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Learning a New Skill

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Re: Learning a New Skill- finished TR3a interior

That's where I go next.

Thanks for the encouragement!
 
Re: Learning a New Skill- finished TR3a interior

That is some great work. It makes me think about doing seats covers for the Herald. I know I can't touch my wife's $2000 dollar machine but she has a surger and an older machine she may let me play with. But I think your right. I need to find an old machine with good gears. Maybe I still have the old machine of my grandmas that was in the sawing cabinet.

The issue I have is I don't want to rip off the covers I have now to make patterns. The ones I have are not to bad but have a few rips. Maybe I can find someone with old seats that are willing to take the covers off of or have old covers around that I can make patterns out of.

Thanks for the inspiration. Maybe that will be my project to keep me busy this winter while I can't get into the frozen garage.
 
Re: Learning a New Skill- finished TR3a interior

apbos said:
The sewing is done! ... I even built the door pockets ... Net cost about $100...saving about $600 time spent with the family on the project priceless........
Click to expand...

Paul-

Its official. You are now on my 'too talented, too productive, I'm not jealous, I'm not jealous' list.

But I forgive you if you happen to have patterns for the door pockets! How'd you do them?
 
Re: Learning a New Skill- finished TR3a interior

Randy
The door pockets were not too difficult. I had an old set that were in poor condition. I took them apart at the rivets and made at tracing. I found some "solid" cardboard at an upholstry shop and drew out the pattern and cut it out. Next I made the folds and then I glued on a layer of ~2mm foam (Micheals in the kids craft section) with contact cement. Next I clamped a section together and drilled for the rivet holes and put in rivets using a washer to strenghten the carboard sandwich on the outside. I guess you could felt the insides but the foam has a great feel and looks alot like a felt layer.

Thanks all for the comments. It is a project you can do yourself. However I have created a monster. My wife now has claimed "my" sewing machine and she just purchased another vintage machine. I'm afaid she is going to collect vintage sewing machines like I collect LBC's. An inexpensive hobby though she will nat pay more than $80 for a machine.

Paul
 
Hey - those look great! Glad to see that those patterns I created worked out for someone other than myself. Was worried that my results might have been irreproducible. Will look forward to seeing them on the car!
 
Welcome back Craig -

you need to change your signature, you must be driving that 3A by now!

Randy
 
I am indeed driving the 3A, although not very often - we still have not been able to figure out why it shows such low oil pressure, so are being very careful until we can dig into it again. We believed we got all the bearing and rod clearances correct, and there's no oil gushing out, so we are stumped. If anyone has any insights I'd appreciate it. Currently using the 10w50 racing oil and have been considering going to something thicker to see if that makes any difference. Also wondering if there are any adjustments in the relief valve near the oil filter (we went with the spin-on adapter) that could make a difference....
 
Craig,

If the oil pressure is always low, ie right at startup, then, maybe the relief has issues.

but, if the oil pressure starts at high and then settles, you have other issues and mucking around the relief valve isn't going to help.
 
I'm late to this thread.......it looks like it ended about the time I decided to make all of my own interior panels. Here's what I can add after finishing my first test set. The sewing machine is critical to your success. It has to be able to take a #18 needle and #69 thread both of which are the best to use on vinyl/leather. It has to have a walking foot attachment. The walking foot keeps the top layer of material moving at the same rate as the bottom layer of material. Without one, you'll find thick spots bunching up or the presser foot getting stuck and the material stops moving. We first got a brand new Necchi machine on eBay for $250 which worked great though I had trouble controlling the speed......my foot kept going faster then my hands and brain could process. Luckily a friend tried teh machine, loved it and bought it from us. So....... we upgraded to a Necchi electronic machine that two features that I love: speed controller ( I set it slow) and an auto-lock beginning and ending stitch. This has been a fun project for me and my wife has rediscovered sewing which she always used to do. Now she sews for the grand kids! In any case, the machine is critical and there's lots on eBay and CL that meet the criteria for doing leather work.
 
Cool... Watch the fingers.
 
Just talked to the wife. Good price and metal gears, so it should do the job (you are only doing simple stitches) , but
from a review
"The 327...well kind of clucky...a low end machine in the Singer line up in the 1960's. It came with 3 bobbins and a few needles- that's it. SS and ZZ only - no cams, aluminuum body".

My wife recommends writing to Sew classic blog. This gal is a sewing gear head and can help you with your choice. There might be a 327k model that more industrial (good sewing leather, vinyl) you might check with the seller. Also try to find or read the manual for the machine, it will give some specs.


Paul
 
30 years ago I sewed all the interior of my TR3A. At the time (I was learnign to sew) I tried several machines and the one that worked best was an old Singer from the 1930's (was my guess). It was a treadle powered one with a motor attached in place of the treadle. It had a shuttle for the lower bobin rather than the small bobbin of most modern machines. This allowed for any size thread. This bobin is about 1.5" long and about 1/4" diamitre. It was also much more heavy duty than the modern machines (I tried three modern ones back then) my guess is because back in those days people sewed all sorts of things including geans and the like.

I still have that machine and just this last weekend I did some sewing of my boat Bimini, going through four layers of Sunbrella plus one layer of clear plastic (just like the rear window on our soft tops) with ease. For fun I tried a modern machine on this and it was not able to get through that much fabric.

I imagine these old machines are easy to find at junk sales and such.
 
Thank you both for the advice. I heard back from the person selling the 327 on Craigslist and she already has a potential buyer. I'll do some more research before buying anything. thanks again
 
Hi Paul, thanks for the link to the sew classic blog, after reading a bunch of reviews I ended up buying a 1950 Singer 99k locally off of craigslist. Think this will be the perfect machine to learn on and with all metal gears should handle the vinyl with ease. Paul or Craig, do either of you still have any patterns? My car is a '56, so perhaps the only patterns that will help me would be the wheel arch covers, quarter panel covers, and the door panels (I can modify the cut out to fit the earlier style I suppose). My car came with some strange custom all pleated white vinyl interior which won't really be of too much use. If anyone has a pattern for an earlier style seat please let me know. thanks again
 
Yes, those are the correct seats for my car. I would hate to ask you to rummage through an attic for the patterns, but thanks for offering. 1915... that is pretty cool. I love how these old machines look.
 
I am there faily often and have wanted to find those paterns. If I get them I will let you know. I was about 20 at the time (when I sewed the seats, not when the machine was built)and did not think I would ever need them again, but now I think I would like to have them just for fun.

I made the paterns from the old original leather seats and interior, so they would be correct.
 
When looking at the seats from the Moss link the seat A looks a lot like the seat of a mk1 spitfire. Has anyone ever compared these to see if they could be the same seat?
 
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