I previously posted a thread regarding removal of the interiior in the 72. I thought it may help others to start a new thread on the build back. First, I would say, if you know you are needing things, plan ahead nd order early, as many items are not in stock, and lead times are many months on some items. I am replacing all upholstered items, as the Arizona sun and 52 years has beat up this stuff badly. I have in hand new door panels, rear seat side panels, armrest and piston covers. These items are PUI bought from OPGI. One interesting thing I found, was that the old material on the armrest covers is .022” thick, and the new by PUI is .032” thick, so harder to bend and form than the original.

I started on rear seating area armrest/ashwell panels and piston cover panels, first photographing them and then tearing off old vinyl. These covers are bare steel Sheetmetal, I am guessing about 22 gauge? All had surface rust on backside. I cleaned off old glue and then blasted them. Did not prime them, as I didn’t want any issues with glue compatibility. PUI has a great 8 minute YouTube video showing covering an A body rear armrest. I followed that as my best practices. Best tips I learned, are that the surface areas are NOT glued, just the edges of fabric where it is adhered to back sides of Sheetmetal. Other tip is to use 3M rubber and vinyl adhesive. It is hard to find and 50 bucks a can.

Here is where I am at now, Dec 16, 2024


The following 5 pics are after removal of old vinyl and then blasting away most of rust. The old factory applied armrest padding and cardboard like padding was in good shape, and retained

The white Sheetmetal piece at top of piston covers was cleaned up and repainted. Here my finger is pointing to a welded in place square nut, that I have no idea what purpose it is to serve. They make it hard for the new vinyl to go over this area, but that is how the old one was, so I kept them and covered them with new vinyl


Armrest jute padding on top, and cardboard padding on side


Armrest blasted and ready for new vinyl


Piston covers blasted and ready


Front side of piston cover has factory cardboard padding, that was in very good condition


Armrest before removal of old vinyl. This should have been my first pic


Old and newly recovered side by side


Old ashtrays cleaned up very well. A little oil on hinges and they work well


The completed recovery of the Ashwell/Armrest covers and upper Piston covers. Not a Pro job, but acceptable to me anyway.


The right glue for the job.

 

Good job.

 

I resumed the interior work by recovering the rear seat side panels. A kit bought from OPGI made by PUI. As earlier mentioned, the vinyl is thicker, and a little hard to shape around tight turns. This work required disassembly of the old parts in order to reuse the upper hard fiberglass part that forms the upper portion. It is stapled to the two piece cardboard panel backer.



Old panel before disassembly


Top edge was tattered


This is the new panel. The top part of the old panel must be reused



Back side of old panel. Stapled to the hard fiberglass upper



The cardboard lower is actually two pieces, which allowed a easier way to stitch on the vinyl



One of the meanest parts of this work is attaching the new interior glass belt line stripping. It is done with stainless steel staples. Touchy work to fit and drill through the prepunched holes into the fiberglass, and then trying to bend over the staples. It is for sure doable, but not easy



Old and newly covered next to each other.

The new cover job with belt line strip installed

 

Great job!!

 

Thanks!

Thanks!

point of posting is that this stuff is possible to do yourself. It is not easy sometimes, but is possible.

Now on to the door panels

 

So when I bought this car in July, the interior was a disaster, really. What really looked bad were some cheesy loudspeakers that someone chopped into the lower front corners of the doors. I imagine great sound! But wow did it ever look bad. Last couple days I worked on the driver side. Again, this is a kit supplied by OPGI and made by PUI. I could have bought the complete panels by Legendary but cost was twice as much. This kit requires re use of several of the existing door components like the stainless steel trim elements, door lock grommet, door pull strap, and other things too. Biggest one is that the top rolled edge of the door panel substructure is a piece of curved steel, and that does not come in the kit. I had to destruct the old panel and salvage that part.

The pic's


Old panel at bottom, with speaker hole in it, faded carpet bottom. New kit fabric is the top

Back side of old panel at bottom. Kit at top. All holes were marked and partially cut out by PUI. I had to complete the cut outs



Here I have separated the top piece of steel substructure from the cardboard backer. Also removed is the interior window belt line seal.


Here I have reattached the top piece of steel and completed most of the vinyl work. Fairly easy to do since there are no compound curves on the door panel. Cleaned up and cut in the door lock grommet.



The beltline seal is installed



The staples supplied are stainless steel, of am alloy that is easier to bend than the originals. Carefully drilling through factory pre punched holes in the strip into the steel substructure. You have to be careful to not damage the stripping. Then reach behind with long nose pliers and bend the legs over. That gets the legs partially bent, and using some small wood spacer blocking to protect the weatherstripping, the legs can then be squeezed completely.



New plastic chrome armrest plate and new armrest and pad. May have to return them. Pad does not fit well.



Completed door panel. New window crank is just layin ther for fun. Went with black color.



Did not install the door pull strap at this time. Old one looks kinda bad, and I have not found a source yet for new ones.

 

Jumping all over the place on this Cutlass. Working fenders and doors, headed for a repaint this fall/winter I hope! Meanwhile, the upholstery guy called and said he now has a schedule slot to install the PUI seat upholstery. I’ll tackle most things, but I really want a seat that is done right, so gonna pay The Man to do it. I took the front and rear seat parts to him yesterday. He wanted to do the disassembly. He called me today and reported that there were some broken spring parts, driver side bench frame. Also, if I wanted to blast and paint the steel parts, now is the time.


