Since we've mostly completed the restomod of our '86 SVO, I'm now turning attention to our '92 B4C 1LE ex-Tx DPS Camaro RS. I plan to document much of that work here. It won't be quick work, as we do have other vehicles and hobbies to keep us occupied, but I do want to clean it up some so I'm happy to drive it and enjoy it more. We bought it several years ago from a friend. It's an ex Texas DPS patrol car. It even still has the DPS asset tag in the driver's door jamb. It's been a great car. It spent some as a road race car, then autocross car. It was being autocrossed when we bought it, the PO was going to get a BMW and had no room for it at his place. It has placed in F Stock (now F Street) at a previous SCCA Solo Nationals event. I don't know what year, or what place, but it has trophied.

I DD it for a while, and autocrossed it occasionally, then let some friends autocross it when they got rid of their dedicated autocross cars. It's been good, and held up well. So now, I want to freshen up some things. I plan to, in not any order:

Replace the carpet.
Replace the sagged headliner.
Recover the seats. The driver's seat is a different color, and is well-worn. We'll probably farm that out, based on our experience with re-covering the SVO seats (wife says no effin' way we're doing that again).
Maybe replace the front seats with a pair of Recaro's we have, after getting them reupholstered to match the rest of the interior.
Repaint the car back to it's original black-and-white paint scheme.
Replace sun-baked light lenses.
Other miscellaneous updates as they arise.

I have already started taking the interior out to get the new carpet down, and make the headliner R&R easier. Below are some pictures of that. I am trying to figure out how to get the dome light down. It seems to be attached to the roof frame via some speed nuts that look to me will be a real bisch to remove. How does the dome light come out?


Headliner almost ready to come out

Interior is gray, the driver's seat is tan

Seats out.

Crack-free dash has already been replaced

 

so much fun...

looks like you and i are about the same place in our rebuilds..

keep the pics comin

 

The headliner was made extra fun with the addition of the spotlights that had to come out before the A-pillar trim could be removed. Who the hell uses those stupid speed nuts to hold a dome light in place, never to be easily-removed?!? Oh wait...

Got the headliner out. Pulled the rear trim out and the rear carpet. It's glued to the trunk well, so lots of fun pulling that out. Since my e-brake doesn't go 90-degrees, I've only gotten the console about half-way out. I'll probably just slid the carpet under the console housing and then put the top back on. Fingers crossed that nothing breaks going back in. I'm just about to pull the interior carpet, then I'll start cleaning things to get ready to go back together.

The headliner foam dust was a real pleasure to enjoy while pulling the backer board out of the car......

 

Done for the day. The carpet and headliner are out. The e-brake is bolted to the trans tunnel via 2-10mm bolts, so it was fairly easy to pull them and rock the handle out of the way enough to get the console out. Now to pull the hearing protection on and fire up the shop vac and get the headliner foam and remove 33 years of cruft. Then, I'll clean the plastic parts while I wait for my Hawk's order to arrive (mostly trim bits). What a job!

After I was done for the day, I decided to close everything up. When I lowered the hatch into place, I heard a >CRUNCH<, and lifted the hatch back up to discover the broken hatch area light I had place out of the way on the latch to protect it when I pulled the carpet out of there.

I also discovered that the center-mount brake light was missing a housing. I'm guessing it was removed to provide space to mount the hatch strobe lights when it was in service. I have an email out to Hawks to see if they have any of these parts, as I'm not finding them on their web site.


Carpet out.

Hatch area, ditto

Headliner gone... cough, cough!

 

Parts are showing up. I had to order another pair of front seat belt sleeves, because the standard set are two different lengths, and the ones in our car were the same, shorter length. Those are now installed. Spent the day cleaning interior parts and finally getting the reproduction brake pedal in place. The clutch pedal has a different pattern, so it will NOT be installed.

I added some hush mat on some of the flat panels that weren't padded to help with sound mitigation. I'm now looking for the seals that were on the A-pillars that don't seem to be available anywhere. Hoping Steele Rubber Products have a solution.

The OEM shifter is kind of rusty from years of sweaty hands being on it, and sitting in sometimes damp garages. Trying to figure out a solution. Maybe hit it with some bronze wool and then wax it? Paint it with a gloss paint? Does anyone have a solution for this?


