3/19/04
Doorpanel and Carpet Details

I showed Frank the work I did on mounting the door panel, and he immediately spotted a detail I forgot! There is supposed to be a leather piping that runs all around the perimeter of the door panel to finish it off, and I was in such a rush to install the door panel, I forgot to install one! Now the left door panel will have to come off again, and the piping attached. It’s just another step backwards I have to take to make some progress forwards!

Progress is being made on my carpets, however, and I’m pretty happy with the results. Frank sat down and sewed all the binding on my carpets, so now I can finish installing all the pieces into the car. This piece is the front piece that covers most of the driver’s side floor and pedal box. We decided to make a heel pad out of leather and sew in some pleats. I’ve seen this on another car, and really like the way it looks. I know that this will not wear very well under the constant abrasion of my shoes, but I have a solution which I’ll explain shortly.

I covered the piece of cardboard I measured with foam, wrapped it with leather, and marked out the stitch lines for Frank to sew.

Now that the leather pad is sewn, I will mark the exact location I want this heel pad to sit on the carpet, and Frank will sew it onto the carpet.

The solution to keeping the leather heel pad in decent shape is to use a throw rug to cover this piece. The heel pad on the throw rug will be made of this ribbed rubber material, and will withstand a lot more abuse than the leather. This throw rug is slightly smaller than the fitted carpet, but fits snugly in place. If I ever show the car, I can take the throw rug out, and have nice soil-free carpets to show!

Some people wonder how I get Frank to come to my assistance when putting my car together, and this might offer some insight. I had four or five pieces of carpeting that still needed the binding sewn on by Frank. He’s a pretty busy guy trying to restore two other Ferrari interiors, along with his “bread and butter” jobs like Cadillac headliners, and Blazer seat covers. I often feel bad pulling Frank away from these jobs to work on my car, so sometimes I’ll try my best to work on my own. Sometimes this leads to problems like forgetting about the doorpanel piping, but other times I can get quite  a bit of work done by myself. In desperate times, I will even try to sew the binding myself! While Frank was out of the shop, I tried for a hour to make a clean straight stitch on scraps of carpet. Just as I thought I was getting the hang of it, Frank returned to tell me I was using the wrong foot on his machine to sew binding! After changing out the foot, Frank showed me how to make a better stitch, and I joked that he had intentionally withheld his secrets from me! After a few more minutes of watching over me, he moved me aside and finished my binding. I know that after a lot of practice, I would eventually get the hang of it, but my struggle with inexperience will often lead Frank to helping out!

Speaking of other Ferrari jobs, Frank is almost done covering the dash to another 330 America, 4969. It’s nice to see how this dash came apart so I can re-do mine soon. I was resistant to pulling my dash out again, but after seeing the results of this new dash, I can’t wait for mine to look the same!

After all the work I did on the interior, it would be a shame not to have the quality of dash matching the seats. I guess that’ll be another step backwards…

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