TR2/3/3A Slight tweak to Martx-5's dogleg covering method

[71TR6]

I just finished covering my TR3 doglegs with leather and have a slight tweak to Art's method that he illustrated in his post TR2/3/3A Carpet and upholstery installation (britishcarforum.com) .

I used a method in Cechaflo's Youtube video Cechaflo - YouTube where he applied a mixture of baby shampoo, rubbing alcohol and water to the leather to soften it and stretch it. He then stretched it and nailed the leather to a wooden form holding the part he was covering and let it dry. He then peeled the leather off the form and glued it down. I did this with the doglegs and it turned out great. I attached the covering with Weldwood Landau Top adhesive (by far the best stuff I've found for vinyl and leather car interiors). I got an empty 1 qt can from Lowes and found a local auto upholster filled it for me for $20.

Using this method eliminates the hassles of trying to stretch and glue at the same time. One word of caution- DO NOT tape as I did- it does leave a slight indent. I didn't need to do this but did anyway as a belt and suspenders step and regret doing it. I'm hoping with a little time and maybe some steam the slight indent where the tape was will come out.

Doing it this way seemed to make it go easy and wasn't anywhere near the challenge I'd been led to believe it would be. By far the most difficult pieces to cover on the whole interior were the door caps with those button ends- I couldn't find a decent method to do these so experimented and they turned out OK but not perfect.

I hope this helps someone in the future!

Ron

 

[CJD]

cool!

 

[Frank Canale]

Ron, That is a great method. I will catalogue that for when I get to working on the interior. Thank you for sharing and including pictures. Frank

 

[Mickey Richaud]

Great work! Having done mine in vinyl some years ago, I can attest it's not a fun job. And leather's supposedly more difficult to get right. Congrats!

Mickey

 

[sp53]

very nice, excellent work

 

[DavidApp]

Nice work.

It looks like the leather may be more stretchy when you treat it right. Would the vinyl stretch that much?

David

 

[martx-5]

Terrific method. Pre-stretching takes a lot of the hassle out of doing it all at once. Nice job, turned out great.

 

[Geo Hahn]

Nice work.

...Would the vinyl stretch that much?

Vinyl is very stretchy (even more than leather) if you remove the cloth backing.

On a recent non-TR (but British) project I needed to recover the shift housing with a single piece of vinyl. By separating the cloth backing and stapling it to a board with the hole shaped to fit I was able to stretch it in the extreme:

Some vinyl backing needs a dose of acetone to come loose but I have found a variety that separates w/o chemicals - which is good as the acetone weakens the vinyl.

 

[DavidApp]

Very nice job there on the gear shift housing.

A tip worth remembering.

David

 

[71TR6]

Geo- that's a great tip to catalog as well! I never thought to remove the vinyl fabric backing but that would dramatically make it more heat moldable. It can be pre-molded, removed from the form and glued into place in a similar manner to leather. Thanks for sharing that tip!