Weatherstrip/air control strip

 

A couple of. pictures of the mat installed and the rust on the shifter lever. Looks worse in the picture than it does in real life, for some reason. I guess I really need to pull it and thoroughly clean it and paint it. That, or get an aftermarket shifter.


Sound deadener in the back hatch area. Also have some just forward of that.

Rusty, the factory shifter lever. :-)

 

While I still mull over what to do with the headliner, I figured I'd pull the carpet out and see how well it fit. My co-driver got out of work early, so was able to assist with the pushing and pulling that was necessary, It had been sitting in the shop, laid out on the floor for a couple of days, but we also dragged it out into the sun for an hour. It really didn't get that hot, but maybe it'll help?

We tried putting the new carpet in the car, then laying the old stuff on it to see what would have to be cut, and where, but the new stuff really didn't fit that well at all. So out it came. We used some old quilts we have in the shop for car covers and rolled them up to at least simulate the transmission and driveshaft hump. That seemed to help a bit. We made some cuts, mostly to the front, to more-match the old carpet, and then went in for a test fit. We were having problems getting the carpet to slide up into the front footwells enough, so out it came again. After cutting about 2" off the front of the new carpet, and about a 2" pie-shaped piece from the front down both sides, we fit it again. After that, the fit wasn't bad. We trimmed a bit more in the front corners and the parts that go under the center vents, and it fit much better, at least in the front. I made a couple more cuts so the carpet would clear the e-brake and laid it in again. We were getting pretty knackered, so figured we'd let the carpet 'relax' overnight in the car and called it a day. Time for some ibuprofen!!


Old carpet laid over the new for trial fitting.

Letting us all rest for a night.

 

So far, we've done about 4 iterations of fitting, pulling, trimming, fitting again. We're now to the point of just trimming little bits off here and there to try to get a better fit. I found another thread on installing these crappy replacement carpets where the author use paving stones to weigh the carpet down so it molded to the curves and recesses of the floor pan better. We've resorted to that, too. Letting the bricks sit on it overnight to see if we can get a better fit before working our way back in the car.

I swear, it seems the vendors of carpets and headliners for these cars saw a Camaro in a parking lot somewhere and decided they could make sellable parts based on the single viewing. If I found the guy. who thought the fit was 'good enough to sell', I'd probably pound him to death with the bricks we're required to use to get a 'sort of' fit!! The carpet in our SVO, while difficult, was NOWHERE near this ill-fitting!!!


Pressed carpet under brick.

 

My ACC mass backing carpet fit pretty bad in my trans am. it's on my to do list to see if I can flatten it out better but I don't have high hopes, it seems like it has extra material in all the wrong places.

Last year I put an ACC mass backing carpet in a 92 k2500 and the fit was absolutely perfect. I think ACC just did a poor job on the mold for these cars

 

Since the aftermarket headliner fit so incredibly badly, and the foam is already starting to fail on it, I figured I'd try to reuse the old headliner board. The material is on its way. As mentioned in another thread, one method of R&R using the old board is to coat the board in fiberglass resin, then glue the fabric to that. Today I started that process. I found that a Scothbrite scrubbing ball seemed to work pretty well at removing the remnants of the old foam. Attached to a drill, as it's supposed to be used, seemed to be a bit too aggressive, and would pull some of the board up. I then got a piece of Scotchbrite pad to try. While it worked, it would also grab the board, and it was hard to hold in my hand.

I then got a cleaning brush I had just purchased to help with cleaning some of the plastic parts before they go back into the car. I purposely chose it for its soft bristles. It's bigger than a toothbrush, but the bristles are about the same softness. That worked perfectly, I'd scrub a bit, then blow the dust away to check my progress. That task took about 15 minutes start-to-finish.

I then started with the fiberglass resin. I used it with some fiberglass cloth to reinforce the anchors for the clips that secure the front of the headliner to the roof of the car. I also ran around the holes cut for the sun visor mounts, along the edges, and down the middle where the dome light goes, adding cloth there, too for reinforcement. That used up what I had left of an old repair kit, so I stopped there while I let things set. I need to do the corners that go down the sail panels, but will probably need to roll the board over to do that, so stopped for the day.

