Interior Restoration - Ongoing Project & Updates - DUW

[AOD]

This has been a project a couple weeks in the making, but I haven't really had the time to post it all on here yet. I've been taking pictures and such, so I wanted to share with everyone the fun.

I'll stay my interior is not very 'bad' at all - so it actually isn't really a restoration. More or less a sprucing up, but it is involving replacing worn out / dirty things.

The low-down on the car:

Seats - perfect. Two small stains on the rear backrest, should wash out, some small strands of loose fibers in the weave, should cut off. Plan is to cover the front seat with a seat cover from JCWhitney ($129). Rear seat may eventually get a cover, but not right now, unless I can't match the colors well.

Door Panels - Good shape, all there. Some darker stains on the carpet part of the driver door, but I'm hoping I can scrub them out. No loose panels on the door, trim and such looks good still.

Headliner - perfect shape. I replaced the visors with units sent to me by Tallen ($10). They matched good.

Dashboard and Dash Trim - The dash cover was trashed, I threw it away when I bought the car, it was that ugly. I have a nice non-cracked blue dashboard in a box waiting to go on ($75). The woodgrain / trim porition of the dash is in good shape as well.

Carpet - Dirty / trashed. Carpet will be replaced with a set of the aftermarket molded carpet ($150). I have color samples from two companies, but I will probably keep it the original color, as it looks really nice in the areas it did not fade / wear / get dirty. I found the original color under the rear seat. Floormats will be color matched to the new carpet ($70)

The other challenge in this will be controlling my ability to strip screws and break things when trying to take them apart. It's pure talent, I swear.

Headliner and new visors installed:


Rear seat in great shape:


The interior tear down started with a planned heater core swap. Eric S. came up for the 4th of July weekend and gave me a hand. I purchased a CarQuest premium heater core and it came with a restictor already installed.

Dash pulled off the firewall, steering column dropped:


Heater core restrictor:


Note, I did not hook the lines up yet, because I don't like the look of them. When it starts to cool off, I'll connect it, but I usually don't drive the car much in the winter to keep it away from road salt and such.

With the dash mounted back up, I can go on and install the non-cracked dash cover I have! Ah...but not yet. I need to wire in a tachometer and an air-fuel meter. I traded a friend of mine a laptop computer for his tach and air-fuel meter. I hate wiring things, so I may recruit some help for that one.

Onto the rest of the interior!

Stereo...yeaaaaah! No plans to reuse the original stereo...yuck! I have a Kenwood CD/MP3 player I purchased from a CVN member for $50 ready to go in. I had to buy a new wire-harness adapater because the car does not have premium sound and uses a square, not rectangular plug.

Speakers...fronts, piece of cake right? 4" adapter from Crutchfield, Ford wiring harness adapater (no splicing...yay) and in it goes. Ah...but the screws are too long, so it won't sit flush. Dremel tool to shorten each screw, took a while, but it worked.

Blaupunkt 4" 2-way speakers ($29) for the front dash.


Rear speakers are 6x9" Pioneer 4-way's that I bought from a co-worker for $50. They're new, in the box still.


Now on my '87, I remember getting to the rear speakers was easy. Pull the seat back up a bit and loosen the screws on the rear brake light. The deck came right out...

On my '85...it's all freaking different. It's a cardboard deck cover, not a piece of carpeted cardboard like they use on later model cars (or perhaps because this was a base-model?). There are two pieces of trim on the sides that hold the cover in place, picture two letter C's and the panel sits between the C's. Sure enough, you can't get the darn thing out with the seat in the way or you'll break the trim piece!

Deck cover:


Rear lower seat out (for those that haven't done it before (thanks Epi) you push back on the seat (towards the rear of the car) and it releases):


Seat is out. Notice the original carpet color? Looks pretty nice!


To remove the back part of the rear seat, you need a Torx 55 and remove the two bolts that hold the seatbelts at the very side. The seat pulls right out then.


Rear seat out:


Now with the rear seat out, i could slide out the rear deck. At the least, it needs repainting, but I may choose to carpet it.


