Bubble Tech

Passenger side
Upholstered leather
Double top stitch in black 135 Tex thread

(Ran out of characters in my last post)

Take aways:
I need to improve my skiving skills. The purpose of this is for the seam to lay flat and if you look closely in the picture you can see the backside of the material showing through, I failed to remove enough material. I found this the most difficult step and the most time consuming and causes the most resistance, so I'll just buy a skiving machine...

On the driver's side there's noticeable "blotchiness" which I later found out was due to spraying the contact adhesive, I think it's due to the inconsistency. On the Passenger side I brushed on the adhesive and it looks substantially better.

And sewing. The inexperience shows. My stitches are still crooked albeit getting better. Dialing in the machine is also tricky as I forget. Since I skived more material on the Passenger side kick panel it reduced the thickness of the overall material, which caused my top thread to pull the bottom thread too much resulting in the bottom thread showing through the top.

Also while trimming off the extra seam allowance I applied too much pressure and cut right through the leather, unfortunately.

More lessons learned, but these will suffice for now as "prototypes" to see how they weather and if I want to make any changes when I eventually replace them.

Material study: Alcantara is pretty unique in the sense it has virtually no stretch in one direction and very little at 90*. This means fabric orientation is very crucial to prevent excess/lack of material when wrapping parts. This study was done on the A-Pillars for its simple geometry. The top flare is simple and straight forward but the bottom curve that meets the dash requires strategy. Overall not too difficult, start small and easy and work your way up. Small boost of confidence, on to the next one.

After countless hours of examining high end sports cars I came to the conclusion Alcantara from the door panels up give off the high end luxury feel. IMO it adds warmth and texture to your sightlines, absorbs reflections/glare and *maybe* dampens noise. It •feels• more premium and in this lackluster digital world I'm trying to evoke more feeling and emotion with this redesign.

Before: OEM semi gloss vinyl
After: Black Alcantara

Reproduction bracket for the E-Brake boot cover & New cover
Commonly cracked and warped
Reverse engineered, calipers & ruler > CAD
3D printed

E-Brake cover templated off OEM boot
Alcantara with Tex 135
Regular stapler

I'm baffled with the boot covers people have been buying and the poor generic templates the companies seem to be using after seeing a few videos on YouTube. With proper templating no zip tie or wire is required to keep it in place.

The stitch length is inconsistent but should be fixed with some tuning of the pressure foot and some more seat time on the sewing machine.

Tech Tip: Wet vs Dry blasting
This is a sample piece showing the results of sandblasting (dry) vs v***r honing (wet) and both combined. The media used was glass bead.

Dry blasting is more aggressive and will clean the part way faster but the dry finish leaves the pours open and is a very uncomfortable desirable finish. This process is typically used for prep work to clean up the parts for paint/powder coating.

Wet blasting aka v***r honing is exactly the same process except it mixes the glass bead with liquid (water) which is more gentle and acts as a "polishing agent" which leaves a much nicer finish. It's less aggressive and a slower process. As you can see in the close up in pic 6 the appearance is a little blotchy. This is due to some of the oxidation not being fully removed due to the more gentle blasting.

This is where I've wanted to explore after trying v***r honing, combining both processes. Dry blasting first to achieve the cleanest part in the least amount of time then v***r honing to "polish" the part. in person there is a noticeable amount more reflection off the surface that has been dry and wet blasted.

I just finished retrofitting my small sandblaster into a v***r honing cabinet and had to test out my theory. Hope this helps someone!

Officially the first wash ever! After 5? Years of ownership 😅
Now I can finally clay bar the car and either bring some life back into it or accidentally take off all the paint.... We'll see how the first attempt at buffing goes...

Thanks for following along!
---