Odmark

Hello. The seats in my CC is in very very bad condition, they are ripped up almost everywhere and some of the "foam"(?) Is ripped out.

Do you know of some place where they sell new skin for the seats? Some kit of some sort?

joe_padavano

You won't find factory-original style upholstery kits for these cars, however there are a couple of custom upholstery vendors who claim that they have every pattern in stock and will make them to order. The material and patterns will not match the original, however. One such vendor is EZBoy.

If you want factory-style material and pattern, you will need to purchase the vinyl from SMS Fabrics and have the covers sewn at an upholstery shop.

m371961

Joe, you ever use this company or Kanter for interiors?

joe_padavano

Unfortunately, I have not. I'm considering using them for my Vista, as no one sells upholster for it. The upholstery part of the Kanter catalog looks EXACTLY like the EZBoy catalog, so I suspect that Kanter is just re-selling their products.

jaunty75

But they can come pretty darn close.

Below are before and after photos of the front seat of my '73 Custom Cruiser, whose seat covers, when I got the car, were worn, torn, nicked up, faded, and everything else you'd expect in a then 37-year-old car.

I took the front seat out of the car, loaded it into my pickup truck, and took it to a local auto upholstery shop. The guy there went through his catalogs and matched the existing material to such a high degree that I would dare anyone to tell it from the original.


Before:




After:




Here's the completed seat after I had brought it home from the shop and before reinstalling it in the car.




It seems that nearly everyone on this site swears by Legendary Interiors or SMS and acts like those are the only sources of upholstery material, and, in my experience, this is just not true. The people who operate auto upholstery shops, if they're in business for any length of time, are not idiots. The guy I went to had at least two-dozen catalogs showing probably hundreds of fabrics, and they can get pretty much anything that's out there.

If the OP has access to a good auto upholstery shop where he lives, he should start there first. They can certainly handle the missing foam issue as well. Unless you know what you're doing, reupholstering an auto seat is something best left to the experts.

joe_padavano

Please go back and read my prior post. I was specifically talking about the company EZBoy. They do hot rod upholstery that comes as a pre-sewn kit, which was the O.P.'s preference. They claim that they have cut patterns for any US made car. They do NOT try to match factory material or patterns. They do pleats - typically 1" or 2" wide - and can do some flat material accents.

I also pointed out that if the O.P. wanted factory-style pattern and material, it would have to be made by a local upholstery shop.

jaunty75

This is not what you said.


THIS is what you said:
The implication here is that he has no choice but to purchase the fabric from SMS (and have it installed by his local shop). My contention is that this is not true. I don't recall the name of the specific vendor that the shop that did my car bought the material from, but I do know that there were several catalogs containing fabrics that would fit the bill, so there was more than one viable vendor.