I then spent a few minutes cleaning overspray off the threshold panels and checking the action of the bricks. They're helping, but I feel I need to cut the holes for at least the front seat studs before continuing. I want help with that, but my co-driver was busy smoking some dino ribs, so I didn't want to interfere with that. Perhaps tomorrow.


Tools used to clean the board. Brush used is on the right.

Nearly done cleaning board.

Clip anchors secured with fiberglass cloth.

Center of board and dome light area.

 

Make sure you add some fiberglass mat around the rear seatbelt openings and the front corners, those are very weak areas and benefit from reinforcement.

 

Yep. That area on our bard has already ripped when pulling it out! One side pulled completely off, the other just tore. That's one of the reasons I stopped work yesterday was I was using some resin as 'glue' to reattach the torn off piece and wanted it to fully set undisturbed.

 

Does anyone know where to get any replacement factory headliner clips? These are the clips that hold the front of the headliner against the roof of the car. Two of the three broke on our car trying to get them out. They. look similar to, but are not exactly like the A-pillar clips. I've posted a picture of the A-pillar clips here. The headliner clips do not hat that 'step' at the base, and the other flat piece is smaller. Simply cutting that lower flat piece off will make the part flimsy. I doubt I can use those without any significant modification, so came here to see. Thanks.

 

Found it! These are apparently still made. GM 20359997. I got a set from Jegs on their way!!

 

And today's progress. The shifter parts arrived. I was able to stretch the new dust boot over the base of the lever and pop it into place. The shifter cut I ordered was no better than the one in the car, so it will go into the spares box. I got the left rear corner of the headliner backer board glassed up.

It's amazing what a difference fresh resin will make! I used some stuff I'd had in the shop for a while yesterday. I was able to mix about 3-3 oz batches up, and was able to spread them out with the same brush. The stuff says it will go off in 5-10 minutes with the ambient temps what we were enjoying at the time. After laying the resin/glass down, I got to doing other things, and after about a half hour came back to find the stuff still tacky. It finally flashed off and set overnight (whew). Today, I started with a fresh kit we bought on Saturday. I tried a 3 oz batch, but it set in the cup before I was done. Since I was working on just the one corner, I mixed up another 2 oz batch, and was able to get it down before it set. I went through two mixing cups and brushes, though.

 

Is that part # for the a-pillar clips, or the headliner clips? Either way, I need to order a bunch lol.

 

Those are the three headliner clips for a hardtop. They ARE different from the A-pillar clips. And yes, you'll want spares before taking anything apart, because you'll probably break most/all of them. They really do seem to be a use once part.

 

Yep, that's my experiences too. Maybe 25% of them survive. I've always rigged up velcro in their place as I was never aware that those clips could be purchased separately.

 

I'm not sure I'd trust Velcro, even though we have some instustrial-quality Velcro available. I'd always be afraid I'd have it out on a nice summer day and the adhesive give up. I guess I could use epoxy for an adhesive, but no need, since I've found OEM-style clips.

Made a bit more progress today. I cleaned the front kick panels and took some bronze wool to the overspray (they spent probably a whole 15 minutes masking stuff before they covered the factory paint). Most of the overspray is gone, and the metallic sheen is certainly gone, so hopefully the fresh carpet covers most of what's left.

I also finished patching in the broken and cracked headliner backer board on the driver's side. After that, I flipped the board over and started coating it with resin. The stuff SOAKS UP the resin!!! My. co-driver is going to pick up another couple of containers of resin on the way home from work tomorrow. Still waiting for the fabric to arrive.


Left side rear corner patched.

Leading edge. Rust-colored board is the treated part.

Passenger side.

 

I always stapled the velcro to the headliner board, before recovering. So far, none have let go of the roof yet and it's been years.

But the proper clips are WAY easier, lol.

 

STILL WOP. But while I do that, we did some more glassing of the headliner board. I got my co-driver to help today. Was hoping to lay down the fabric in two sheets, but as we worked, it was becoming obvious the whole sheet wouldn't lay down in the recesses of the board. So we're doing it in strips. After the aborted attempt at a whole sheet, we got about 1/4 way done today. Gonna have to go get more fabric.

