348 interior redo/restoration progress and seat opinion

I think I’ve made it clear in the past that I really have no love for peanut butter colored interior and have planned to remove it from my 348 from the beginning. Here are a couple pictures of my progress since it started snowing on and off here in Montana I decided there was no time like the present. You may have seen my last post about this car and finding a demolished ac duct under the dash and having to pull the heater core. Well today I got a little time and got the new fully black dash installed. I plan to do a full restoration thread in the future but for now I’m just dropping little progresses. First picture is the original peanut butter bottom dash then the full black dash. And no I couldn’t just swap out the bottom pieces, there would have still been a strip of tan between the upper and lower. I got an ok deal on the black dash so the full swap happened.

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During and after, I think the dash area is now a good 9 out of 10. Hopefully I can carry that through rest of the interior.


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My black seats that I have been using the last couple years are in rough shape. If I remember correctly I bought them from Plugzit, I think from his tree car. I just rubbed in leather conditioner and each seat sucked up about a half a bottle, the leather looks better but it is too late. When I bought them the threads were starting to give up on the seats and they each have a split now. I’ve found that having them redone costs about as much as a pretty nice set of 355 seats so I may go that way but in the mean time what do you guys think of these seats I have sitting around? They are plenty narrow but maybe look a bit tall, they are a good 3 inches taller than the stock seats but they may do for a while. Sorry hard to get food pictures. Unfortunately this is about as far as I’m going to get on this car for a while as other pressing matters will be taking over for a while. I’ll let you know when I get back to it.


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I got the dash and the carpet from slava81 on eBay. He has pretty good prices but you get what you pay for sometimes. I bought the dash a couple years ago and have had it stashed away waiting to go in. When I originally bought it I thought it came with the radio cover piece but no, I had to pay him more to get that. Then when I just finally went to put the dash in I found it was cracked up and mounting holes were broke out, I had to do some fiberglass work to make it useable of course that was never mentioned when I bought it. So then I bought a carpet set from him, no mention it was from a spider and the back wall carpets were much different and wouldn’t work. So I see he lists another (correct) carpet set up and I ask if, since he sold me ones that wouldn’t work for my car, would he separate the set and sell me just the back wall carpet... nope buy the whole set or get lost. So I bought the whole set... again. Anyway, I sold the spider wall carpets but I still have the extra black floor carpet if anyone is looking.

I don’t have plans to put the red stitching anywhere else, those seats having that stitching is part of why I’m not totally sold on using them long term. The are super cheap seats and I thought maybe they would be a plausible place holder until I spring for some nice OEM seats. I’m going to spend a boat load of cash redoing this car so if I could defer that cost a while it would help me get through the rest of the restorarion.

 

If anyone has a nice black center console please let me know. I am still in need of one. I have one but it’s pretty trashed and I got a quote for $300 to 400 to completely redo it. I think I could find a nice one for that and not have to go through the hassle of getting this on redone and matching the rest of the leather. I have a very nice tan one for sale if anyone needs one.

 

It is for sale, as is a tan center console and a bunch of the other lower half of the interior that was tan.