TheSamba.com :: View topic - 59-up dark grey upholstery sources

Sat Mar 21, 2009 8:40 am

Hi all,

I saw the thread on the black upholstery kit, and thought a dedicated thread was needed for the grey upholstery kit. I have two 1959 buses (Double-Cab and Double-Door Panel) that will both eventually need quality upholstery kits. I have the grey factory covers without piping. I ordered the grey kit from Wolfsburg West (an EMI kit) and it is nice but way lighter in color than the original upholstery color. Side by side the color is way off, even accounting for dirt and ageing. Has anyone come up with a closer or dead-on color and texture match for all of us out here needing that grey interior? Pass the word on...

Bill Bowman
www.bnnta.com

Sat Mar 21, 2009 9:07 am

I would like to find that out as well. I have a 59 (11/58 production date) Single Cab that's gonna need some grey interior.

Is Lenny's or Octavios a close match?

EA57RHD

Sat Mar 21, 2009 9:33 am

Marc (abuspilot) sent me a sample for some fabric which looked nice. I haven't had a chance to compare it to my '62 panel since that is packed into storage.

Sat Mar 21, 2009 9:50 am

I posted in the other thread about some sample material I ordered.
I'll let you know when I get it, and take pix of it alongside my OG '59 grey seats.

Sat Mar 21, 2009 4:12 pm

I'm working on a '63, and plan to reupholster the seats. Would upholstery in this condition be of any use to anyone? The bottom part is fairly wrecked, as is the entire driver's seat, but other than some loose stitching, this seat back doesn't look too bad if someone is looking for OG gray with white piping.

Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:56 am

Finally got the cabrio vinyl material swatches.
Here are the photos:

I really like the non-strechiness.
However, the pebble pattern is much finer than original.
If I were covering all the seats in a bus, I'd use the #464 blue grey.
The one on the left. My seats have aged and darkened over time, so I don't think the blue grey would be that far off from original color.
It would look weird if you had original fabric seats alongside recovered seats in this fabric.
Anyway, this is the closest I've found so far.
I'll keep looking, I guess.

Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:07 pm

Maybe it's my monitor but from here, neither of those samples match at all in color.

Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:59 pm

Damn, I thought for a second that someone had found a "real" correct match for 59-61 Dark Grey material for deluxe panels and seats judging by thread title.

Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:05 pm

yeah...I would love to know where to get some.

without dying anything, looks like we are screwed.

Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:25 am

Where do the school bus companies get theirs? I was on a bus last week, and it looked pretty close.

Fri Apr 24, 2009 8:11 am

Aiko wrote: Damn, I thought for a second that someone had found a "real" correct match for 59-61 Dark Grey material for deluxe panels and seats judging by thread title. yeas, i was thinking that it was closer to the 59-61 dlx blue-gray as well

Thu May 07, 2009 12:44 pm

Hi all dark grey upholstery freaks!

Matt Miller from Arkansas (Samba name: 1962 x3 ) got a hold of me a few weeks back (probably here on this very thread) and they were working on a solution to the color and thought they had a possible source and might make kits. They wanted a set of covers to study for color, etc., but I don't have any original "scrap" material, and I'm still using the covers on my Panel. I believe he understands the color problem that we're all having and that we want a close if not exact shade and texture match. It's obvious that there are a LOT of us out here that would line up to buy a reasonably priced upholstery kit for these dark grey covers. I myself need three bench seats, all with out the piping, for my '59 Panel and '59 Double Cab! So Matt, if you're on here, please speak up and tell us what we can do to help! Anyone have a decent scrap piece to send to him?

Bill Bowman

Thu May 07, 2009 1:05 pm

Okay, here is a photo I took of the grey upholstery kit I bought from Wolfsburg West a while back. I laid the kit material (lighter grey) on my original seat covers in my '59 Double-Door Panel. Not even a close match!

Notice the split seam and the normally hidden material now exposed. THAT is what we are looking for, that is as close to fresh new accurate color as we can get. Now we need someone to be able to supply a lot of us with as cose a match as possible in texture and especially color as possible in a kit any of us could install. I hope someone from W.W. sees this and can get the color right.

If someone gets this right, there are a lot of out here that could use 'em.

Bill Bowman

Thu May 07, 2009 6:10 pm

FINALLY, I got around to taking some photos of the material I have found and used for the seats in my 61 kombi.

