Interior Trim by Peter Hils

Disclaimer:

This site was created to

provide information for Jaguar enthusiasts. It is not intended to be

professional advice: I'm not in the trimming business. There is no garantee

that anything described on this page will work as intended. It is for private

use only, free of charge and the copyright is owned by me and jag-lovers.org

shows this site with my permission. Trademarks are freely used to describe

materials needed for the restoration process. .

My Jaguar

In 1997 I got infected by the Jag fever. While living in Durban / South Africa I saw an advert in a newspaper. A 1967 3.8S.

It was advertised as in good condition and was located in Johannesburg about 600 km from Durban. I phoned the guy and went with my wife to Jo'burg. As you can imagine the car wasn't in good condition. The interior was vinyl and totaly shot. The carpets were nearly gone. Still I was fascinated from the car but could keep cool. I offered the guy half of what he wanted and left Jo'burg. He phoned me after two long weeks and we agreed to a price a little bit more on my side than on his. A few days later I took the overnight bus to Jo'burg and got the car. The way back was horrible. After about 100 km I checked oil and it was about 1 litre below low. I refilled and went another hundred kilometers. Again a litre was missing. So I stopped at each filling station on the way, refilled oil and checked petrol. Opposing to other Jags she was not dripping oil. As I found out everything leaked through a stucked inlet valve into the engine.

As it got dark I wondered about the dark dashboard. No lights. I found the switch for the map light. At least I could read the speedometer again. It took me about another half an hour to find the dashboard light switch.

About 200 km before Durban I lost half of the exhaust and she started to sound like a tank. Back in Durban I brought her to the muffler's shop and got a new stainless exhaust fitted which was just about 250 Euro. After a few other repairs and rust proofing I got the COR (MOT, TÜV). After finding so many defects I thougt the car was in bad condition A closer inspection revealed that wasn't the case. It is nearly rust free and the compression ratio, except for one piston due to the stuck valve, is still good. Seat frames and Dunlopillos are also in an acceptable state and all bits and pieces were complete except for the washer bottle.

After using it for 1 1/2 years I shipped it back to Germany where it arrived in January 1999. A last ride home where it was stored outside for 3 month during heavy snowfall. Now it is stored in the garage. The interior is now out of the car and due to the lack of good information about interior restoration I got motivated to write this little page.

The aim

I want to restore the Jag to use it for special occassions. I'm not in concouring. The interior color will be changed from red to dark blue (like on the background picture) and the carpets will be charcoal black. Materials used will not suffice original standards. Original materials will be mentioned in the description further down.

What you'll need

Time

First of all you need plenty of time. It takes about 150 hours to do the seat covers.

Literature

I could find two books and one magazine till now

Practical classics & car restorer on Classic Trim through Kelsey Publishing Ltd. This is the book I use

There is also a Haynes manual on classic trim

The German "Oldtimer Praxis" has started a series on seat restauration from 12/2000 onwards. The first article is quite useless. The second one showed the installing of prefabricated seatcovers. .

Leather

Second you need plenty of leather. For a S-Type expect to use about 15 sqm for the seats and if you choose to use leather for the door padding and the other bits and pieces of the interior another 7 spm. Originally vinyl was used for the door paddings, but sometimes it's hard to get matching colors. In my case good vinyl would have been more expensive than leather.

Buying leather is a time consuming and difficult task. There are many different grades and prices range from about 30 to 80 Euro per square metre (A square metre is about 10.76 sqft). First of all there is leather for furniture and leather for cars. Latter has UV - stabilized dye and will not bleach in the sun. Both look the same, so be sure you get leather for car interior. If you want to keep your Jag original your only choice will be Connolys of Wimbledon. Otherwise you can also check your local wholesaler. Jaguars usually have seats with a smooth surface opposed to vintage Mercedes seats which have mostly a scared surface.

When buying your hide make a careful inspection. Hides come in sizes of about 3 sqm up to 8 sqm. The bigger hides are usually from elderly animals and will not possess the suppleness required for a good job. So go for hides of about 5 sqm as a rule of thumb. Take care of scoring, holes, marks of the skinners knife and other surface markings. They will make parts of the hide useless but will help you bargaining. Most of the leather around the edges will be wrinkled and of not much use. I used this for parts which are not seen eg. the bottom of the seat base.

Other material

For the flutes you need stuffing material. Originally cotton stuffing was used. I used some syntethic fibre.

The base for the flutes is calico. I used some strong cotton.

You need also some piping cord (about 20 to 30 m). Originally it was made of drilled paper which works surprisingly well and is very durable but hard to get hold of. Modern replacements are made of rubber.

