the 2013 thread on my 95 Parisienne wagon

it's a work in progress.....

I started pulling parts off the parts wagon and cleaning em up and making em all purdy. I have to colour match the interior parts from the parts car to suit the parisienne. the Parts car's interior is light blue, so I've started colour changing parts to the medium grey.

lets start with the dash, the original dash in my 95 has suffered from years of hot southern sun. the dash pad is dry, the airbag cover has curled up on all corners most of the lower dash's clips and mounting points have cracked or broken, the dash just don't fit tight like it should. there are big gaps where the lower dash meets the heater controls and around the head light switch, it looks ok but not great. It just makes an other wise decent wagon look old and worn out. All the dash from the parts wagon is going to be swapped into my 95.




the new to me dash pad in blue



here is the dash pad in it's new colour




here is the lower dash all re coloured and with a simple change in the colour scheme, more mono chromatic just enough to differ from the Chevy sister car....








over head console

Some of you who have been following this wagon's new life with me will know that I took the interior from this



to this



these seats came out of a late model Monte carlo, they look ok but are just not built for a Man size individual such as me...

I've been tinkering......

One would think that Bonneville seats would be right at home in a Pontiac Parisienne...

Nice work, dude. Gonna change the dash illumination to red?

toomanytoyz wrote:

One would think that Bonneville seats would be right at home in a Pontiac Parisienne...

Nice work, dude. Gonna change the dash illumination to red?

you would think that but I'm not a fan of the bonneville seats.....

red means STOP, going green, since it means GO!

so I'm going to play with the stock seats a bit.....



first I took apart the original driver's seat and the passenger seat out of the parts wagon



the passenger seat, with the recline leaver shaft on the right hand side



the driver's seat with the recline leaver shaft on the left hand side




I then removed the recliner mechanisms from each seat bottom, simple as pulling two clips and two pins.






I then simply put the driver's recliner mechanism into the passenger seat frame.

and I now have a passenger seat with the recliner lever on the left hand side, making this the new driver's seat.

Looks great Pat, but I kinda like the Monte seats. I know for a fact that they are very comfy.

Now onto the seat foam. the original foam from the part's car passenger seat was fine. However the seat springs had started to cut into the foam



I glued a full peice of 1/4 scrim backed upholstery foam to the bottom of the seat foam. Scrim back foam is an upholstery foam that has a cloth backing bonded to it. the cloth backing will prevent the seat springs from cutting into the seat foam for a few more years.



the stock seat foam is rather flat and has little contours




so I laminated some layers of foam to build up the seat bottom's so it will contour my butt better, yet still look factory once the upholstery is over it




the seat should feel a bit firmer and hold me better, since I've added about 5/8" of new foam

How about one of those cluster overlays that turns the gauges into circular bezels? That would be very "pontiac".

Jay, where do you those?

Looks good Pat. I like the monochromatic dash.

The overlay was from impalaSSstudio. I just searched, and he's deleted his ebay account, and the website is gone. Maybe put a WTB on the ISSF? You could probably make one with a piece of thin textured plastic, using the old overlay as a template.

I really like the all-one-color look. Sounds exactly like something GM would do if they'd made a Pontiac version of these cars.

Looking forward to seeing the dash and seats installed!

-Mike

Nice work, Pat!!

Sadly the OEM seat fabric that I ordered is on back order and might take up to 6 weeks to get here. I'm a bit ticked but looking for other sources....

I did find the OEM headliner material in Detroit this past friday. picked some up

I played around with some of the headliner fabric and here is my first attempt with sunvisors

they are a bitch to take apart! good thing that I got a few sets of them to play with...

here I have the core of the sunvisor cleaned up and misted with upholstery glue



here is the back of the fabric also misted with the glue



the fabric is now bonded to the sunvisor's core



here's the sunvisor closed up





here it is done







over all it looks ok, but it's just a test to see if it can be done, I'm not 100% happy but I know that it can be done.

the next ones will look better

Those "clamshell" visors are difficult to re-furbish; they are not designed to be serviceable.

You did a nice job, especially for your first trial run. Nice work!!

JoeT wrote:

Those "clamshell" visors are difficult to re-furbish; they are not designed to be serviceable.!

that's what I was beginging to think, they are nothing but easy to get apart.

Wish I had known you were looking for a set,I have a brand new set still in plastic bags and that
exact color too.I would have given them you.













JUST KIDDING PAT!

Very nice Pat.