On the left of all these pictures is the NEW material, while on the right is a EXTREMELY nice rear seat I have. The seat was stored in darkness for 35 years, and in the photos, the BACK of the rear seat backrest is shown..no wear and no discoloration.

A picture with flash and one without, under incandescent lighting. On the last few showing texture detail, do not mind the discoloration as the light source was indirect

The material is a little bit stretchier than I would like, but it is thick enough not to bother me. Best I have come up with yet (far better than anything currently available from a VW supplier) Let me know what you all think.

Fri May 08, 2009 10:12 am

Hey Sled,

That looks like a fairly close match in both color and texture on my monitor. Clearly a better match than the TMI cover that WW sells and can be seen in my photo above. I wish I had taken those shots outside in the sun w/o a flash.

I talked with Matt from Arkansas yesterday. He owns his own upholstery shop (cars, boats, and aircraft) and he has several VWs including split Buses. He started out by hunting for the black upholsery for an earlier van, and wants to get going on being able to provide enthusiasts with a package of the correct color/texture covers, the hair pads, jute pads, basically everything you'd need to recover your seats all in one purchase.

Are you considering having covers made for others or were you just doing your own? Perhaps you might turn Matt onto the material source as a possibliity for his sets for others enthusiasts. I think he is hoping in these early stages to be able to provide a complete kit of covers, hairpads and jute pads for hopefully a bit under $300 a bench. I think I paid around $170 or so for just the TMI cover set, can't remember what I paid for the WW hairpads. A target price of under $300 for everything sounds pretty good to me, I just hope he can hold it to that.

Bill Bowman

Fri May 08, 2009 10:13 am

BulliBill wrote: I think he is hoping in these early stages to be able to provide a complete kit of covers, hairpads and jute pads for hopefully a bit under $300 a bench. I think I paid around $170 or so for just the TMI cover set, can't remember what I paid for the WW hairpads. A target price of under $300 for everything sounds pretty good to me, I just hope he can hold it to that.

Bill Bowman

nice, keep us posted on this

Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:14 am

Okay, how about an update on the search for a proper gray upholstery seat kit?

About a week ago Matt Miller who owns several Split Buses and lives near Little Rock, AR drove up to my home near St. Louis with all of his sample books, measuring tools, etc., and paid me a nice visit. He spent several hours looking at all my various condition gray bench seats and we went out for a nice dinner too. His goal was to locate on one of my seats the most un-worn, un-weathered and un-faded area of original gray material, no matter how small. Then he could compare all the gray material samples he brought with him against mine to come up with material he that could obtain in bulk to eventually start production of a complete kit. The objective here is to make a future gray upholstery kit as "new" or as "NOS" looking as possible, not a match to worn-down grain or faded color, but to make it look just like the day the Bus was delivered.

It took a while to find a sample swatch with pretty much the exact shade of my best area on my seats (see the photo I sent earlier in this thread - that area of original upholstery material hidden inside the stitched backrest). Then he spent even more time trying to find a sample swatch that had the right grain pattern, as close as he could get to the original un-worn material. The guy was fanatical in his search, and certainly has better eyes than I for looking at all this stuff. Then again, it's his passion and what he does for a living!

I ended up sending the complete bench with my best material with him back to Arkansas so that he could continue to study it and go for the best match, or possibly have the material actually made new to order which is possible, but more expensive.

So that is where he is now, and hopefully he will duck in here and eventually update us on his progress. I wish him luck and can't wait to have him cover my set as an example of the finished product. He mentioned that he hoped to have something ready for the Eureka Springs VW event, but that is pretty optomistic, we can only hope the search goes well.

Update over!

Bill Bowman

Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:19 am

These pictures kind of distort the color but it is damn close to the same as OG.

Sun Oct 04, 2009 10:26 pm

Another update on the gray upholstery effort...

I talked with Matt Miller about a week ago and after lots of research he has contracted with a US company to make from scratch some of the elusive material for the dark gray upholstery kits that he will be offering fairly soon. The company can reproduce the material in the gray color to match my best, freshest original material swatch and they will create the correct size "pebbling" or texture and depth of that texture. As soon as the first roll of material arrives he'll be making up a set on the front bench seat set I loaned him. Once that is completed we should be able to post photos of the completed seats for you to see.

After that I'm sure that Matt will let you all know about his complete gray (and earlier black) seat upholstery kits and when they should be available.

End of update...

Bill Bowman

Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:29 am

cool,look forward to this.