plan out our interior now as you can see it's a bare cab right now but by the end of the day we hope to have fully upholstered custom seats door panels headliner and carpet we did have one problem the fifty-five came to us without the factory bench seat not that we would have used it anyway so Jeremy and I roadtrip down to a local salvage yard to see what we could find with over 2,000 vehicles in their inventory Express pull and save in Luverne Tennessee should be able to accommodate us but it doesn't matter whether you're out on a mission or just killing an afternoon walking through an auto graveyard is one of my favorite pastimes there's so many cool things at the junkyards I could stay here all day look at the projects it's better than going to the mall oh yeah for sure since our f100 has been highly modified for a more modern look a lot of seats in here certainly some of these will fit you worth checking out an original bench seat would look dated so we'll sneak out a couple of buckets well these Honda cores have pretty nice seats let's check this one out that's a pretty good design big bolsters get rid of the headrest looks pretty cool but yep there's the issue usually when I'm trying to find interior parts in the junkyard I look for a car that has the windows up this way you know it hasn't been reined in that's the issue with this car seats starting to mold over and the foams gotten really stiff and I think they'd just be too hard to work with so we'll keep looking around aside from condition size matters to will want a fairly wide seat to fill the cab so there's little gap between the console we'll build later but fortunately that's just too narrow too small on the seat keep looking that's the one I'm looking for we found a mid 2000s Nissan Altima wide enough firm foam underneath and perfect for our Ford and 40 bucks a piece mission accomplished you mean a direct Toria can you see where you're going now one cool thing about these old trucks is there's not a whole lot of upholstery to take care of but we still went ahead and got a little bit of a head start we sent these seats out to Tommy Perkins and his company it seems ridiculous upholstery out in Virginia man I really like how that seat came out with that design thanks Jeremy after receiving the seats from you guys and speaking with you over the phone at the color scheme you were gonna use on the paint job at a car I went ahead and came up with these colors and added this orange thread accent to complement your orange pinstripe that you add to the hood and the rest of the truck yeah man I really like that orange accent that looks really good Tommy's gonna take a step by step to how to turn this junkyard seat into a showpiece and mine does that I'm gonna take care of the door panels cool let's go what makes this modern Nissan Altima C work so well in a rod like this is the foam already comes stiffer nice contours to the style of the truck it makes for an easier foundation to start off with then starting off with an older spring style seat of UC Tahoe Silverados I've used seats out of Volkswagen Jettas escorts small compact car seats work better for hot rods like we're doing today so with the seat torn apart Tommy flips the covers inside out and makes alignment marks at each seat everybody has their own method to this madness Tommy uses the alphabet to keep it all straight these marks will be transferred to the new fabric so everything lines up correctly the seams are split to separate the individual pieces now he can rebuild the patterns by first gluing them on scrim foam once it's trimmed he'll trace the old pattern onto the new material then copy over his alignment marks the same process is done for all 15 patterns that make up the entire seat over at the machine Tommy will sew a line over the top of his mark now this condenses the edges making them shorter and easier to sew together once the excess is trimmed away witness marks are next Tommy calls dart the darts what they do is they've allowed me to see this line without having a mark on top of the material that way while I'm sewing I can make sure that all pieces line up and everything turns out square what design for the panel's well Jeremy come up with find out next we're back on truck Tech where our guest upholsterer Tommy Perkins is handling the custom seats for our f100 camión seems ridiculous upholstery in Montrose Virginia and at age 31 has made quite a name for himself this WyoTech grad was honored as one of CMAs top 35 under 35 years old a trendsetter Award for innovation in the auto aftermarket we heard about Tommy through Detroit muscle when they were taping this military Mustang tribute built last fall in Texas the car was unveiled at the SEMA Show raising awareness for educational opportunities for active and veteran military personnel after seeing Tommy spot on work on the Stang and hundreds of his customers cars the trucks were just honored he volunteered to lend his skills to our Ford I've probably done custom interiors on about 10 of those mid-50s f100 what the guys have done in this truck is amazing it's uh it's something I've never seen before having the new style chassis with the new f-150 motor turbo all that stuff is just amazing with the cushion and backrest cover is completely sewn together he'll reuse the listing and Jay clips from the originals then the backrest gets reassemble first hog rings hold the seams tight to the phone [Music] the cover slipped over then attaches to the frame with plastic J clips for interior panels we went to Dennis carpenter restoration parts and picked up everything we need to complete our interior pre-made door panels kick panels panel