 

i had mine redone a few yeras back, and it is now falling.
appears the clips on the a pillar trim have failed.
i ordered some new, but havent tried putting theheadliner back up, as i have to weld in the sub frame connectors, so the interior willbe coming out

--fun times for the both of us

 

It cost millions of dollars, cost thousands of lives, hundreds of paint brushes and gallons of fiberglass resin on too many yards of fabric, but we have the headliner board finally coated. Still waiting for the fabric to ship. I may start prodding resellers tomorrow.

 

The headliner fabric and other bits have finally shipped from OC Carpets. They do state that there's a 10-15-day shipping average for the sail panels and sun visors, so am figuring that was the delay. Hope to be able to get to this part of the project next week.

Meanwhile, I pulled and cleaned the hatch seal and the area around the seal where it sits in the car. Not perfect, but it looks a TON better than the (dirty) gray and tan seal I pulled out. I need to hit the ends with a dab of black RTV just so things lay down better. Found an interesting saw blade-looking insert in the ends of the seal. I'm guessing it's there to keep the ends connected. I've never seen that before. It was glued in, too.

I acquired a hand steamer. I'm hoping the steamer will help the carpet lay down better, and get some wrinkles out of it. We'll see. I hit the front floorboard area with it today and laid the bricks back on it to hopefully aid with ironing out the wrinkles. We'll have a look tomorrow. I also trimmed a bit more from the edges, cut the front front seat stud holes and installed both front kick panels.

Tiny steps.......

 

Moar parts have arrived. I got the replacement housing that screws to the rear roof trim piece just in front of the CMSL. It didn't come with the car, so now we have a replacement. I also got repro license plate light housings to put the new LED bulbs in. The lens is much less crackled than the OEM unit, but because of that, shows the LED bulb. I'd prefer the LED, since it'll burn cooler than the old incandescent bulbs, so it's a bit of a looks compromise.

I've been concerned how spongy the headliner padding seems. It feels like it's separated between the bottom layer and top layer. I've started drilling a couple of small holes for resin access, and squeegee-ing resin across the upper layer. I'm then setting a piece of 4X4 under it to press upward on the board so the resin from the top hopefully 'glues' to the resin on the bottom. Waiting for it to fully-set before I investigate further.

The steamer seemed to have helped a bit. The brace across the driver's side floorboard for the frontmost front seat studs is more-defined after an overnight with bricks laid on them. I'll continue with that process to the back, but am waiting to go to the store for groceries this afternoon where I'll pick up a couple of gallons of distilled water.

The TCT cutter is working great for cutting round holes over the studs and other screw/bolt holes you have to make in the carpet. A lot less smoke and you don't ruin a socket doing it the 'heat the socket with a torch and burn the hole into the carpet' method I've seen online. You just remove the drill bit from the center and press the cutter over the stud/bolt. Where there's not a stud, or bolt, you lay the cutter at a bit of an angle to get a start on cutting, then raise it to vertical once it gets going.

Since it doesn't always cut the hole completely, the haberdashery scissors my co-driver has loaned me have been awesome. Just wished I had a left-hand set, as it seems every time I'm trying to cut, going with my left hand would be so much easier.


TCT cutter with carpet plug.

TCT Cutter and scissors.

 

Got all of the carpet in. Still steaming and weighting down the trunk area so the creases disappear, but starting assembly of the front part of the interior. Now I'm looking for the light socket for the HVAC controls in the console. The one on our car has a broken ear, and won't stay in place.

Still coating the back side of the headliner board. I hope to finish that up tomorrow. Then I can roll it over and glue the fabric down,

Wish I could find replacement fabric to match the seats. That's looking like an impossible task.

 

More progress. Still not having any luck finding any decent seat fabric, but am continuing the search. I'm amassing a big pile of resellers/vendors who are a no. I am pretty much done with the carpet. I think I have two more holes to cut for the front and back seat inner seatbelt mounts, but that's about it.

