pognoot

Newbie here. Say you had a 3rd Gen T/A and you wanted to change the interior colors from, say, beige to black. How hard would this be? I am seeing velour kits, carpet kits, and door panel kits are available online. What about the rest of the plastic molding throughout the interior?

84 1LE

iTrader: (9)

Find the desired color plastics from another 3rd gen car, purchase/swap/done.You could dye the plastics, but they'll look like chit after some wear sets in.

Steve86TA

iTrader: (57)

Very easy swap. Easiest thing would be find someone near you parting out a car with black interior and purchase it all. Shipping some of the the interior parts will cost more than the parts themselves. You can buy the carpet, headliner, sailpanals and visors new if needed. You can also put up a wanted add in the classifieds here, incase someone is close to you.

Where are you located?

pognoot

I'm in Denver. I haven't found the car I want yet. I'm still in the research stages, the "what if I find a great car, but I wish the interior color was different" phase.

tealman92

Easier to find the car with exactly what you want. Finding complete good condition plastics are going to cost you some money then add seats,headliner,door panels and carpet. It will be cheaper to just find a car with the interior you want. Say you find a nice 6000 dollar car but you will need to swap the interior add 2k to your price and figure 8k when your done. Can you find a better color combo for 8k without the swap? Go that route first.

Drew

iTrader: (58)

Trouble with just changing the interior panels is all the variations. For example... Rear shoulder belts and rear lap belts use different rear panels. Same with T-top vs Hardtop rear panels. Roll-up Security shade vs without. No 3rd brake light, spoiler 3rd brake light, and 90-92 3rd brake light all have different panels. Door panels have ones with window crank holes or without holes for power windows, some Firebirds have panels with a hole for the driver's manual mirror adjuster vs ones with power mirrors that don't. Then you get into things like seat belts, that are almost always trashed and faded on junkyard cars.

At this point, having done a couple swaps when parts were a lot easier to come by, I wouldn't even think about doing an interior swap just to change the color. If I really had to do it, I think I'd be looking for a parts car with everything I needed, or I'd be planning to break out the paint and have the cloth redone. Either way unless you get lucky you'll end up with a half-fast color change, where some parts are the wrong color, and lots of finer details are all mixed together into a full Franken-Maro mess.

Neil350

iTrader: (1)

I am assuming your end result wants to be factory looking. From personal experience I did this on a 4th gen, the 93 in my sig. Converted to a 00+ ebony interior, dash, console, panels, carpet, all plastics down to the correct seat belts. Here is a word of advice, don't do it. The only exception is this, if you have a complete parts car you can get every last bit from. When I started this swap, I took my original glove box to an upholstery shop to have it reskinned to match the later ebony dash. Early year 4th gen that's where the RPO codes are. The upholstery shop guy basically said people ask him all the time to do the conversion and he turns them down all the time. I learned why very quick on why that is. This was 10 years ago on a 4th gen and parts were way easier to come by then, but you learn GM changes shades through a production run or generation. So you have to be VERY specific to a single set of years color, they're not all the same and they WILL NOT match.

The other problem I learned quick, you're relying on used parts. So guess what? Every car is different, some cars were garage kept others driven every day and left out in the sun. So due to UV rays the factory colors fade ever so different so they won't match, just quite enough for you to notice. Then there's the fact that there's many nickle and dime pieces that are color coded to an interior trim color.

There's paint shops, automotive that will remix the factory GM colors. I had to have this done to remix the GM Beech wood used on my GTA so I could refinish the seat plastics. Was not cheap, almost a 100$ for 4 cans. If you find it all from the same car you can refinish the plastics, preps every thing. You could color change your stock stuff, but if it scratches, then its going to look weird. Best bet is to find the plastics in the color you want and refinish them back to new.

sshoureas

iTrader: (1)

I've done several interior restorations and if the proper products (SEMS) are used with proper prep, re-dyed parts can hold up well and look way better than 30+ year old original plastic parts... If interested can provide more details. Good luck with whatever you decide to do