After blasting. These parts are raw steel from factory, and had mostly surface rust, and in a few places, a little more rust. I’ll coat it all with some spray cans of rust oleum



The driver side of the steelwork has a broken spring, so I’ll see if I can find that part? Kind of hard to see in this pic. The broken part has some black plastidip or something on it, so may have been replaced once already, don’t really know. The severed part is just above finger. Actually broken in two places.

 

I decided to use a mini spray gun and black rustoleum to paint the cushion parts. I was able to find new bench seat end springs. Not many places to buy them. Two spring assemblies $50 to the door. So I will return these parts to the Upholsterer. Monday.


These are the end cushion springs. It looks like they perhaps were replaced once already? Not real sure about that. One side was broken in two places, other side was OK.



Here are what I believe to be the correct springs. They don’t look exactly like the old ones. They came with black on them.



New, installed. Small soft steel wrap around sleeves are used as attachments. Getting these springs in place went pretty well. Cushion steel as factory supplied is all raw steel. And it was all lightly rusted. So, some black on the steel not factory correct, but better, I think?



The bottoms of the springs fit into these retainers.

 

This was a fun day. The upholstery fella that I was VERY fortunate to find called to tell me he was done with the seats. I had bought PUI front and rear seat upholstery. And he was willing to do the installation. His cost I thought very reasonable. Not easy to find anyone to do this work, and the 4 month wait was well worth it for me.

I am really disappointed in myself for not taking some good before pictures. I was able to find one, but I didn’t do a good job of documenting this.


Front seat was a disaster. Arizona sun killed it, I think?



This is such a huge improvement. A stock white color, and original Olds stitching. All in for parts and labor to install, about $2000.



The rear cushion and backrest.



So for now, these parts will rest in the basement. Covered them well, because the cats may mistake them for new scratching posts. I now have everything needed to do a complete new interior. I will likely leave it sit until the exterior bodywork is done. May temp install the front seat for a fall drive.

 

Looks great... And the cat has already claimed it.

 

Thanks Turnpike!

When I took the seats to the Upholstery man, the front seat had the seatbelts threaded through the seat. When I picked the seats up, he told me, Steve, I just couldn’t put those old dirty belts next to the new clean vinyl. And I told him, Thank You for NOT putting those filthy belts back on the seat.

I had previously disssembled the rear belts and cleaned them up. I found a video showing how to get the buckles removed, and then put the straps in with a load of laundry. They cleaned up and almost looked brand new. But I’ll tell ya, getting them apart and back together is worse than pulling a cylinder head!

Heres the vid if interested
A few pictures.


Insides of the buckle. Lots of dirt and dust. Used a soft brush and multipurpose cleaner to clean them up.



This little spring is nasty to remove.



Spring is sharp and will cut you if not careful.



With the spring out, the belt will twist out



With belt retainer twisted at an angle, the belt can be pulled through the buckle frame.



Remembering how it all goes back together is the hard part. Lots of pictures help. And this is something that I want to get back together quick, before I forget how to do it.



Old uncleaned belts on left. Belts ran through the laundry on the right.

 

I reassembled the two belts, before I forgot too much! Still had to relearn a few things. These buckles are simple, if you work on them enough to learn the secrets, and there are some.

While I had the buckles apart, I removed what was left of the old black coating. Seemed to be like a rubberized paint? Not sure, but it didn’t look real good anymore. So repainted the two on the left with satin black spray paint. My thought at this time, is to just put a driver set and a passenger set on the bench seat. Belts from that era are such a nuisance except when wearing them. I will disassemble, clean, and paint the one on the right, and store it for the center set.

 

Nice job on the interior panels. Curious as to what brand of felts you used and did they include the staples vs. screws to mount them with?
thanks

 

Sure. Happy to help. Not a lot better to do as I recover from back surgery.. See box pictures for brand and part numbers. Seems like I bought them at Hydro E Lectric? Not sure?

The old SS staples are hard to remove, as they appeared to be a “hardened”. SS. Clinched legs are difficult to pry up and pull out. I Used a dremmel and cutting disk on them, cutting middle, and that made them easier to pry out a half at a time. The new ones came with a softer SS staples that are somewhat easier to bend. Touchy work back drilling the new SS strips, as I remember it? Not easy, as you have to carefully work around the new felts, by bending them out of the way to finish the clinch. I started by bending each leg about at a 45 degree angle using long nose pliers, and then finished the clench using channel lock pliers and small wood blocking to protect the new felts.

 

Thanks! that's exactly what I was looking for. When I did mine, the curved fiberglass at the top of the rear panels was deteriorating and the felts were not correct with a SS wire at the top, instead of the 1/4" SS trim piece. I put them on anyway and there's too much resistance in the PW setup for the quarters. I sourced early model curve sheet metal tops to replace the fiberglass ones, and now need to purchase the felts. Great write up and hope all is well.

edit: Well it appears the quarter interior panels for the GM A-bodied 'verts are different. Who would have thought? So back to the unique original fiberglass/plastic ones. On a good note, I received the new felts from repops and these things are sweet. Much thinner and even shaped differently from my originally purchased ones from pu*.

Doug