Continuing my march towards restoring the GTE, I’m now seeking experience with front seat re-upholstery. Both of mine are not repairable, with the comfortweave and side panels on the seat bottoms pretty well trashed.
The interior color is dark blue, XR7, vinyl with comfortweave inserts and two-post factory headrests. I’ve mostly restored the headrests, but my understanding that’s a rare option to accommodate and the combo of comfortweave & headrest means even few choices.
anybody have any positive/negative experiences I can look into or shy away from. Before/if any says Ken’s Cougars, don’t bother .
Don, do you carry or can order such an animal? I had contacted the vendor <distintiveindustries.com> directly and it seemed like they had dark blue and comfortweave, but they only deal with retailers. I didn’t see dark blue as an option on your site, but figured it was hard to put all variations up.
Seems like SMS has both the Cloth comfortweave Inserts.
1968
Mercury
Cougar GT
2-Door Hardtop
8B
Dark Blue
68-80119
and the Dark Blue Vinyl
1968
Mercury
Cougar GT
2-Door Hardtop
8B
Dark Blue
L-3403
I’ve ordered samples to see how close they are. guess I might have to engage my hugely talented wife & seamstress unless someone now offers up a really good upholsterer to do the work, assuming the materials are a fit.
Still looking for you, Don, to offer it up as a service
Have SMS make the covers for you. Send them your old ones so they are sure to get it right. I did this (with them) for a 67 Comet Caliente. They nailed it. Another friend had a complete 64 Galaxie interior manufactured by them. It is perfect. I can’t say enough nice things about their work. The bench seat and rear seat covers cost $1000. I could not source this service anywhere else after months of looking. If they say they can do it, get it done.
finally got my samples from SMS. They are spot on. Dark Blue Comfortweave, grained and smooth seat vinyl and Black grained vinyl roof.
none of it cheap, I must say. but in for a penny in for a pound as the saying goes.
Now we’re shopping around locally for an auto-upholstery place where we can see their work and they are willing to use SMS materials we provide.
Still holding having SMS do it in reserve as was suggested/recommended, but since the foam and seats really need some love, it’s probably should all be done at once instead. still thinking about that tho.
I look forward to seeing the final outcome. I wanted to use SMS for mine but as a non-concours resto I couldn’t justify the cost. I have heard that others have had some issues with the full rolls of material from SMS not matching the samples due to storage marks/stains but that’s likely only a problem with the lighter colors. Still, I’d ask about their return policy.
I’d be worried that someone else will mess it up and you’ll have to buy it twice. You’ll never regret a masterful job and you’ll get over the pain in the wallet.
Well, Don warned me about “don’t expect good service or retuned calls” from SMS. So far, true to form. They were happy to charge my Credit Card ASAP, but not so much for status reports, or any news whatsoever. I’m making myself a nuisance with once a week calls to the new-order-desk (the check-about-existing-order, voice-mail just says to send them an email, from which I’ve never gotten a reply). 3 weeks and counting for a bone-fide update.
The seat vinyl’s and comfort weave finally showed up to and is now in the hands of the upholstery dude. Can’t wait. We’re gonna fire the 427 for the first time tomorrow. :-). Wish we could get it all together for the MACC 50th anniversary in Tulsa in April. Not likely tho
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