Metal Guru

When I bought my car in 2006, it had a "custom" interior installed two years previous by the PO. No one in the local PCA who knew the car could understand why he did that. I didn't understand why he didn't replace the carpet first, as the driver's sill was down to the jute backing in one spot.
I spoke to a close friend of the PO at C&C last Saturday. Apparently the PO saw a bolt of Alcantera suede and promptly lost his mind. He had to swath the entire interior in it
The shop he chose for the project was better known for boat interiors and it showed. They chose furniture leather which promptly wore out on the driver's bolster by the time I bought the car two years after the conversion. He insisted on covering every square inch of interior in grey Alcantera: headliner, package shelf, waterfall, quarter panels, door panels (including the door tops) upper and lower dash.
After tackling other projects, I got around to addressing the interior in 2011. Had a new stock headliner installed, remove all the window tinting (which was under all the window gaskets ), and peeled off the Alcantera everywhere I could, leaving it on door panels, seats and quarter panels. It improved the appearance a lot but I still wasn't satisfied. Last fall I made plans to finish the interior, returning it to stock.
Here are the before pictures from 2011:

das76

I’m toying with the idea of replacing the carpet in mine as a winter project. Did you replace that ? Where did you source from?

I’ve seen that there are options for both Porsche OE and aftermarket kits

Metal Guru

The bottom line is that at some point, a 30 year old car will need a refurbished interior. There pictures show how the carpet was turning grey and pilling due to wear. While most of the interior materials are synthetic, ozone and other atmospheric pollutants will attack those materials and break them down.

Metal Guru

Early on I decided that I wanted to replicate a stock interior. The project was going to require a carpet set, seat covers and the recovering of any interior components that were showing any aging.
Anthony assisted me in picking a manufacturing source for carpet and seat covers in Autos International out in California. They have a reputation for vintage Porsche interior restoration.
To install the seat covers and recover the rest of the interior, I awarded the job to Shelby Auto Trim in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Shelby is very well known in the hot rod and custom car community for their work and do a lot of custom work for the Big Three.
For a while now I have wanted to install sport seats, so I sourced a pair from a Rennlister. The foam was in great shape so I pulled the trigger. Learned some stuff about seats I'll share later in this thread.

Metal Guru

So now it was time to remove the interior pieces and take them to Shelby and tear out the old carpet. I retained the stock sound deadening and repaired the little bit that cracked (mostly in the passenger footwell).
There was a big glue buildup on the sills when I removed the carpet. Rather than laboriously removing it with xylene, I chilled it with CO2 and chiseled it off, making fast work of it.
When you receive a carpet set, the various pieces of carpet are vague suggestions of what the final shape will be. You end up cutting darts into them and reducing the span judiciously to get everything to lay flat. I watched the Lakewell installation video a few times before I started.
Here are some work-in-progress pictures;

Metal Guru

Around the third week of May, I started receiving the finished interior from Shelby. I installed a new (to me) rear window (Thanks Anthony) and set about putting the puzzle back together.
The PO's trim shop had completely altered the waterfall portion of the rear seats so I had Anthony scale up his, made a drawing and asked Shelby to re-produce it. You can also see the re-covered quarter panels. The old ones were marked up and shiny.
I think it came out good:


Parts I had recovered: package shelf, waterfall, quarter panels, center console, door panel top rails and lower dash. The passenger side top rail was completely trashed by the PO's trim shop (over-tightening the mounting screw) so I had to source a decent one from Flebay. Door panels were purchased new from FVD.

Metal Guru

One problem I encountered during disassembly was that the previous trim shop had re-installed the seat belts with whatever they had on hand. They didn't save and organize any of the various fasteners and didn't re-assemble them in the right order. Also, all the anchor bolts were not torqued properly. This is a big deal from a safety standpoint. Porsche homologated the car with the correct fasteners installed in the correct order. Any deviation is equivalent to rolling the dice with your life in a serious accident. I had to figure out what seat belts I had, what was supposed to compose the stack of various washer configurations, ordering the material and installing it in the proper sequence. Fortunately, the parts weren't expensive and I had them in time for the re-assembly. However I had to organize them into kits and have the appropriate PET sheet on hand for the install.
Then there was the matter of the sport seats.
Turns out what I bought was early 944 sport seats. I wasn't able to get them to fit initially at the rear mounting holes. The interference was between the center console and the seat belt receptacle.The receptacle anchor is welded to the inner seat rail. Comparing hardware quickly provided a solution (albeit a rather expensive one ).