To cover the springs of the front seats you'll some jute (for single layer two pieces about 1.0 wide and 1.5 m long)

The cushions are made of Dunlopillo. Replacements are readily available but quite expensive. Some parts can be made using normal padding foam. For padding some parts you need thin foam.

You'll need plenty of thread. Till now I used about 120m for the drivers seat. Originally cotton thread was used. To work with cotton thread you need thread lubricant. Use special stuff from the upholsterers. Normal oil will stain the material. I use Polyester thread without lubricant. It must be thicker than the thread for normal clothing.

As far as glue is concerned you should stick to your principles. Most trimmers continue to use the old-fashioned liquid glue. If you go for originality use the old Dunlop stuff which is said to be still the best. I used Pattex without solvents and Tesa spray. One important point is material suitability. Most solvents contained in various glues will pipe your foam to /dev/null (for non-linux users: Will dissolve your foam) under devolpment of hazardous fumes which are toxic and a fire risk. So be careful. Use the well known piece of scrap to test your glue. Very useful comes a plastic spreader.

Tools

The most expensive tool will be the sewing machine. Forget the idea of using your domestic all fancy electronic sewing machine. It will not cope with four layers of leather. The way to go is to get an industrial sewing machine. Unfortunately they're very expensive even secondhand machines will cost at least 700 Euro. Another possibility is to go retro. I'm using my grandmothers pre-war Singer 66 with the BUD motor and a Pfaff 30 (both built about 1932). They're mechanically strong and simple, easier to maintain and to repair than an old Jaguar. The only stitch pattern you need is straight and forward.

There are special needles for leather: they have a cutting edge. For the machine you need the biggest size (100/16) and plenty of them. Expect to work your way through at least 10 of them. Get one pack of normal leather sewing needles as well. There are a few spots where it is easier to sew by hand. You also need upholsterer's needles for the front seat base. They are bent and allow to fix the jute to the frame.

Very important is accurate measuring. Leather is quite expensive and once cut or sewed there is no way of reusing it. Don't use any steel tape for measurements. It will scratch the surface of the leather. Use a non metal measuring tape which will not harm your leather. In addition a wooden ruler is a very useful tool. It should be 1 m long. My method of choice of marking leather is taylors chalk. Most brands are easy to remove and don't leave any stains even when used on the front of the leather. But check first on a piece of scrap.

Cranked taylor's scissors are very convenient for cutting leather. Get a good pair for leather, calico, etc. and a second cheap one for cutting templates and paper. As far as knives are concerned cutting quality of disposable blades is pretty much the same. Check which handle you prefer. Always remember that the blades should never be stressed sideways as they're very brittle. For trimming you don't need them very often. I used it mostly to dismantle the old seats. A good clean cut can salvage your Dunlopillo.

For fixing your seat covers to the frame you'll need a good quality stapler. Like with needles you can also buy staples with a sharp edge. As far a I can see you don't need a hammer for the S-Type interior but for other types of Jags you will. There are special trimming hammers which are magnetic and have a soft-metal face.

Last of all you should have some metal spring clips with rounded edges or clothes pegs. They are used to fix the seat covers to the frame for fitting.

Getting started

Make a plan, get the picture

As with all jobs in car restoration: first make a plan. Before you buy

anything or start any work, define your aim. What quality of workmanship do

you want to achieve? My first seat cover looks

really nice and some friends have already admired it, but I can see my

shortcomings. There are some folds which don't look perfect, the piping of the

base is a little bit thinner than of the back and the flutes are not perfectly

aligned. But I like it and I don't have to deal with anybody else who hasn't

delivered good work to me and I enjoy working with leather.

If your leather is just hard and a little cracked consider also treatment

and repair. It's usually much cheaper and less time consuming than sewing a

new set of seat covers and conserves the cars originallity. Even seat covers

beyond repair should be treated with hide food to have nice and soft templates

to work with.

Ok your fingers are itching now and it's time to get the seats out of the

car and into the workshop. Take your camera and your sketchbook. Photograph

every part from different angles and sketch the pattern of your seats. I

recommend to start with the base of a front seat . It's the smallest and least

complicated part of the seats. Remove the clips and pull the sides of the seat

cover up. The piping is glued to the foam. Cut carefully with a sharp knife to

preserve the foam and your old seat covers. Number the

parts on the back and mark them on your sketch accordingly. Nothing worse

than spending hours to puzzle out how the parts are assembled at the end.

