Chevy Interior Reupholstery - Savin' Money & Sittin' Pretty

Back to the dirty work, the shabby old carpet and jute padding had to come out. Needless to say, I won't miss it.

After a thorough cleaning, I flipped over the new jute padding that goes under the seat just in front of where it would go so I could spray on some adhesive. Spray it on the bottom of the padding and in the same places on the floor, then let it tack up for a few minutes before flipping the jute over and attaching.

This is the black molded loop 80/20 carpet from Classic Industries. It is for low transmission tunnel C-10s. Of course, there are lots of color and carpet styles available, but simple old black is what I wanted. This carpet also has the jute for the toeboard and trans tunnel already attached to the bottom of it. Do yourself a favor and first let it sit out in the sun for a quite a while to help iron out the wrinkles.

After some more spray adhesive and fitting the carpet into place-which was easy-the holes to mount the seat to the floor needed to be found and cut out. A sharp awl or punch helps find them and a sharp razor blade carefully cuts them out. Don't cut too big of a hole and most importantly-BE CAREFUL!

After attaching the freshly painted and lubed seat mounting brackets to the bottom of the seat, I rustled up some help to install the seat back into the cab. Things were starting to get exciting!

To prepare for the eventual orange paint job, I wanted to switch the interior to black. This included the door panels and armrests. I repainted my old ones a while back, but they weren't gonna make the cut this time. Don't forget a cheap little door handle and window crank remover tool from your local parts store to make this job easy.

I also need a new dash pad since the one someone made when the truck was reupholstered many moons ago wasn't cuttin' the mustard anymore. This high-quality molded urethane dash pad from Classic Industries comes with the needed washers and nuts to attach it.

The old one is also held in by studs on the backside. Some of them can be a bear to get to, but it only took about 10 minutes to remove the old brown one and replace it with the new one.

One last touch for now: new sunvisors. Classic Industries has them to match the other vinyl pieces in your truck. My brackets were fine, so I pulled the old visors off them, cleaned the brackets up, added just a touch of grease to the bracket rod, and slid the new ones on. I also lubed the pivot, which made a huge difference since the passenger side was seized! If you need new brackets, Classic Industries has those as well.

Quite a change, if I do say so myself! The inside isn't done yet, but it's getting there...at least I won't have springs poking my keester anymore. I'll eventually swap out the old sprint car/hot rod steering wheel I got with the truck with one of Classic Industries' nice stock repops and a tilt column, but all in good time. I couldn't be happier about it for now.