On the left is the old style 944 inner rail; the right is the post - 1987 inner rail. The difference in stick-out is about an inch.


These are the old vs new seat belt bolts. The old bolt got a beauty cover. The new one is cut down and doesn't have a beauty cover called out in the PET; there's no room for one..
Starting in 1987, Porsche commonized front seats across all models. I didn't realize this. I do now
Actually, having to buy new inner seat rails was not the end of the world. For some reason, every set of seat rails I've seen out of an old 944 look like they were stored at the bottom of the ocean; they are that rusty. I worked on mine before I realized I had an issue and no matter how I did it, corrosion kept getting in the tracks so they didn't slide very nice. They literally would need to be split apart and blasted. Since I had to replace my inners anyway, I bought new outers too.

Metal Guru

I could have had Shelby make my door panels but it was a little cheaper to buy them from FVD. I did try the Appbiz ones but they didn't even come close to resembling stock ones and I was worried that they were so flimsy that I'd destroy them putting them on. What I didn't know was I would have to put an additional 10 hours of labor into them to enlarge the tweeter holes, add the cutout for the top of the door handle and provide a mounting for the crossovers that hide in the door pockets. Also, the tweeter mount brackets had to be removed from the old panels and riveted to the new ones, otherwise there will not be a way to mount the speakers.


Another pesky detail is that aftermarket speakers are not plug-and-play with the mounting means Porsche provides. Since I had enough on my plate I opted for new factory speakers. I also had to fix the speaker wiring that the stereo shop touched

Metal Guru

Now for the big finish:

Megatron-UK

That's nice. Very original looking!

das76

This looks great Paul. I jumped in too early on my first comment above - not knowing this was going to be a multipart build thread - sorry!

This is perfect timing as I'm thinking this will be a good winter project for me to tackle and might consider the door / rear quarter panels too but mine are in decent enough shape.

Are you going to keep the silver door/brake handles and shifter? Personally I like the silver - it gives the interior a bit of 'pop' and am thinking of some similar pieces for my black interior.

Did you need to do any refinishing / replacing of the door handle/armrest and door pocket pieces? Mine show some wear on the handle.

Can you shed some light as to why you chose Auto International vs ordering the carpet from other online sources (Lakewell, Auto Atlanta etc)? I'm assuming it was substantially more (seems like OE / aftermarket carpet sets go for $700-1500)?

Did they also provide carpet for the back of the rear seats with the "turbo" inscribed? Can you please share a picture of how that turned out?

Thanks again!
Dave

Metal Guru

Thanks for the compliments.
Yes, I'm keeping the silver accents. My wife collaborated with me on this and she said all along that the silver accents should stay. The PO had added stainless thresholds, aluminum pedals (super slippery when your feet are wet) and aluminum trim rings to the instruments but I thought that was too much and removed all of it. We initially kicked around doing silver piping on the seats but after taking a sample swatch that Autos provided, changed our minds on that and went with all black.
My pocket lids and door handles are in good shape so I reused them as is. I need to refinish the steering wheel, maybe this winter.
Anthony advised me on the carpet. He had just finished the interior of his C2 and said he preferred the Autos carpet set to Lakewell as it had a more authentic binding. Autos did embroider the "Turbo" script on the rear seat back carpets for an upcharge. I specified silver thread for this (I'll take a picture).
It's worth mentioning that Shelby found defects with the seat covers when I presented the covers to them; flaws that would have been visible when installed. Autos agreed that they were sub-standard, paid to ship them back California, repaired them and shipped them back to me all inside of a week. IMO, this is an excellent and noteworthy response from a supplier and as such, a company that I want to do business with.

Metal Guru

Here's the rear seat back embroidery:


I also want to thank Helio for recommending Techquipment floor mats. They are a little on the spendy side, but have a great anchoring method so they don't end up bunching up under the pedals.

das76

That looks great - and yes your wife has good taste!

If you were just looking at the hours to remove and install the new carpet (ie not dealing with your seat issue, doors, speakers etc) how many hours do you figure you spent on that part of the project?

Metal Guru

Two days to remove the interior and carpet and four days to fit the new carpet. You spend a lot of time on your knees. It's fun if you enjoy puzzles