East Coast Wagon Refresher
skunk.werks
Band Wagon
Hey everybody, I've been spending some quality time with my new 1990 Wagon that I picked up here on the east coast. I am the third owner, previous owner did a auto>manual swap and put a d16z6 in the car. The car was dirty but I could tell underneath the grime that there was sparkle to be seen so the past couple weeks I've been pulling apart the interior and documenting my cleaning and re-assembly.
I will start off with only a few pics and as I make my way through the car I will update this thread.
I will start off with only a few pics and as I make my way through the car I will update this thread.
Comments
Painted it
While I had the carpet out I washed it with a scrub brush and hose. I wish I had taken some pics of the process because it was BROWN mucky nastyness coming off!
Don't worry.....I got EVERY nook and cranny
Polish the door jams under the kick plates? YES. Don't be jealous yet, this side was the only one with no blemishes. All three other doors had a bit of rust pitting and tiny scratches, oh well can't win em all.
Stay tuned for more...
have the front seat covers off and hand scrubbed, didn't want to saturate the seat foam with water and soap. i am familiar with auto upholstery and felt this was my best way to clean up the seats. i would not recommend this for everyone.
don't pull on the fabric too hard!
cruddy repair, but hopefully it holds. id rather work with a sewing machine than a needle and thread....
primed and painted the seat pans
i hit up the honda-part fairy for some new lovin
she sent it URGENT!
I experimented with putting the seat covers into the washing machine and dryer.....DON'T! It worked alright but frayed a lot of the fabric, it's easier just to hand scrub the seats with stain remover and soap. Let the wet stuff line dry, nothing is going to shrink. All this business I've been doing by removing the seats was completely unnecessary, but in the end I think seats are MUCH cleaner. I'll even challenge anyone in the world to the freshness of my seats
There are a bit of pictures, but I thought I would give you guys a crash course in how to assemble/dissemble seats properly.
First and foremost, buy the right tools. Your hogrings pliers should look like this, don't buy the junk from harbor-freight, they don't work well for putting seats together.
You'll have three pieces to every seat generally, at least newer car seats.. First is the seat pan, then comes the pre-molded 'bun', followed by the seat cover/fabric itself.
Be aware that inside the seat fabric are 'listing' rods and strips so the hog-rings have something to grab onto without tearing off the fabric.
Also note that molded into the seat buns are listing rods, you'll see how these work in the next pics.
You'll have to pay attention to how the seats come apart, but for these purposes you'll just have to use your imagination for now. Feed the bun into the seat fabric and tuck the listing strip into the foam and attach it to the burried listing rod.
Your foam bun is now attached to the fabric. When working with upholstery always start in the middle of something so everything is symmetrical and this helps you work wrinkles to the outside.
Wedge the seat pan into the foam as it came out
This time the second listing strip will be attached through the foam directly into the seat pan, basically done as in the step above. Use your hogrings to attach at the factory points
Now you can pull all the fabric edges over the foam bun and seat pan to begin attaching the final pieces.
DON'T PULL HARD ON FABRIC!!!! If it doesn't fit you have to massage the fabric towards where you want to secure it, this is done with swiping motions. Its pretty self explanatory.
This section just pulls and tucks under the tabs, press the tabs down for secure fit when finished.
Here is an illustrated example of how the fabric doesn't quite make it, and how you get some slack into the material.
Now you have enough to work with
Make sure you put your plastic mounting push tabs back in, it may take a small rubber mallet or your palm to seat these back into the metal base.
Done and ready to install
Good pics of the process!