Thursday, February 27, 2014

Update on the Mercedes

It's been quiet around here. Sorry about that. But, I've been busy. As per my previous posts, I've been rebuilding the seats from the 1979 parts car to use in my 1983 project. It was slow going, and in the end, I spent close to two months worth of weekends working in the basement on this. It was a very good project for the winter, as I was able to work entirely in the basement. The basement is unfinished, and isn't properly heated, but the boiler throws off enough heat to keep it comfortable down there.

Projects take me a long time, especially in the winter. If it's Saturday morning and fifteen degrees out, you can bet I won't motivate myself to get out of the house, even to the basement (basement access is through an exterior bulkhead door) until at least 1 PM. Then, I work for a few hours before calling it a day.

As such, the seats took time to complete. In the end, I'm really happy with the results. I think the memory foam I used was a good choice. Here's some shots of the completed seats cleaned, but before Armor All.





As you can see, I had to do some stitching on the driver's seat to close up a couple of large rips in the MB Tex vinyl. I also had to do some stitching on the bottom of the rear seat back.

Now that the seats are done (as of last week), I'm ready to get back to metal work on the Mercedes. In preparation for that, I spent all of last weekend cleaning up. I was in the basement all Saturday afternoon cleaning up from the seat repair project. I had dirt and old horsehair padding EVERYWHERE. You wouldn't believe what a mess these made. After that I spent Sunday afternoon cleaning out the garage. I needed to in order to get to the car. The car itself was covered with empty boxes from the Volvo project. Even worse, the floor of the garage was almost impassible. I had to step over and climb over empty boxes and tools that I hadn't put away. But, now I have a work space again:


This weekend, as soon as I can motivate myself to get out to the garage... bodywork resumes. I have an interior - now I need a place to put it.