Some like it hot, I like it Red.

Right out of a Sammy Hagar song. You know the one. Before he joined "that other band"...

So, the other day, I looked down at the floor of my 86 Toyota Truck and I saw... Pavement. I thought "I gotta fix that." I cut out all the Swiss cheese and welded in some steel salvaged from a 74 Ford truck hood and an old PC AT case. The windshield surround is now solid pookie, so it isn't leaking there anymore. I thought that was the main source of water rotting out the floor. After my latest round of pookie, I thought I had it all dry and it rained. The floor was wet again. I got after it with the water hose. Didn't take long. There was a 5/16" hole in the firewall right at the level where the wheel well attaches and underneath the brake booster. On the inside, there was a piece of carpet/insulation covering the hole. Basically, every time it has rained for the last 23 years, water has flowed under the carpet and sat there. Well, after the holes, I guess it was self-draining. I plugged the hole. I also cleaned and painted the whole floor of the cab. Rustoleum Regal Red is a perfect match to 86 Toyota Truck Red.

Next up was some carpet. I ordered some Auto Custom Carpet from a internet auto parts store that drop shipped it. Non-GRM advertiser, but the carpet was about $140 and I think I did OK. We (Dr.Linda and I) put that in. You have to cut holes and trim it to length/width, but the basic form is pressure molded.

Then we tackled the seat. I bought a whole hide of Spanish leather from weleather.com for $230 delivered, 58 sq ft. I was going to get a half hide, 25 sq ft as that what I figgered I needed. A half hide was $130. But I figgered if I needed 1 extra square foot, I'd be screwed, so I just bought the whole hide and I'm glad I did, because I sure didn't have half left.

We took the old seat cover apart. It was really shot. It was shot 10 years ago when we put the Wal*Mart stretch over seat cover over it, which also was totally shot. We traced out the pattern of the old seat on the leather, cut it out, and I sewed it up on my grandmother's 1924 Singer hand crank sewing machine. Oma bought this machine in the mid '20's in Holland. From there it went to Alberta in the 50's, then my mother got it a few years ago after Oma passed. Mom learned to sew on it in the 30's when she was 7 and wanted clothes for her dollies. When we drove out to the Left Coast last fall, we brought it back. I got a walking foot for it, and that helped a lot. I used upholstery thread and a denim needle worked better than a leather needle. It's a little tricky cranking with one hand and feeding the leather into it with the other, but it stitches beautifully. Mom says a new machine won't make stitches that good. I could sew 3 layers of the leather, which is about 4 oz, as leather is graded, OK. 4 layers was a bit much for it. The original vinyl cover had a thin piece of foam and a fabric piece sewed to the back. Instead of doing it like that, I put a layer of about 1" egg crate foam down, then put the covers on. I couldn't find any hog rings locally and I didn't feel like messing with ordering them so I just used stainless safety wire.

I should have taken a "before" picture, but it was pretty bad. It looked about like the "before" pics of challenge cars or BABE cars, so you get the idea. Here it is today:

It was quite a bit of work, but total cost was under $400. Next up is to do some body work and hit it with more Rustoleum. One of these days, I'm gonna have to fix the windshild surround, but given that Rustoleum Regal Red is so easy to work with (just hit what you're working on with the spray bomb), I can do that later, and that will probably be another 3-4 weeks of down time.

My next intermediate term project is the pull behind trailer for my bike. I sense more Rustoleum in that.

figures... I went through that with my bmw.. thought all this time the sunroof was leaking.. took out the cassette.. cleaned out all the drains, replaced the seals... nope, it was a replacement winshield put in before I got the car

hmm, so if I had some surface rust on my 87 pickup's body I could buy a can of Rustoleum Regal Red and fix it on the cheap?

Good job! Interior stuff used to scare me but it's amazing what you can DIY. The seat came out really nice.

Great job on the interior! looks good as new! i just recently re-did the interior on my 92 f150. Jacked some Mercedes seats from a dealership that had a warrenty issue to replace the broke a** bench seat (a huge hassle trying to get them to fit right in the truck but hey, they were 'free' and it was well worth it), change the carpet from red to black to match the seats, all new sound deadning material, new Hurst shifter. It transformed that truck. Drove it all the way from NH to FL and was comfortable the whole time, no hurting back or anything! Plus for a little bit, it had that new car smell

Very nice work, and I'm sure it makes the cab of that truck a whole lot nicer place to be. Did you add any lumbar support to the seat while you had it out?

That looks very good. Is this your first time doing upholstery? I have been toying with the idea to make my own seat skins. I have an old sewing machine that looks like it would sew thru your arm if you got it in the way. I’m too cheap to use leather though and with Spitfire ragtops porosity I thought I’d use vinyl. How did you get the skin to drop down right behind the knee bolster? I guess that’s what you call it; you know the part where your butt goes just before your knees dangle over.

Looks good, much nicer than my toyota. I had betty boop riding a harley floor mats, 1/8" oak plywood door cards, carpet was out of someones basement(picked up from a early trash day morning run), rubbermaid speaker enclosures, and seats out of an old saab(they were heated).

So.. Yeah thats a really nice truck.

TNWbgo, I've found the Rustoleum to be a perfect match. Shoot a coupon and hold it up to your truck. It will only cost you three bucks at Wally World to find out.

I didn't add any lumbar support per se, but I did fix the disconnected springs in the lumbar area on the driver's side and bend them in a bit more. That plus the extra 1" of foam everywhere from the egg crate. It's like sitting in an easy chair now.

Yes, this is my first auto upholstery job. We did a Sportster seat 20+ years ago, but we did that different. We took much heavier leather, punched holes in the sides and laced it. Actually, Dr.Linda did almost all of that. This leather is like garment leather. Or actually is, I suppose. Very soft, very supple.

The depression in the seat just behind the thigh boooster was done duplicating the original. There is a steel rod sunk in the original seat cushion. Sewn to the back of the cover is a strip (I used leather, Toyota used cloth) about 1" wide by 12", with a steel rod on the bottom side. That's what you see in the pics where that row of stitching runs across. When I put it on, I cut a slot in the egg crate, fed the strip through and wired the two steel rods together, which pulls down the cover as shown.

I really should have taken a "before" pic. On the driver's side, you could see more foam rubber than vinyl.

We thought about using vinyl again, or a tapestry. $30-50 worth at the fabric shop probably would have done it, but the labor would have been the same either way, so spending the extra money on the leather wasn't really that bad. The extra two-ish bills makes it really nice. I thought about using elk or deer, which you can get for about the same price ($4/ft), but it would have been hard to get a whole bench out of a hyde. I probably would have had to splice 2 pieces together. The elk and deer skins all seem to come with various holes in them from high power rifles or arrows. This whole hide had one small hole, about 2mm in it.

Leather will out-last vinyl with a little care, even in a leaky Spitfire. A mototcycle seat takes about the most abuse of anything you can upholster. The original vinyl seat on my bike lasted about 3 years in the Texas sun and rain. I had an upholstery shop re-do it with kidskin I provided and 20 years later, it's still on there, but starting to show its age.

Dr. Hess wrote: I had an upholstery shop re-do it with kidskin I provided and 20 years later, it's still on there, but starting to show its age.

Only in Texas could you get a way with skinning children. The seat looks good.