Interior clean.... What to use..??

Cougar Community The Project Forum
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Starting a new thread…

I have a 1969 Leather interior XR7 that I picked up off of E-Bay last year… Just now I am able to finally work on it…

The car sat in a body shop with the door windows down for over 25 years so the interior has 25 years of Bondo dust all over… I want to try and save as much of this interior as I can plus get the leather back into good shape…

Any recommendations on to what products to use to get this clean and what to use to get the material supple again… This stuff is pretty dry… I have most of the interior out… Need to pull the front seats yet so I can do all the work out off the car…

Will post some pics once I get to a real computer and off my I-Pad…

Thanks - Brian

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I’ve used lexol products in the past with very good results.

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Couple of pics…

Console lid…

Rear seat base…

Its quite the mess in there…

Brian.

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I would start out with some “mean green” cleaner then follow with some Murphy oil to soften the leather.

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This is what I use http://www.leatherique.com/
I think something stronger to begin with either simple green or dawn dish soap & water after air to blow off what you can.
They also have very good leather dyes.

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Wow! Yeah, I would start with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge.

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+1 on the leatherique. Get as much as you can with dish soap first. After it dries use the leatherique and leave it on for at least a day. The leatherique should loosen everything up.

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Took the rest of the interior out today and washed everything with soapy water and a hose… going to let it dry for a couple weeks then hit it with letherique… The seats are not in the best shape but it will have to do until I can afford to re-do them… Driver seat is the worst with a couple of good tears in it…

Pics later, they are on my phone…, this is where tapatalk worked good for photo sharing off my I-phone

Brian

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I’m a big fan of the Murphys Oil soap also.

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Before

After… Still wet and it was raining anyway…

My boys washing a door panel…

Driver seat… going to use seat covers until I can afford new upholstery…

Passenger seat…

Seat backs… These are nice, just one little tear on the bottom of one of them… Did not even see it until I pulled them off the seats…

Panels… Driver quality, not perfect…

That’s all for now…

Brian…

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They cleaned up real nice.

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Looks great! Dry them well so they don’t grow mold.

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I think it will be a good driver quality interior… I still need to do a deep clean with letherique to get the grime completely out… I also need to remove the center column, carpet and dash pad. The pad is bad but I have a good one from the parts cars. Probably going to go ahead and pull the steering column and go through it since it is a tilt-tilt away and I want it working. And since I’ll have it down that far might as well go through the heat/AC box and re paint the lower dash… Seems like a lot but all that is more time consuming than $$ consuming… My headliner is bad so I do need to invest in a new one and thinking about investing in new carpet too.

Unfortunatly mice got into the rear seat when it was in the body shop where I got it and pulled out a lot of the padding… So I need to remove the cover and replace the pad… Anyone know if the padding from standard seats will work in the XR7 seats… One of my parts cars has a good standard interior in it… Ugly green but good… And I figure I can rob the padding if it will work… I’m also going to check with my interior guy I use on the aircraft and see if he can “repair” my front seats… That would save me a heck of a lot in the long run…

Mike, they are dried and stored in a clean dry hanger under a Stinson 108-2 for now…

Thanks
Brian

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More progress today… Forgot my phone so no pictures… Will get some next week…

So, a quick narration of what I did today…

Removed center console, disassembled and gave it a bath in dawn and warm water… The console is in really nice shape as far as the plastic is concerned… One little chip at the front passenger side of the main piece and the insert needs to be replaced…

Removed the headliner… Bows look good and minimal surface corrosion on the inside of the sheet metal roof…

Remove dash pad and disassembled… Put that pad aside and got my better pad out of storage and cleaned it along with all the other plastic parts that are on the panel…

I have three XR7 clocks, going to send all three to WCCC and have them make me a good one… Hopefully they will take the other two for partial trade…

Remove instrument cluster… Noticed that someone hard wired the amp gauge while taking it out… One of the tracers on the blue circute board is bad to the gauge, hence the hard wire… Have a spare XR7 panel so I got that out of the other car… That panel is a red board but the tracings look good… Any problem running a red panel in the car…?? I would have to completely rebuild the spare panel since a couple of the gauges are broken…

Removed a lot of the miscellaneous door seals, interior trim around the windshield, rear shelf cover, sail panels, visors and just a bunch of little things…

I’m too the point now where I need to start taking lots of pictures so I dont forget how to put it back together…

Also, anyone know the size of the torque screw bolts that bolt the seat belts down to the floor…?? I do not have one big enough and would like to just buy the one to use with my socket wrench and not a whole set…

I also did a few things to the outside of the car while I was there…Removed tail light housings, rear marker lights and rear fender extensions for painting… Removed the trim for the vinyl top… Also removed the trim from the trunk lid…

Anyways… Pictures later…

Brian

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My good dash pad… Needs re paint,died … What should I use to keep the vinyl from drying out any more…??

Close up of the pad… This is the worst of any cracking that I can find on it…

Also, on my good pad someone took out the AC delete plate and mounted a set of triple gauges in the hole… My car has AC… The register covers most of the cut outs on the sides, but I have an idea to use a piece of aluminum under the register that would clean that part up… But, the four holes drilled in the upper part need to be filled with something… Any idea.??

Clocks and the cluster from the parts car… This one has the red circuit board…

Center console… Good shape but the insert on the right bottom is junk, bad chrome on the plastic and one of the seat belt retainers is broken out… I’ll get the repo from WCCC…

The good cluster… With the bad blue board on the back…

The panel at the end of the day… Need to take lots of pictures from here on out so I can put it back together right…

Tail of the beast… :slight_smile:

The rest of the interior at the end of the day…

I have more but this should be good for now…

Brian

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Edited all my picture tags… Easier to post from a desktop computer… Posting off my I-Pad sucks…

On another note… If anyone is removing their seat belts you need a T50 star wrench or socket… I bought just the one because I do not need a full set of them.

Brian.

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First… I forgot to thank you guys for the suggestions on products to use for the final cleaning of my interior…

Second… I e-mailed the moderator and asked to change the name of this thread to better match the fact that I am pretty much switching it to a cleaning / restoration thread…

And third… From looking at other posts it looks like SEM products is the preferred paint type product for painting / dying the interior plastic and vinyl… I was reading on the SEM website and of coarse they have all sorts of products for cleaning and prepping your interior parts before painting with the color… My question is has anyone here used any of the other cleaning/prep products…?

Thanks for your help

Brian

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Removed the rear carpet the other day and found these…

Funny thing is this is a power window car…
Unfortunately the ever elusive complete build sheet is not under the passenger seat…

I watched Don Rushes video on replacing the carpet and he found a power window switch… Makes me wonder what else has been found under carpets…

Brian.

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Removed the front carpet today…

Found a mystery piece of metal under the passenger side sound deadening… Any Ideas where its from …??

This is where I found it… right next to the seat riser…

Pulled out what is left of the build sheet under the driver side carpet… I knew this one was there from looking earlier… Was hoping to find another one in good condition…

Driver side floor… A little surface rust, otherwise nice and solid…

Nice clean passenger side floor…

That is all for now…

Brian…

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Worked today on the car… Not posting pics because all I took are really just reference pictures for when I put it back together…

Things I did;
Removed passenger door and quarter glass… All need to be re-glued…
Removed passenger door and quarter glass regulators and power motors along with the quarter glass slides…
Removed passenger side door seals including all the trim pieces…
Removed steering wheel and got the column ready to pull…

Question… Are the steering rag joint bolts a special size…?? I can not get those things loose and that is all I need to do and the column can come out…

Thanks…
Brian