The frame of the base

Frankly my frames were still in good condition, so luckily I couldn't get

much experience on frame repair. I took of the broken cushion and discarded it

after using it as template. Repair is quite straightforward. Repair the frame

and replace broken springs. First of all a fairly coarse hessian (or jute) is

used to cover the springs. It is stitched into place with a curved needle.

Afterwards the foam is glued to the hessian. That's it.

Cutting

As mentioned before leather is very expensive. So be very careful when

cutting your pieces. First of all mark all the useless parts of your hide on

the back of it (e.g. the wrinkled parts, scratches ...). Now put all the

templates of the parts you will need on the back of the hide and try to put

them in a pattern to use as little leather as possible. To mark them put

something heavy on the template to keep it straight. Best are metal weights. I

used books. Sounds simple but works. Now mark around the template. If the

distance between the edge and the seam is standard you don't have to mark the

seam, if it is somehow different from the rest mark it as well. The marking of

the flutes works somehow different. See further down.

To avoid any confusion keep the template and the leatherpiece together till

you have used it.

Sewing

Sewing is straight forward. Really!! You only need straight stitches. The

length of the stitches is important for the look and the quality of your work.

Compare it with your original seatcovers. As a rule of thumb you should try 3

mm. Very important is also the tension of the thread. Bottom and top tension

have to be adjusted in a way, that the crossing of both threads lies in the

middle of the material and the thread is pulled tight. If you're not

experienced with sewing then ask for help as this is very important.

I couldn't find any answer on what to do with the ends of the threads. I

just knoted them together.

Piping and flutes

If you compare a modern BMW leather seat and an old Jaguar seat the Beemer

seat looks quite dull. That is due to the missing flutes and piping. The most

important design detail of vintage car seats. Piping is to finish off edges

around a seat with a round strip at the joint beween panels. It looks like the

beading fitted on the wings of a vintage beetle. Flutes are a series of

paralell pleats stitched on a backing material such as calico.

Piping

As mentioned earlier pipes are made by stitching a piping cord into leather

strips. I used a 3 mm rubber piping cord which is quite inexpensive. The

leather strips were about 3.5 cm wide. Length is according to the templates.

There is a special foot for your sewing machine to create the piping. If you

dont want to spend the money a "half foot" will do. You fold the

leather strip around the piping cord and sew it together.

There is also the possibility of glueing them together but I haven't tried

that. It is not as easy as it sounds. My advice is to practice on a piece of scrap.

Producing the pipes not that difficult but putting them in place needs

quite a bit of experience. You have to put the piping in between two panels

which will obscure the view of the piping completly. First of all I put them

together and adjust them with clothes pegs. They work much better than

needles. Afterwards you start to sew them together. Use your fingers and the

piping or "half" foot of your machine as guidance. If the piping is

examined from the face side, there won't be any stiches seen at all.

Flutes

One of the more complicated parts of the seat are the flutes. There are

several kind of flutes and several ways of producing them. I will show the way

I did it. The description refers to a sample of 8 flutes. Best is to practice

on a piece of scrap till you have a satisfying result. To practice put at

least 4 flutes on your sample.

There a two possibilities to do the flutes. First you cut single strips of

leather and join them or you take one large piece of leather and fold it over.

Latter is more complicated in my opinion and needs lot more experience to get

the flutes straight.

The width of the leather strips is utterly important for the result. You

can measure your templates or calculate the right size for your requirements.

The folds of my seat were 2.4 cm wide (maybe it was originally intended to

use 1 inch which is 2.54 cm) One has to add about 5 mm each side for the seams

and about 1 cm for fluffiness. That's a total of 4.4 cm per strip.

Take a piece of calico, cotton or other strong fabric and mark the visible

width of the flutes (here 2.4 cm, black lines). Now mark a second line about 5

mm right of the first line (this is the width of the seams, red lines)

Now put the first leather strip on the calico. The back is upward and the

right edge is on the first red line. This is for your sample. If you do it on

your seat you have to put the part which attaches to the left underneath the

strip front facing upwards and both parts aligned to the red line. Then sew

along the now invisible black line. Therefore you can use the width of the

sewing machines food or some of the little helpers delivered with your sewing machine.

After attaching the first strip you just fold it over and align it with the

red line as shown in the next figure.

Now repeat the first step by putting the second strip on the first one and

align both with the red line. Sew along the invisible black line to attach

both strips to the calico.

Fold it over. The first flute is now finished. Congratulations.

Now you repeat the steps until you have put all flutes on the calico.

Ok now follows the stuffing. I will explain this as soon as I find the time

for it. If you have any questions or ideas contact me. peter@hils.de

Last changed on Sunday, December 30th, 2001