corellian vette

Had some time to kill this afternoon and remembered an old restoration trick and decided to give it a try.

For my blue interior I had a couple sun-faded spots but not enough to replace all the carpet. I had recently purchased a can of SEM flexible coating (#15043 Shadow Blue) in hopes it would be a good color match for the dash, which it was not.

A spray test though sure looked very close to the carpet. So I decided to paint the carpet. Now I've done this in the past and there is a trick - you need a stiff brush to "work in" the paint and you want to brush it while the paint dries. You use a very thin coat, "brush in" the paint and the carpet will remain soft and pliable. You use very light coats because you don't want the carpet to harden.



SEM Color Coat and a small, plastic brush which is stiff enough to work in the paint but not to stiff to rip it out.

I started with the rear tool panel. Here you can see I've done a very quick section so you can see the fade vs. the color. It's a prefect match.



A close-up. On the left - brushed in paint. On the right, the pink fade. below the fade is underneath the hump and is the color of the original carpet. Yeah... this is gonna work great.



And the finished product. I purposely left a little unevenness so that it looks natural. I also brushed in some paint on some of the original carpet to blend. The finished product. You can run your hands over this and it feels soft and pliable.



The other faded area was the back of the seats. The tool kit worked well, so I decided to give it a try. Here you can see the drivers side done, and the passenger side for reference.



And finally, both sides. The look perfect! I have ordered new rear carpet so I'm not doing that at this point.



So I have a good match for Blue. Black will be easy using the SEM interior black if you want to clean up an area.

Hope this helps!

linderpat

wow, nice result!

joejoe

I've used the s.e.m for a tan 944. Carpets had faded to silver and the dye brought it back to new (at least it matched what was under the seats) That looks very good indeed, just remember to keep brushing it to keep it soft.

GT6ixer

Agree. Thanks for the tip!

smoke-inator

nicely done, i used the same when i did my LT-1 vette.
Black is much more forgiving than any other colors.
Don't forget....same tricks hold true for dash components with similar products.


Ron

beran earms

That looks really nice, great job!

cali4sun

Wow, as others have said nice result! Looks great

Thanks for sharing....

'89 928 S4 GP White/Black

crushingday

I think it looks great!

FREAKINHEAT

Where did you purchase the spray paint? I have a grey/white interior that needs help.

corellian vette

Find your local paint store. We have a place called Wesco here in WA. They do professional paints and carry SEM prodcuts.