And with the rear deck out, I got the new speakers installed:


Wife helped me put them in. I forgot how suckass that job is, because you have to hold the speaker up and bolt it from the bottom side. Ford uses a rubber band thing to hold the original speakers in, but it's not big enough for aftermarket stuff. Plan to get some help when you install speakers in the rear...if you don't set them up on your rear deck. I chose to hide mine below...

Soooooo...that's where I'm at today. I'm working on the wiring harness for the CD Player now. Once I'm done soldering that up and get the CD player installed, I'm going to start removing the front seats.

I also went ahead and changed the ignition switch, since I had to drop the column and the one in there was acting up sometimes. It fell apart when I took it out, so it def. was bad.

I'll be ordering carpet sometime this week and updating it as I go along. Stay tuned!

~Adam

[Dave84]

Hey,, Looks good where did you get the new dash pad? i have been trying to find one for months and they are all cracked in the same 3 places as mine.

[gadget73]

damn, never seen carpet that faded. Does the stereo work properly? I know some of the older ones were common ground speakers, which wasn't compatible with an aftermarket radio. I had to run new wiring, but I also had the older style premium sound that no bypass kits exist for.

[AOD]

I don't have premium sound, so that's a good thing I guess, and the car had a cheesey tape / AM / FM radio in it already, so someone confirmed an aftermarket system should work.

What I did notice is that Ford has a common ground wire system on the harness. There are typically 8 speaker wires on a stereo, 4 +, 4 - for each speaker. The ford wire harness has only 6 terminal connectors though.

I looked at the aftermarket connector that was on the cheesey radio installed in my car and I noticed it bridges all the ground wires together and then splits it into two wires.

I soldered a pair of - speaker wires to each of the two ground cables, so I'm thinking this will work...

~Adam

[Southern_Pride]

Its looking good man. I dont think im gonna restore my interior anymore so much as modify it to fit my needs.

[83countrysquire]

so i was wondering if sedan seats fit in my wagon

[mrltd]

so i was wondering if sedan seats fit in my wagon

Seats are all the same...

[87_crown_vic]

i like the look of the Bronco II rims on the car...wonder what it would look like on mine since my mom has a Bronco II that has a bad tranny.

[AOD]

Bench seats are a little different than the split bench. My '85 has the solid bench up front and it is bolted to the floor in only four spots. The split bench seats found in most box bodies bolts to the floor in four places, eight total.

[grandpaslincoln]

Looks fun mang

[p71towny]

Looks good. I also had no problem with my stereo install, and I had premium sound. I had to gut the premium sound as much as it pained me cause it sounded damn good. But I wanted to play cds.

[85crownHPP]

good stuff.

i was able to get the rubber straps on my aftermarket 6x9's but it wasnt easy...

[p71towny]

I had metal straps??

[85crownHPP]

around the speaker or the cardboard and foam box around the speaker?

[p71towny]

Around the foam boxes. I saved the foam boxes and straps cause I figured someone else here could use em. I need to put a box together of all my shit and ship it to one of you guys to divy up at scottfest.

[85crownHPP]

here my rubber.. it was a tight stretch

[gadget73]

Solid bench? geez, uber strippo model. Time to gut the goodies out a plushie model at the junkyard

[boXman]

I need a couple of those plugs with the wires...where did u get those??

[FatNasty]

Do you need to drop the steering column to get the dash out?

[Grand Marquis GT]

I don't have premium sound, so that's a good thing I guess, and the car had a cheesey tape / AM / FM radio in it already, so someone confirmed an aftermarket system should work.

What I did notice is that Ford has a common ground wire system on the harness. There are typically 8 speaker wires on a stereo, 4 +, 4 - for each speaker. The ford wire harness has only 6 terminal connectors though.

I looked at the aftermarket connector that was on the cheesey radio installed in my car and I noticed it bridges all the ground wires together and then splits it into two wires.

I soldered a pair of - speaker wires to each of the two ground cables, so I'm thinking this will work...

~Adam

I would have ran all new wire. I did on my car. That common ground shit is for the birds.

Wanna convert to power windows? I'll trade ya