FTO AUSTRALIA

Hey all,

As promised, here are some pics of the microsuede re-upholstery to date, and also my led lighting.

http://www.geocities.com/redexa2000/FTO/

There's still some work to be done, ie. drivers seat, rear seat and maybe rear parcel shelf, but it's starting to come together.

We'll try to take some pics of the process when we start back up... kind of having a break from it for a couple of days for now though.

Happy to field any questions and cop any compliments

-spastic rob

Im having trouble typing this as my eyes are still adjusting from looking at your +- buttons. Nice site, FTO australia has somthing to worry about *JOKING*. Haha, but yeah dude those pics turned out really well with the right amount of photoshop.haha. Im ringing that damn embroidery shop this morning.

Looks great mate, so whats next?

I reckon underbody neons!! what ya think spas??

very nice I was thinking about trying to make my needles brighter... and the leds work very well!!

Wow, can you write up a DIY when you’re finished.

hehe under car neons!!! i had some on my silvia..cop magnet, but still, i dont care what people say...they look cool

well foe, the underbody neons would definately suit your fast & furious beast of an fto, but not my stock-rider.

i don't know what's next.. the other things i want to do are all costly to do right. ie mags, lowering & respray.

i wouldn't mind having another muck around with fibreglass on a larger scale.. maybe build some custom front and rear lips to meld into the stock bumpers and also some sideskirts *shrugs*

Black_FTOGPX-
We'll put something together that resembles a guide for the re-upholstery.. but it's really just a matter of getting the tools and winging it. works best if you're constructionally inclined, of course *blows own whistle*

-spastic rob

hey spastic, what type of fiberglassing have you done before?

Hello,

The thing that has been worrying the most about this retrimming my self is onlu one thing.

You're basically saying get in it and do it, but let's just say that I do start with it....Just cause I start stitching these materials, doesn't mean it's going to come out like what you guys have, which is great!

I guess the question I am asking is how do you get the material to be sewed so that it moulds perfectly to the body of the seat? The contours and the size and what have you...
Do you get what I am trying to ask? Any one?

I guess it's not just a simple case of I sew some material in a square and try and fit them and tie down the left overs is it?
It's going to be sewed in the shape ofthe seat. Right? How do you do that?

Do you get the existing seat cover and put the material over it and sew it?
Or put the material over the actual seat and sew it?
Does any one get what I am trying to ask here?

Thank you,

Btw, your seat covers look fantastic!!! And the LEDs are great too!!! I can see you love working on the car...and I do too....but this retrim has got me stuck! Not sure how I would go about this!

thanks,

Ok the way we approached it is that we took off our covers. There basically made from a bunch of small flat panels which can be removed one by one. Then once removed (say two at a time) you attach your new fabric to the old fabric by either sewing outside the original sew line (so that you cant see it when you sew the two peices back together) or hot glue which I used some times when the piece of sh*t sewing machine wouldnt do it. Then you basically just stich those two panels back together along the original sewline that held them together in the first place.

To explain the small panels better the seat is made from a bunch of flat pieces of material (DUH) which have different shapes by sewing them back together exactly as they came apart they reform the shape of the seat. I have no idea if this is what they do professionally but the advantage is that you know exactly what your sewing and where and the old material forms like a bit of extra padding under the microsuade.

Hows that does that help??

just a quick question. where did u buy yr material from?

Mmm I like what I see. Looks strangely familiar but just slightly darker shades of suede Appears to be a fine diy job. I'd be well chuffed if mine only cost a paltry $140 too. I assume you aren't using actual "macrosuede" as its skyrocketed in price in the last year. Was $44/metre when I had the initial trimming done and now its up to $66/metre. I think they are just cashing in on the current fashion trend of swaying towards microfibre/synthetic suede for furniture etc...

Dials certainly look nice too but too much work even thinking about doing that myself!

Hey are you ever gonna sell me (or anyone) a set of speaker pods? Could've done with a set for Autosalon

Lastly, its great to see some other local guys getting more serious about modifying their FTOs...

Lastly, its great to see some other local guys getting more serious about modifying their FTOs...

I AGREE!! We wanna see more moded FTO's on the streets of brissie!!

Hi Foe,

Thank you very much for that...
That's interesting how you did it...
Well it definately works!!!


I just think sewing sounds like a good and better idea, but just thinking it's going to be quite hard. And obviously normal needles aren't going to work, right? So that's why you used that special tool? What's it called? Can we find it on the net some where?

And what's this hot glue thing? does that glue really stick so hard that even if you have people constantly coming in and out of the car it'll still hold?

Interesting.....But thank you for this info and let's see if I have the time to achieve what you have done!
It's great!!!

We got the material from spotlight, i think they had six different colors in the microsuede material. There's different grades (qualities) of it available also, we chose the highest grade they had, which was $20 per 1m x 1.5m.

infyfto - thanks for the compliments
I'm not familiar with macrosuede, how does this differ from microsuede?
...the speaker pods... I really do want to make up some sets to sell, but always seem to have some other project to work on, and then there's the gf who's not getting enough of my time either!.. but I will get to it, promise.
The speaker pods and some repair work on a previous car is pretty much all the fibreglassing I've ever done, but don't seem to have any probs getting good results with it.

fto12345 - normal needles work, and I actually did a lot of the stitching by hand (coz i don't trust my sewing machine abilities), but it's very time consuming and tedious work. The hot glue was only used to hold the fabric panels in place for sewing, the thread is what ends up holding them together. I'll get some pics of how we're doing it this weekend, so it's a bit clearer.

-spastic rob

quick question
how do you remove the original seat covers...
did a quick look at them today becuase your little project has got me wondering

but 2 things stumped me
a)for the back part, there are metal support rods where your back rests and
b)the back portion is held together with some metal loops

for the later, i assume you need to cut these and possibly use something else for 're-attaching', but the metal support rods(which i assume are also in the base), i couldnt seem to workout where they went to/secured to(as i didnt remove the actual cover, more like just slid it around a bit to see what was there..

so, enlighten me
Silentbob

Prepare to be enlighened!

Those metal rings are way over the top for what they do. At the time of taking them out we painstakingly did them one by one but in hind site I for one will be using zip ties to replace them. They just hold the seat against the foam so just snip them.


The rings attach metal rods on the seat cover to metal rods inside the foam. Happy spas ya SPAS!!

i used short, black cable ties to replace those metal loops when i did mine....

They attach ring attached to the seat cover to rings inside the foam.

Mate.. after having replaced seat covers with you, I'm suprised to find myself completely bewildered by what you just wrote...
..but yeah, cable ties are the way to go when putting it all back together.

As for the rear (think it's vynil) section with the zipper & metal bar at the base.. we re-used this entire panel, as it's not really visable and actually looks pretty good anyway. Saves a fair chunk of material & also having to sew that part of the zip back in too.

-spastic rob