Upholstery in 71 Charger any ideas

[Uncle Bob]

Just bought a 71 Charger appears to have original upholstery, only the carpet has been changed. Headliner needs replacing but other than that everything looks good, no tears in seats, but the plastic parts have some yellowing, was thinking of trying upholstery paint to freshen up, has anyone had good success with that stuff? Also the car has old musky smell, any suggestions on how to get rid of that short of stripping out the old upholstery and replacing with new?

 

[poly3521]

I've had good luck with SEM brand on plastic trim. As far as the smell, I think I used simple green and febreeze on mine, febreeze the defroster ducts or if you feel ambitious pull the heater box and use some simple green on it. I did mine and it was a huge difference, got alot of crud out of it, and you can change the old heater core if you want. My old core had some nasty crap in it, and was turning green.

 

[Bruzilla]

There are a couple of problems with painting seats. The first is most paint doesn't bond well with vinyl to begin with. Second, soft things like seats flex and bend, and paint usually has a hard time doing that without flaking and cracking. They do sell paints at auto parts stores that use a special primer than is designed to bond with vinyl, then you spray the color coat on the primer before it completely dries and the paint bonds with the primer. I've used this on steering wheels and it works pretty well, but it does wear off pretty easily if the surface gets exposed to a lot of wear.

Before you do anything, you might want to start getting some conditioner on those seats. I just bought a set of front seat covers from a 72 GTX that had been put on a few years ago and the back seat wasn't changed because it looked to be in perfect shape. Two years later the owner went to do some work on the back shelf, and when he started sitting on the back seat the covers just disintegrated and he ended up recovering all the seats again with new covers. The rear seat covers in my car looked fine until we went to pull the seats out and just doing that was enough for splits to form.

I would get some vinyl conditioner on there and see if you can soften them up a bit before spending time painting them.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Thanks for the input, didn't make myself clear, not planning to paint the seats just the hard plastic parts, but getting the vinyl conditioner is a good idea.

 

[Bruzilla]

Oh, if you're painting the hard plastic, that's a different matter all together. The best stuff I've found for hard plastics in our cars is called Dual, that's made by Krylon. It's a combination paint & primer, and the semi-gloss colors make the hard plastics look like new, plus I haven't had any issues with peeling or flaking. The downside is you can't have it color matched to your interior, but it does come in a fair amount of colors.