Got the trunk panels all put back in place. Re-glued a couple of bits of OEM sound deadener that didn't stick when the car was built, and added a couple of sheets of lightweight hush mat-like material to a couple of bare spots, also from when the car was built. All smothered in glue, just no sound deadener.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the rear hatch area. Pretty happy with it.

 

More slow progress. Some moron ran into my co-driver's Tahoe and folded the rear bumper cover in, so we had to spend a bit of time making that at least look presentable. Our portapower worked great pushing the plastic back out. I polished the rub spots out and got the cover re-clipped to the quarter panel metal. After that, we got to work a bit on the Camaro.

Got most of the seat belts back in. I'll wait until the headliner is in before reattaching the front belts and installing the console.

I think I've finally laid the last layer of resin to the headliner backer board. So we'll probably glue the fabric in this weekend, around weather and other chores. We've sold a truck in anticipation of a new one arriving, so I'd like to get it more-presentable. Wash, wax and vacuum. That'll take up a few hours, too.

 

I think we're finally to the point of gluing the fabric to the headliner board. I'm reading the directions for use on the 3M headliner adhesive and in those directions are the following: "May not hold material to vertical or overhead surfaces". I'm thinking WTF?!? The sh*t has 'headliner' in its name, but won't hold on overhead surfaces?!?

Anyone actually use this stuff with success/failure, or what's better? Thanks.

 

Permatex headliner spray adhesive. This is about five years old now.

 

Been taking courses at U-toob University, and found a guy who does upholstery who stated on several videos that using the 3M stuff will only lead to heartbreak. His recommendation was to use DAP contact cement sprayed through a cheap HF paint gun. I'm not up to that level yet, so opted for the Permatex stuff. It should be here tomorrow.

 

I've always used 3M, but it wasn't universal headliner stuff. "Super 77" I think it's called.

 

We. got the headliner glued down yesterday. I looks like cr@p, but I'll live with it for now. We had the headliner fall in our '12 Caprice, and I just pulled it out, and haven't noticed it missing ever since. So may not really notice this, either, as long as it's not rubbing the top of my head.

Most of the bumps are probably from the multiple iterations of fiberglass resin application, with some added fiberglass fabric on some of the really soft spots. We used more than 2 cans of Permatex stuff. We ended up gluing some of the bit you wrap around the other side of the board with contact cement. The spray pattern from both Permatex cans kind of suxored, but we made do.

The seals we ordered for the A-pillar trim have arrived. At first glance, it looks pretty dang close. I'll have a closer comparison when I get out to the shop in a bit.

 

Two cans?!? I did my headliner and both said panels with less than half a can. You only want a lightish coat on the substrate and real light coat on the foam side. And it has to flash off before sticking them together.

 

As I mentioned, the pattern out the spray head was horrible. At about 4" distance, there was about a 2" fan, but at 6+", the 'fan' seemed to collapse on itself, and squirted out about 3/4" pattern. BOTH cans did it, so it's a feature, I guess. And yes, 2+ cans is excessive, but the word on the street was that you wanted NO gaps in glue, and wetter is better. One guy I watched a YuuToob vid of did a Holden sedan headliner with 3/4 can of the stuff.

So, better too much, than too little, and it's DONE!!

 

Done with the headliner part of the project. What an incredibly huge PITA that was!! I ended up reinforcing the back with fiberglass cloth, and just brushing/squeeging resin into the surface facing the. interior of the car. That's probably not the proper process, but the backer board is incredibly flimsy, and was torn in a few places, requiring some reinforcement.

Not at all happy with the way it turned out, but while driving the car I won't have to stare at the headliner. Those lumps and bumps show through, and make the headliner look like a fat lady's legs! Since the edges had pulled apart a bit, they ended up being almost too thick. The headliner fought us every inch of the way. I had to use at least 3 different screw lengths to reattach the sun visors. I added some aftermarket seal rubber along the a-pillar panel, and ended up having to rip most of that out just so the clips would clip into the roof panel. Fingers crossed it all stays put.

I'm now trying to clean the cloth upholstery, and again, the thing is fighting me every step of the way. I used Turtle Wax carpet and upholstery cleaner and some Griot's carpet and upholstery cleaner on the back seat, followed up with a carpet and upholstery wet vacuum, using only distilled water. That resulted in some sort of reaction leaving an orangish coating on the top of the back seat back. Luckily, a fine mist of distilled water and a lot of blotting with a towel picked most of that up.

