austinseanchris

Well, the time has come to finish this one month project that started last August. The idea was sparked back in August of replacing my seats which were in awful shape. My car came factory with saddle brown interior and was dark brown on the outside. How the 70's loved browns! Nonetheless, we painted the car white and I've been wanting to change the interior to black. With that said, I put black slip covers on the seats(which were in horrendous shape), and dyed the carpet black. So, in a quick peek, everything appeared black and aok. But, the seats were nasty, splitting, uncomfortable, and up close, it looked like crap. SO, I decided it was time for some new seats. Well, I removed the seats and then I got to thinking, "Nows the time to go ahead and put new carpet it in." So I bought new carpet. Then I got to thinking, "well, I'm changing the carpet, now would be the time to change the plastic trim." So I painted what I could and bought new peices that werent broken. Then I'm like, "Well new seats cant have old nasty brown seatbelts," so I bought new black seatbelts. And so on and so on, etc!!! Next thing you know, everything inside was replaced...EXCEPT FOR THE SEATS which were the final peice(and most expensive too)! Anyhows, found some rust in the floor pans, sanding that down, POR15'd it, painted the entire surface on top of that, dynamatted in, dynopadded it and then layed the new carpet.

Nonetheless, the wait is over, I have purchased seats. Thanks to RobRace10, I'm armed with a plan to go about putting this babies in. No tracks on the seats...I'm 6'4 so I cant use tracks or I'll be up to high. Looks like I got a few custom brackets to make, but thought I'd share some images of the progress for anyone who may care...And yes, some of the image quality is poor...used my phone...
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In case your wondering, I'm putting new covers on. The ones that were on it were in pretty good shape, but with everything else new, I dont wanna cut corners. Instead of the C5 logo, there will be the 77-79 Style Corvette flags on the headrest and where "Corvette" is written on the seat, it will no longer be in the 97-04 design, it will be in the 77-79 scripting.

MIKE80

You're almost there... It's looking really nice

qwank

Nice Rhoads V and A7X Schecter in the background

jaysonb

Nice job. Looks great!

austinseanchris

Sounds like someone knows their guitars!

briankeery

Beautiful workmanship, well done.

doorgunner

It's looking great! RATS! You're three weeks ahead of me!

MrJlr

I re-did my interior about a year and a half ago......what a nightmare project

But I can say it was totally worth it in the end.....

Looks great! Keep us posted!

Snoopysvet

I wish my dash looked that good

austinseanchris

Thanks all...well as of tonight, I got the passenger side C5 seat torn apart. I wish it looked as good as the driver side I tore apart last night. Looking like new foam is gonna be a must for this side But now the dilemma Im faced with is trying to figure out which year seat I have. Just learned tonight that the 97-00 C5 Sport Seats were a little different(as far as the foam) from the 01-04 C5 sport seats. I thought all 97-04 sport seats were the same??? But, I figured by looking on the mfg tags on the hardware would be a dead giveaway...Well, reading the foam, its stamped mfg 01-11-2000 and the power motors read mfg 01-28-2000. So, not sure if that'd still be 2000 production cars or whether it'd be starting 2001 production based on mfg dates. Or even then, those parts could have been mfg'd early 2000 and still equipped cars all the way up till August-ish when new models come out???

TurboStitchCW

lol....a lot of "while I'm at its" in there! Your interior looks awesome! Those seats are gonna look sweet in there. Question: what are you doing with the old seats?

austinseanchris

No kiddin! Lol...my old seats. Well lets just say I tore em apart to look about rebuilding the stock seats. Not much useable on those old seats so they were tossed to the side. Even the frames were rusted

TurboStitchCW

so not really much of a chance of someone buying them off of you to rebuild?

austinseanchris

I dont think theres much left to rebuild lol

Dk Gy Met

Yeah, you're doing some good work there. Love all the pics.

I also have a 78 with some rusty floorboards. Did you make sure and fix the cause before all that fix em up?
I hate to ask but I didn't want you to think - ah, it's just rusty from age - it probably was/is a leak.
I have the carpet out of mine until I get the leak fixed. Then new carpet, new seats, ...!!!

austinseanchris

Nope...I think a lot of people would agree that no matter how much we love these cars, they did like to leak. My passenger side was A LOT worse than the driver side. I scraped all the rust out that I could. Then i sanded it smooth, then washed down, dried it and sealed it with POR15. After that, I put a base coat of rustoleum over top of that. Then the dynamat, then dynapad, then carpet. Good luck on your project and dont try to cut corners. I learned a lot doing mine abd thanks to forum members help. But...the pride will be when your done and someone takes notice of it. Then you can say, "I did that!"

minitech

Great work! Before assembling the C5 seats search C5 seat in the C5 section. Some people put extra support such as a split piece of hose over the sharp driver's side bolster edge so it doesn't cut into the foam so easily (Easy to push on that while getting out and it messes up that side easily over time), maybe some other things to think about before getting the new covers back on. Definitely get the air bolsters to work.

austinseanchris

Thanks and will definitely check that out...gotta bout 3 weeks till the new covers come in. Had some special embroidery done...hope it turns out right...

austinseanchris

Going at a slow pace here with work and everything else going on. Got all the trim peices repainted and the seat frames sanded down(they had some surface rust). Just finished spraying them yesterday. Got the frames in the car to do some preliminary measurements before bolting them in. The new foam should be here by the weekend and the new covers next week. Hoping to have the brackets made and frames mounted by the end of the week. Then all I'll need is to throw the foam and covers on them.

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P.S. Make sure you dont lose your recliner handle clips(or C clips). I had one fly off, heard it bounce about 10 times of the walls and I've yet to locate it. Needless to say, I bought one from GM for $6!!! Still feeling a little sore on that one...

Grabbed an old burlap sack too...gonna throw that beween the seat cushions and foam to help prevent the wires from cutting through. Plan on adding a few small peices of rubber hosing on the lumbar side peices. Thanks fellow members on these two tips

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Hopefully the next pics will be completed ones.

austinseanchris

Well, after what seems to have been an eternity, I have finally completed the seats as of last night. Talk about a PITA, anyone who has re-upholstered a seat knows what I'm talking about. I hear people saying it sucks all the time, I know first hand now. Nontheless, they're done and mounted in the car. I was originally going to use the original seats tracks to try to mount the seats to since I knew those holes were correct as opposed to making custom brackets. The problem with that though is that utilizing the existing bolts in the floor pans and using the original tracks outta my 78, they were too wide as the C5 seat frame is narrower in width. So, after it was all said and done, bout two peices of 1/4" thick/4' long steel and cut them in 4 pieces at 22" each. Lined the holes up and drilled holes into them to match the floor(I didnt wanna start drilling holes in the floor pans...wanted to keep stock ones), then mounted those to the frame. So the seats dont adjust, but when your 6'4, I dont think I'm gonna need to slide up any towards the wheel anyways.

I'll be a lil honest when I say, I'm happy with the way they turned out(as far as the custom embroidery), but the emblems are a little bigger than I wanted. I would have preferred about half the size that they are. I feel like its drawing too much attention. It was going to be C5 emblem on them and I thought that'd look hideous in my C3. The 77-79 scripting in the center is what I wanted as originally it had the C5 style "Corvette". But, without further ado, here are the finished end results...

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I did wanna give a shout out to "RobRace10" for the help in getting this project underway for me. Also, for anyone thinking about doing this, have a pair of hog ring pliers(I didnt have those) and PLENTY of patience and/or sanity!