Exhibition Ready

The interior work is finally done!

It took a little longer than expected – partially due to underestimating the time it takes to do something like this, partially due to miscellaneous product backorders and delays – but, at long last, I can say that the work is at a point I feel proud enough to present.

In my last post, a major blizzard was closing in and due to arrive the same day as my upholstery.  Alas, despite my somewhat uncomfortable level of forced optimism, the upholstery did not arrive the day I had intended it to. The blizzard pushed the delivery date back three days to Monday, and I missed the opportunity of that weekend to get the final work on the seats done. Luckily for me, I guess, there was still plenty of work to do before the seats went in… so I stayed very busy, despite the storm.

Everything, sans seats, was finished that weekend: the rear quarter trim panels, kick panels, door sill plates, instrument panel, speedometer cable and center console all went in – all brand new, apart from the rear quarter trim panels and frame for the center console. Everything looked amazing, and the sight of the near-finished product gave me motivation to finish it.

Monday rolled along, delivering with it a full set of black and white Mustang upholstery, but it was also the first day back at school, post-holiday. I couldn’t spend the whole day working on the car anymore, so I relocated one of the seats and all the necessary equipment from my grandmother’s garage to my Dad’s studio. This way, I could work on reupholstering one seat a night after school during the week.

It became clear very early on that this was a two person job, and, as he had been throughout the whole project, my Dad was right there to help. The amount of stretching, squeezing, pressing, holding, pulling, clipping and general work that needed to be done to finish one seat was really tough on our hands, not to mention our bodies (and admittedly our emotions). This was definitely the hardest part of the project. It took us four evenings to complete, but we finally finished the driver’s seat. Ugh! One down, and now we needed to do it all again… and then again, for the rear bench.

By the following weekend, the rest of the seats were done… and luckily things got easier with experience. On Monday, I took the day off from school to mount all the seats, buff out as much of the scratch on the windshield as possible, and clean up the significant mess we had made in my grandmother’s garage and basement. My Mom even lent a hand to put the finishing touches on the car – repainting the emblems and the gas cap with the Mustang logo colors to look almost new.

When all was done that evening, I took my parents out for a little victory lap… to fill up the gas tank and enjoy the finished interior.

Tomorrow is Senior Project Exhibition Day at school, and I’ll be officially unveiling the refurbished Pony. The new bumpers have yet to arrive  (they’re due to arrive Friday, the day after the exhibition), so we had to put the old bumpers on instead. Even though they aren’t new, they do complete the look, and the new ones will go on as soon as possible.

All that’s left to do is the final before-and-after video, which I will complete in the next week or so. But, for now, my work on the car is complete, and I am oh, so very proud of it… and so very grateful to all who helped to make it possible.