Restoring a classic car is an exciting ordeal especially when it comes to a powerful new engine and beautiful paint job, but be sure the inside of the car doesn’t get overlooked. The attention paid to restoring the car’s interior can make or break how comfortable and useful the car is, which can determine how often you’ll get to enjoy the car. With that in mind, we’ve come up with the 5 best practices for classic car interior restoration.
Trust Velocity
The easiest option when it comes to a classic car interior restoration is to let Velocity do all the hard work for you. If you’re restoring a 1966-1977 Bronco or 1969-1972 K5 Blazer, we sell full interior packages including seats, door panels, center console, dash pad, and more not to mention the fact that they’re available in multiple colors and stitch patterns! These kits are designed to fit right in with no modifications to the body, and this stress-free approach can give your classic the interior of a luxury vehicle.
Click this image to learn more about the Velocity interior packages available for your Classic Ford Bronco.
Plan Ahead
Even if you are considering a full Velocity interior swap, you definitely want to plan ahead for your classic car interior restoration. Not only is this an important thing to do up front to determine your budget, but you’ll want to make desired upgrades while components such as the dash, seats, and carpet are removed from the vehicle. This allows for any necessary modifications to the vehicle such as cutting holes for air conditioning or laying down heat insulation/sound deadening, and it also provides the opportunity to to hide any add-ons (such as the stereo equipment) without having to cut or modify any of the car’s original components.
Stay Organized
One of the biggest headaches of a restoration is misplacing parts or forgetting where they come from. Whether you’re rebuilding an engine or restoring an interior, staying organized throughout the process will make the job much smoother start to finish. The easiest thing you can do is take lots of digital photos and create folders on your phone/computer. An old-school method of organizing parts is using plastic baggies or pieces of cardboard to arrange various nuts and bolts.
Source Quality Parts
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. Whenever you’re restoring a vehicle, make sure you’re using high-quality, OEM-style parts. Cheaping out with an interior restoration can result in the parts fading or cracking over time, and while they might look close to the original, fit and finish usually suffers with inferior parts. Depending on the year, make, and model of the vehicle, replacement parts might be hard to come by, so you might have to resort to used parts.
Proper Care
After you’ve performed a classic car interior restoration, protect your investment with a regular detailing service. Just like we recommended in our classic car maintenance checklist, keeping the interior clean not only ensures it looks good but also that it continues to function properly. Dirt buildup can affect everything from seat tracks to door handle operation as well as cause damage to painted and upholstered surfaces.
The Velocity Difference
Velocity is the leader in classic vehicle restorations, and we have years of experience creating high-end modernized vintage cars and trucks. In addition to the interior packages mentioned above, Velocity also can provide your restoration with a full rolling chassis (with or without powertrain) as well as full builds including the Bronco, Mustang, F-Series, and K5 Blazer.