My 66 seat backs had a bit to much wear on the vinyl surfaces to just over-dye/paint and go on so I went ahead and re-textured them using SEM products. I used their vinyl texture spray on my 67 GTX seat backs about 15 years ago and was pleased with the results. Back then I had problems with the texture coming out a little coarse and I had to be careful to really keep my distance when spraying so that the texture was fine enough. This time, it seemed that the texture was coming out finer and I had to get closer to the seat back with the can to keep to get a good result.
After flattening out a couple shallow dings I cleaned the surface with Prep Sol and soap and water and then touched up some gouges and scratches in the vinyl surface with lacquer spot putty.
Sprayed on about 4 light coats of the texture.
Then with 400 & 600 sand paper I carefully sanded the surface to flatten the peaks of the texture to more closely resemble vinyl grain. Have to go slow with this and be especially careful on edges and corners as it's easy to completely erase the texture. If that happens though, you can just fog a couple light coats of texture back over those areas and go at it again.
This is pretty much what you end up with although I sanded a bit more after this photo. It's not going to be a perfect match but it looks a lot better than a beat up set back. I sprayed a couple coats of SEM Satin Black and then fogged a couple light coats of SEM low luster clear over that. The seat skirt below I'm holding up to the back is the original vinyl with a fresh coat of SEM Satin Black on it.
One of my backs has a couple very slight dings that I missed at the start - I mean really slight. But they show up as a slight irregularity in the finished surface. Once they have cured a couple more days I'll try to flatten them out with some careful tapping. But it shows that getting the surface irregularities flattened out when starting is important.
After flattening out a couple shallow dings I cleaned the surface with Prep Sol and soap and water and then touched up some gouges and scratches in the vinyl surface with lacquer spot putty.
Sprayed on about 4 light coats of the texture.
Then with 400 & 600 sand paper I carefully sanded the surface to flatten the peaks of the texture to more closely resemble vinyl grain. Have to go slow with this and be especially careful on edges and corners as it's easy to completely erase the texture. If that happens though, you can just fog a couple light coats of texture back over those areas and go at it again.
This is pretty much what you end up with although I sanded a bit more after this photo. It's not going to be a perfect match but it looks a lot better than a beat up set back. I sprayed a couple coats of SEM Satin Black and then fogged a couple light coats of SEM low luster clear over that. The seat skirt below I'm holding up to the back is the original vinyl with a fresh coat of SEM Satin Black on it.
One of my backs has a couple very slight dings that I missed at the start - I mean really slight. But they show up as a slight irregularity in the finished surface. Once they have cured a couple more days I'll try to flatten them out with some careful tapping. But it shows that getting the surface irregularities flattened out when starting is important.
