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Updating 83' Interior to 84+


norcal505

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This is a project that I've long contemplated, but as most of you all know, I was involved in an accident back in May, that totaled my car (which is going to rebuilt). I sustained severe whiplash and got a concussion, all due to the lack of headrest protection. If some recall, I had my seats redone about five or so years ago. While the seats may look and feel nice, they are unsafe. The upholster guy put too much "padding" in the seat, to the point that my neck/head get NO protection from the headrest, and I'm 6' 2". So I have finally decided to upgrade my car's interior to the 1984+ specs.. With this, I'm going to need two front seats and two rear seats. I also want to add rear headrests. Anyone know how difficult this is going to be and if there are any differences in hardware?

This past summer, I completely gutted my BMW 3-series' interior for audio-installtion, and put it all back together with no problems. Curious if there are any guys on here who have gutted their 505's before, and what I should look out for, or take "extra" care for.

Also, if anyone has a 505 interior in Brown, Tan, Red, or Black, please send me an e-mail here! :D

Cheers!

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shoot, i didnt even know there was a difference between 83 and 84 interiors.

This is a project that I've long contemplated, but as most of you all know, I was involved in an accident back in May, that totaled my car (which is going to rebuilt). I sustained severe whiplash and got a concussion, all due to the lack of headrest protection. If some recall, I had my seats redone about five or so years ago. While the seats may look and feel nice, they are unsafe. The upholster guy put too much "padding" in the seat, to the point that my neck/head get NO protection from the headrest, and I'm 6' 2". So I have finally decided to upgrade my car's interior to the 1984+ specs.. With this, I'm going to need two front seats and two rear seats. I also want to add rear headrests. Anyone know how difficult this is going to be and if there are any differences in hardware?

This past summer, I completely gutted my BMW 3-series' interior for audio-installtion, and put it all back together with no problems. Curious if there are any guys on here who have gutted their 505's before, and what I should look out for, or take "extra" care for.

Also, if anyone has a 505 interior in Brown, Tan, Red, or Black, please send me an e-mail here! :D

Cheers!

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so basically, you want to update your seats to the later style, correct? a bit sportier, more support...

if you're pulling the seats out, it would be a good time to put dynamat or something like that under the carpet. on the 505 (at least on mine), the wiring is run under the sills so unless you are going to be running a bunch more wires, you can simply remove the sill covers and run wiring there at any time. it's also a good time to clean stuff that never gets cleaned, like the floor of the car under the carpet, the plastic footrest-thing to the left of the pedals (mine was nasty), etc.

even if you are not replacing the carpet and/or putting in dynamat, it is a good idea to pull out the carpet to clean it and clean underneath it. i can't tell you how much nasty crap i found under the carpet, especially in the console area. <_<

my car's PO like to spill coffee or soda on the carpet a lot, and my carpet had holes worn in it, so i am replacing my carpet as well. i found a place that sells replacement carpet for the 505s, see my build thread for more info (or pm me). they also sold me a bit of extra carpet so i could re-do the bottoms of my door panels, the bottom of my console and the rear hat/parcel shelf (i.e., where the rear speakers go).

things to look out for:

1) you've already removed your seats (to get them re-upholstered), but if you haven't removed the seat tracks, be careful with the bolts...mine were frozen on pretty good, broke a couple trying to remove them and still trying to get one out that had the head break off. :angry:

2) since your car didn't come with rear headrest brackets (mine didn't either), you will have to drill a few holes in the metal panel that separates your interior from the trunk, so that you can mount the headrest brackets. not difficult, but not "bolt-in."

3) if you end up sourcing the parts from different cars, you might find that they have faded differently and are now different colors. hopefully, this won't be too bad on your tan interior, it's pretty bad with my blue interior. gray interior is probably best in this respect...

4) be careful removing the door panels and the interior b-pillar panels (i.e., the panels that cover the post where the front shoulder belts attach), you don't want to crack any of those plastic clippy things. for the b-pillar panel, the bottom clips pop out and you slide the panel up to get it off.

hope this helps.

andré

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Wow, that's some great info Andre. So far I haven't gathered much, but what I have gathered so far is:

-Pair of *perfect* C-pillar vent covers

-Pair of perfect Seat-belt mechanism covers, though painted in blue

Now another thing I wanted to ask was regarding dyeing upholstery. I want to have someone else do it, but does it really stick? Say, if I manage to track down a nice set of seats in blue or black, would it be possible/smart to have them redyed to Brown?

I really want to revive the original feeling of my car: one that was familiar to my childhood, and to my father who bought the car brand new. Which is also why I am having the entire car's body gone over; removing rust, fixing dents, reconstructing the rear quarter, trunk, etc...then having the whole car painted in the original Claret Metallic.

I used to just want my 505 looking "cool", but now, I feel like I've grown up a little bit :D and I'd rather have the car looking pristine, the same way it did when it rolled off the showroom floor. Don't really care about it having large US Bumpers, or US tail-lights. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Also, here are some bits that will remain in the car, with the new interior (as they are fairly new).

-1985 Turbo Steering wheel, already wrapped in fresh wheel-skin

-Clarion CD/Mp3/Radio Head-unit - Added this since I loved the discreet look, not too flashy

-140mph Speedometer, with working Econscope (however, I'd like to fix the jammed trip-meter (is this even possible)?

And the dash mat will stay covering the scarily-cracked dashboard. Fixing the cracked dashboard is not really a priority at the moment..

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glad to see that your car is coming along, rob. i saw ukit the other day and he told me that you had taken his advice wrt getting your car done by a professional bodyshop...how did that go? are you satisfied so far with what they've done?

i've seen lots of forum postings on leather dying/painting, they all say that the results can be quite good but i've never seen a follow-up that shows how it holds up over the long haul. i've heard good things about leatherique, it's really more of a paint than a true dye, but it would let you change your new seats to the original tan color...down the road, you can also touch it up easily if it starts to crack over the years. one of the main problems with dying car leather seats is that the actual seating material is not all leather, there are bits of vinyl in there as well which take dye differently. so if you want a uniform color, the leather "paint" is the way to go.

as for fixing the broken trip odometer, i remembered seeing a posting on odometer fixes on peugeot-l...did a quick search and found it, you can search for post # 79917, it deals with a 504 odometer but i'm sure the gauges are similar...

andré

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have the head rest mounts and related parts from my 86 505. You are welcome to them, send me an email at [email protected]

with your address and I'll get them sent your way. Cover the shipping? Won't be much, $5-6

No read head rests, sorry. The mounts should easily fit into any 505, they just are not very complicated parts.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Rob - one thing to be aware of is that the newer style seats are still too low for tall people. I'm 6' and the headrest at it's highest point is beneath my head.

The only want to resolve this would be to extend the headrest rods, or swap different ones onto the seat by modifying the seat frame to accept new ones. I'm actually considering finding some 98' 00 Volvo seats to fit into the car, but I don't want to downgrade the comfort level.

I stripped a passenger seat for the first time a few weeks ago and the steel frame would be easy to modify to fit a Volvo head rest as long as you had all the bits. Alternate would be to cut and extend the existing rods on the pug headrests, but another issue would be to bond the foam inside as both mine just kinda flop around with not a lot of support in them.

I was hoping to save the hardened leather, but the best option is likely to have the seating surfaces redone, and if that happens I'll likely have them patterned after a Recaro seat, along with different headrests. Seats in my Volvo are NICE, but are heavy power units. If I could mount the Volvo seat to the manual Peugeot rails and loose all the power motors that'd be ideal. (I'd only need power to recline hooked up.)

Rabin

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  • 7 months later...

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