The Lotus Grand Tourers

If it's good enough for you that's good enough for me. They're coming off

If you are doing the front rails, note the orientation of the tangs in case you remove them. I know some one who put them back on upside down. But I wont embarrass him.

Headlining replacement getting back on track at last. I've now pulled the trigger and bought a full 50 sqr ft hide from MarTrim on line for £230 inc.

It arrived as a 9 ft roll ! Didn't realise cows were that big. Colour match to sand leather is good enough for the headlining. Sun visors will be done in same hide.

Given up waiting on Heritage Classics and now the job is going to The Classics Workshop near Croft Circuit Darlington. Never knew they existed until seeing them on Bangers And Cash when the restored a white convertible Golf GTi.

No idea how much fitting will be. I dare not ask. Hoping they will fit me in before Christmas because I want to go to St Ives in the Excel for the Christmas week... assuming it's not snowing.

Back after two weeks at The Classic Car Workshop, near Croft Race circuit.

They did the strip-down and leather fitting, I didn't do anything.





Rear parcel shelf not done (not enough leather)
Sun visors not done (enough leather, but not enough courage!)

Guess the cost of the labour (you know the cost of the leather) - main thing is, the wife is happy with it, and she correctly guessed the labour cost!.

Looks fantastic! Really nice job. Mine is waiting to be done again. Last time 2009

That looks great Peter! Well worth the expense (whatever it is! ) Got to keep SWMBO happy at all costs

Pete

Wow. Just wow. Great job.

Thanks chaps, Credit goes to the trimming guy. He did a good job.

The only rear flaw in the job is at the c pillars. Lotus used normal door card clips pushed through the c pillar trims, and as there can be no foam backing under stretched 2 mm thick leather, the clip heads show through as a small rectangular bump.

As no one has offered to guess the fitting cost I'll tell you.

£1528.84.

Plus £230 for the leather = £1758.84.

They'd not done a complete start from scratch headlining job on an Excel before, so I paid for their disassembly time plus trial and error job development time I guess.

That looks like a top job. From your description, I don't think the C pillars would bother me at all, but I'd want to get the visors done, now that everything else is looking so good.

Thanks for sharing the prices. I'd have guessed quite a bit more than you've paid.

Lovely job.
Those sun visors won't be that trick.
When I redid my roof lining with normal material, I remade the black plastic part of the visor with black leather, stitching the roof lining fabric with a backing to it. Leather to leather really won't be too tricky, easier and the finish at the pivot line easier to get neat.

Tony

Class, pure class.

Bash

Thanks again chaps.

I think I will have a go at the sun visors myself. In any case they are not staying like that.

How would one finish the leather edge around the vanity mirror? The leather is quite thick so I guess folding it to make a clean edge around the mirror might be tricky?

Also how do you remove the visors? I don't want to damage the job they've done.

That leather headlining looks really good!

I recovered my sun visors in fabric, not leather, the previous job had been done in vinyl - but badly. The vinyl around the mirror edges had been stitched and the mirror glued in place behind it I think. It was a mess as the shape wasn't consistent, and the stitching was all over the place. If you can cut a neat hole and finish off the edge of the leather nicely and then glue it to the mirror or a replacement plastic mirror you should be able to get a decent result.

The original mirrors were heat welded/melted to the fabric - something I can't do! I tried a few things to get a neat finish but failed miserably, in the end I took the easy way out and just deleted the mirror. I also didn't stitch along the top, straight part of the visor, just folded the material over - easier to do if only one colour is used.

There are nuts either end of the rod that goes through the top of the visors - the whole front roof panel will need to come out to access the nuts. See pic below:



Neil.

Thanks Neil.
I too would delete the mirror but SWMBO will need it for cosmetic maintenance.

So the front trim comes out by just by undoing the screws under both sunvisors plus the screws into the rear mirror bracket?

I figured that all phones have selfie cameras these days so that would have to do!

I think so - there may also be some clips/tabs that support it above the doors, and the cover over the roll bar may need to be removed/loosened - it is a long time since I took mine off though....



Neil.