The seats are stained and dirty from years of use, and I'm finding the upholstery cleaners aren't doing much for the stains. I even rubbed one spot with a towel dampened with brake cleaner and nothing happened. Sigh. I'll go ahead and finish at least wiping the seats down and probably say 'Eff it!' and call it a day. We still have to swap the fabric on the driver's seat out (driver's seat is tan, while the rest of the interior is gray). That'll be ton's of fun!!

The sail panel inserts, of course, folded at the speaker cutouts. After they've been in a while, they don't look too bad, but you can still see the creases in certain light. I still have the OEM molded inserts, and a bit of headliner fabric, so may re-cover them and put them in the car. Luckily, that can happen after everything else is done. Winter project maybe?

 

Still putting things together, cleaning along the way. I think I found a decent process for doing an OK cleaning job. I'm putting Incredible Stain remover in a spray bottle my co-driver loaned me from her scrap booking equipment, spraying the fabric down, scrubbing it with a soft toothbrush, then rubbing it dry with a towel. That gets a LOT of cr@p up. If I have to repeat, I'll use the Hoover wet vacuum to make sure I get most of the liquid out. I stopped today with cleaning the remaining back seat, and am letting it dry. before installing it. Then, I'll be done with the back seats.

I took the driver's side seat apart to put the replacement fabric on and was not happy with the state of the foam. The outside bolster is showing its age. The old seat we pulled from the car is actually worse, so it can't be used. I figured I'd replace it while I had it out, and went searching for replacements. Jeg's CLAIMS to have one seats-worth of foam in stock, so I've ordered it. We'll see. I guess I can always put the seat back together and wait until I can actually get the foam, should the parts prove to be back-ordered like everyone else is saying.

I also continue to put the console back together. I put the radio back in, and can receive no radio stations. All I get is static. Not sure if it's because the car is in the big Faraday cage that is the shop, or if I'm missing something. The only odd thing I find is that there were only 3 electrical connectors for the radio, plus the antenna cable, but there are 4 plugs on the back of the radio itself. Like an idiot, I failed to take pictures while coming apart, but all 3 of the connectors are on one harness, so if I'm missing a connector, it's on a separate harness. It's just an AM/FM stereo, without any special bits. Just a low-buck part for a cop car.

 

I got the back seats and console back in. The console was a bisch! The e-brake has to be pretty much vertical to drop the. top of the console on, and ours is adjusted kind of tight, so we only have about 10-15-degrees of rotation until it's set. I had to remove the brake anchor bolts so I could wiggle the top into place, then sneak my hand under the top with varying combinations of long and short 10mm sockets and extensions to get the brake re-secured.

I'll hopefully give the passenger seat a final cleaning and bolt it into place, then that side of the car should be done. The driver's seat was a replacement, so was covered in another color fabric. The seat back foam is kind of worn on the outside bolster, so I'm going to replace that. I got lucky, and may have found the last repro seat foam in the country. It's on the truck for delivery as I type.

In spite of my co-driver stating that we'll NEVER do seat covers again, we're.... doing seat covers again. I'm hoping it's not the relationship-limiting activity it was when we did the seat covers on the SVO! Luckily, the Camaro seat bolsters aren't that pronounced, and we're using take-off seat covers to match the interior.

The shifter ****, a simple black ****, has a crack. It still holds on the shifter lever, but looks kind of unsightly. I found a replacement that has the 5-speed shift pattern on it, but looks otherwise stock. Since the console has the shift pattern on it, and it's 30+-year old 'white', it's a completely different color than the pattern on the ****. That, and the pattern on the **** is kind of redundant with the one on the console. I'm still considering whether or not to use the AM ****. I think my co-driver is more in the 'use the old parts' frame of mind. Decisions, decisions......

 

Got out to the shop between thunderstorms and made more progress. I got the floor mats we got with an old take-out carpet set cleaned up and in the car, and got the passenger seat back in. It's finally looking like it's back together. We still have to do replace the fabric on the driver's seat so that it matches the rest of the interior, and hopefully that'll at least get started this weekend. We have the fabric and repro seat foam so we're good to go. I was planing to just replace the seat back foam, but after looking at it more, we may also do the seat bottom. We already have both pieces, so why not?