for the back wall headliner and armrests now they specialize in nothing but Ford cars trucks tractors you name it now this is a very inexpensive option to keep you from having to make panels from scratch out of panel board holes come pre-cut for the clips window cranks and door handles now you could install these in your old original truck just like they come here or you could cover them with whatever material you like or even add a custom touch like we're about to do the first step is to pop the metal door clips into the door panel I like to use the metal clips as opposed to the plastic ones because you can reuse them you can pop the panel on the door as many times as you like if you use the plastic clips they're usually only a one-time deal when test-fitting we knew we'd have to trim the panel for our aftermarket bearclaw latches so I'll pull a few measurements then trim it out with a razor blade next I'll drill a quarter inch hole for the one that got covered up when I installed the latch next is where a little creativity comes into play I'm gonna roughly draw out a pattern I envisioned for the door now this can change a little bit when I cut out my templates nothing exact but me a pretty good idea of what we want I think it'll look pretty cool we carpet at the bottom insert that work over at my work table here's a little tip when your panel comes on and off a bunch of times I like to tape down the clips this helps to hold them in place and prevents them from ever trying to push back out on you if you happen to miss a line one on the door now we can foam the panel I'm using quarter-inch closed cell phone for this trim out a piece a little bigger than the panel and spray contact cement on both the panel and the phone now be sure to let the glue tack for a few minutes this helps for better adhesion then I'll marry the two together and trim the excess foam away with a razor blade I'll take 180 grit sandpaper and lightly sand down the edges of the foam left from my cut marks there are a couple of different foams you need to know about when doing upholstery like we are in our f100 and one is a closed cell foam now that's great for door panels kick panels headliners anything like that a couple of good features to it is you can actually sand the foam like we are here to get a beveled edge you can also cut designs into the foeman pretty cool now earlier you saw Tommy using a scrim back foam now this is what you would use for all seat cover backings or anything you want to so for that matter because it has this scrim vacuum that actually catches the threads and prevents it from pulling back through the material which you can't do in closed cell foam and we make our insert for this panel we use this and I'll show you how it works hey I tell you with a block standard you need some thousand grit or some guys coat anything I don't think it's coarse enough but now is it that everything that I do has to do with a sanding blocking paper you're good at sanding so no guy code though no guy code on this alright hey aren't you staying help out now next rust repair the easy way man that's bad check out this bed is from an 84 c10 and it's definitely seen better days it came to us without a header panel but that's not the worst of it check out this passenger bedside it's been dented in and somebody attempted to repair it they didn't prepare the metal very well the filler didn't stick and there's a bunch of little holes where they tried to pull the dent out now does that mean this bed is unusable well no it'd be great on like a rat rod truck or if you're after that patina look but you actually could use this very bedside and make it back to showroom condition you'll just take a bunch of work you'd have to start by scraping up all of this extra filler grind it down to bare metal treat the surface so the rust doesn't return add some more filler blocks and it add some primer and all in you're about 20 to 30 hours worth of work but what if I told you we could have this bed ready for paint in less than eight hours I'm probably interested we know that classic industry sells many hard-to-find restoration parts for classic GM cars but they also carry a full line for 47 through 2008 and GM trucks so we picked up a bedside and a header panel they're made from high-quality stampings and they're shipped with this protective coating so they're ready to bolt on then scuff and shoot but we're gonna start by unbolting this bedside this repair is really a no-brainer you don't need any body working skills at all and for under 400 bucks plus shipping classic industries really makes a repair like this affordable for the average do-it-yourselfer with the bolts loose I'll need to cut through two small spot welds and then the panel can be removed I'm going to grind down the welds and clean the seam sealer and rust from the exposed edge then hit the surface with some self-etching primer once it's dry I can bolt on the header panel then the bedside our bed site has been a hundred percent bolt in so far but there were two areas that were welded from the factory now do you have to replace those not necessarily but you definitely should because that's what holds the side of the bed square to the floor and as you can see the top of ours leans in by about 3/8 of an inch so we're gonna correct that a porta power will help hold it square while I make a few stitch wells well there you have it with a little help from classic industries a day's worth of time and some brand new sheet metal we were able to get rid of that old rust and have this bed ready to paint and it wasn't even that hard over in the shop Jeremy and our guest Tommy Perkins are busy finishing up the seats and trim of our 55 f100 with the design cut out of the door panel foam the next step is to use those cutouts for the insert layer of the panel board after they get traced metal shears make quick work of cutting them out all of this material and vinyl was donated to us by Three Rivers supply in Homestead Pennsylvania now the base panel gets covered with the same gray vinyl Tommy used on our seats a two inch overlap on the cut provides some wiggle room the best way to do this is glue one half at a time if you tried to glue the entire piece on it once there's a good chance you'll run into alignment problems using the handle of your scissors or around a trim tool I'll force the material down tight where our inserts go now I can flip it over and start wrapping the vinyl around the panel there's a technique I always use when covering around a square corner it's kind of a trade secret the pros usually keep to themselves so if you want go ahead and take notes to make your corners wrinkle free wrap one side up to the corner then about an eighth inch from the turn make a cut in the shape of half a wine glass fold it over and cut the other half of the wineglass then fill it over and staple it down now your edges will rep perfectly every time wrinkle-free now we're taking the design on the seat and transferring it onto the door panel the white grease pencil represents my stitch line that will match the seats my new toy is this console - oh six RB five sewing machine now this thing works great and will run as fast as 3,000 stitches per minute or slow it down like I'm doing for a stitch that's perfectly straight it gets blue to the paddle board using the same technique as before then it's inserted and stapled down for our lower insert we're actually going to use carpet now this will flow nicely into the floor with the door closed but this isn't your typical cut or loop style carpet like you're used to seeing in today's cars this is called Daytona carpet it was used in the 50s and 60s on full-size and muscle cars and kind of resembles a fabric but is just as durable as today's carpets now I've already pre trimmed up this piece to fit but I don't believe this raw edge here next sitting pretty [Music] we're headed to the finish line on the f-100 interior with only the carpet to take care of before the end of the day go looks really good making progress our guests Tommy Perkins will get started on the Daytona rug provided to us by auto custom carpets then cut out the holes for the dimmer switch and Mark for the seat mounts a good way to do this is with a block of wood and a punch it leaves a nice clean edge as opposed to fiddling with scissors or a razor the next step is binding the edge like we did on the door panel inch and a half vinyl strips lay face to face with a carpet and are sewn together the only difference here is the vinyl wraps around the carpet then a stitch is run right beside the finished edge that locks it all together the kick panels were made with the same process as the door panels [Music] I'll tell you what you spent a heck of a thrash these last three days but these guys have put together a pretty awesome interior that'll definitely win some shows thanks I really appreciate coming out and helping you guys with this this was a great experience for me and I hope to do it again in the future it was a blast I mean I really like this design we came up with carpet it's definitely different and that orange man had accents everything and I really enjoy doing upholstery so having Tommy Perkins come in from seems ridiculous upholstery man it was a pleasure - thank you yeah man you bet better catch that plane yeah man thank you if you want to put a modern den style radio in your 67 to 72 Chevy truck oftentimes the post hole edges will still show up once you cut the hole well brothers truck parts offers this billet cover to really clean up the look it's made of brushed aluminum and comes with the template for the cutout and all the hardware or if your holes already cut this replacement panel I'll get you back to stock visit brothers trucks comm you need to consider your engine's torque output when you're selecting a clutch you don't want to install an inadequate disc that will slip and burn up on you but you also don't want to over clutch and have to suffer with poor drivability American powertrain has clutches that will work with stock engines and have smooth engagement like the super street model all the way up to this atomic twin that's rated to hold 1,100 pound-feet of torque and whether you have a classic American four-speed or a modern five or six speed overdrive you can find a clutch that will fit your transmission and your engine's torque output at American powertrain calm well the trucks looking great and we get a little bit closer every day we've got her Dakota digital gauges installed it's a super clean set up just a few more things left to do let me head it down the street hey hold on a second a few I've been keeping track and as long as I'm not forgetting anything there's 25 things left to do before this truck will hit the road so hopefully next time we get it in here we'll get glass cut for it get it pedals install to run some brake lines and maybe we'll make a dent in that list you've got over there at least 22s so it's a start you [Music]

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 59,147

Rating: 4.9200001 out of 5

Keywords: ford f100, junkyard, Cars;, Vehicles;, How-To;, Auto, News;, Howto;, How, To;, DIY;, Car, Tips, ford, f100, automotive, car interior, truck seats, powernation, classic car

Id: ZSeHFDB8lUE

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 13 2019