We'll also probably be pulling the Firebird off the trailer this weekend for some needed work, so the Camaro seat will get moved to the house so we can do that in air conditioned comfort, and have room to work around the TA.

 

While. I wait for parts for the race car, I turned my efforts back to the Camaro. I managed to get the driver's seat bottom recovered, using an old take off cover received from John in RI (Thanks, John!).

I also used new foam, since the stuff on the old seats was pretty beat up. After taking apart the current driver's seat, with. the tan fabric, I discovered the wire netting used on the seat bottom was all corroded and broken. No wonder I sat so low in. the car white that seat!! Soo, I had to dig the seat we took out of the car so many years ago and took it apart. The metal seat base has a fatigue crack on it, but shouldn't be anything to worry about. After much pulling and stretching and pushing and prodding, employing a tie down strap and actually sitting on it to compress the foam some, I was able to get it all hog-ringed in and secure.

I'm knackered, but happy it's done. Now on to the seat back. It may wait a day, or two, the parts for the race car arrived, and we need to get it buttoned up for a July 6th event.

 

Kind of hit a roadblock with the driver's seat recovering project and am waiting on more parts for the Firebird, so decided to get some little things done on the Camaro, Got a full set. of seat rack mount covers from a Bay Trader and installed the ones on the passenger seat. The car had just a pair of the front covers for the passenger seat when we got it, so these are a nice addition. Can't wait to get the driver's seat done and the same covers mounted over there.


Font covers.

Rear covers.

 

I _finally_ got the driver's seat put back together. It looks like that side may have a 4th Gen seat rack, as it was a real bisch to wrestle into place and get bolted down, and the 3rd Gen seat mount covers will in no way fit to these mounting brackets . I will probably pull the seat out and replace them, as they also seem to raise the seat about an inch (that may be just the new seat foam and a non-broken seat base, too), which is annoying getting in and out.

I cleaned some spots a bit, since I was using take-out seat covers, but the discoloration is not too noticeable in the car. Can't wait to be completely. done with this project!!

 

I. discovered that the driver's seat rack was bent, which made it really hard to install (it pinched the seat belt between the seat and console, and pushed against the console. Late last week, the replacement rack arrived. It's a take-out, so I scuffed it with some Scotchbrite, wiped it down with brake cleaner and shot it with some semi-gloss black to hide the rust. Had it still been mostly OEM unpainted metal, I'd have shot it with some clear, but it had. obviously been in a car that sat in a junk yard for a while, and got wet a few times.

After the paint dried, I bolted it back on the seat and threw everything back in the car. I am almost done with this project. Since we do hope to maybe autocross this car again, I'm keeping the 3" lap belts in the driver's side, so am waiting for a B-pillar bracket I think I can use to mount the belt to the outside seat belt anchor. That should be here Monday. Then, I'm done with this project, for now.

I have other projects in the shop that have been stacking up, so will get to those next. Working on a way to stabilize the door shells on our Firebird, which will probably. be next, since we race it the first weekend of next month. Then I want to get TPMS sensors installed in the trailer tires, since our new truck will monitor them, and have to do some remediation to our 4000-mile Dakota R/T. Gonna be a busy year!!

 

Hello there! I've spent waaayyy too much time trying to get those speed nut/push nut things off. What finally worked for you? I've tried vise grips/pliers/prying/cursing... nothing seems to work. I am almost to the point of cutting them. :-(

 

I've always grabbed them with some quality needle-nosed pliers and wiggled them down off of the studs. If you wiggle them with just the right motion, it's not TOO terrible.

 

^^This. AND, a decent 90-degree pick to get behind the nut and get it out enough for the pliers to get onto. A good dental pick might do the job, or, I have a set of the Griot's Garage long-reach hook & pick set:

https://www.griotsgarage.com/8-piece...hook-pick-set/

But yeah, I feel your pain! My troubles were exacerbated by gimpy shoulders and bad back. Reaching up to that light was in a VERY inconvenient location for me.