Jim, the ones I'm re-covering will be a perfect match to the new headliner.

the secound one that I just finished is 100% better, and close enough to OEM that nobody will know it's not OEM









I'm quite please this time

You should be,its beautiful!

The visor came out great much better second time around. Practice makes perfect. Never knew the visors came apart like that.

That second attempt is awesome. Nice work!

I had no idea that they came apart like that. I may have to grab a set and play around with them, too!

Well done, sir!
Looks perfect.

the impalastudio gauge overlay is one of there older ones the one i have has round holes for the idiots lights instead of the rectangles

I did a third one, giving me a nice pair that will go in the wagon.









here is the finsihed pair of sun visors for my wagon





so yes these visors can be recovered

mtrhead79 wrote:

the impalastudio gauge overlay is one of there older ones the one i have has round holes for the idiots lights instead of the rectangles

the more I look at those the less I like em.

here is the first b body pontiac door pull and trim bezel

SHMOKEN!!!!!!

This is looking GREAT! I'm really looking forward to seeing it all installed. Please keep the pics coming!

Nice job, Pat!

Nice cross tween a Buick and Chevy Nice Poncho touches all around.

Building a one of a kind wagon that you should be very proud of Pat!Definitely never going to see a lookalike across the intersection from you.Beautiful wagon,dude!

thanks guys,

so this past saturday while many were digging out, I dragged sue all the way to toronto where I went to a warehouse outlet of automotive fabrics and vinyls. they buy end of line and miss fit lots of automotive fabrics, vinyls and carpets.

So I lucked out and found the exact fabric in the right colour for my 95, along with matching carpet that I'll use to redo the cargo area.

here are the samples of the new fabric, the headliner fabric and carpet sitting on the new dash pad and a section of the original 95 fabric darn close







He had a roll of it and I wanted 10 yards, but the roll had 13.5 yards so he sold me the whole 13.5 yards for the price of 10, at only 8 bucks a yard too! I also got 3 yards of the cargo carpet too at eh same price!




an added bonus the seat fabric has the foam and scrim back already bonded to it!

As I was leaving I said to the guy that I was happy that he still had some of this old GM seat fabric, he smiled and said yes GM did use that very same fabric in the 90's but Toyota is currently using it, that's where that roll you got came from!

the first project that I tackled with the new fabric was the passenger front door panel

I then started on the seats, I got the driver's seat bottom done first



this is what the factory seat bottom looks like



I'm doing some minor differances

Looking good Pat.

I need to take care of my baby really bad she is filthy from letting Val and the kids just terrorize it. Interior is bad and rust is creeping up really bad on her. Dam winters.

Really nice work! Looking great!

So you got the needed fabric for your seats,headliner,doors and carpeting from the same
place and he made you a deal on the price?I would call that incredibly lucky and then go buy
a handful of lotto tickets!Way to go Pat!

I really like the door panel mod. Looks super!

Flasheroo wrote:

Building a one of a kind wagon that you should be very proud of Pat!

Correction: Building ANOTHER one of a kind wagon that you should be very proud of Pat!

Tom C.

81X11 wrote:

I really like the door panel mod. Looks super!

thanks

so this is what I started with



added some of this



and worked with them and made this

Did you fill or sand/grind/remove the ridge (That had silver,chrome on it stock in the pic) on the outside of the whole door pull?

Years ago I was working on using the early Roady set for my 95 MGM wagon. Was going to go all black but the SEM wouldn't set up correctly and I never went back to working on it again. That and I wanted to wrap the moving door pull in leather/vinyl which meant I would then have to wrap the oh-SHoot! handles I added in the headliner to match as well.

The visors look good too. I know how much a pain they are as I have tried that as well. Both my visors ar the lighted mirror type now.

Looking good, especially because I almost purchased that wagon for parts.

silverfox103 wrote:

Flasheroo wrote:

Building a one of a kind wagon that you should be very proud of Pat!

Correction: Building ANOTHER one of a kind wagon that you should be very proud of Pat!

Tom C.

we shouldn't forget my 93 with the power vent windows....

i love those p/w vent windows. i still have never seen those in jy. i always check the malibues for them. the closest i found was a pontiac wagon with p/w vent windows but they used a mtr with a rod not a cable. i took them to see if i could use a cable but never got around to it

rh96ss wrote:

Did you fill or sand/grind/remove the ridge (That had silver,chrome on it stock in the pic) on the outside of the whole door pull?

I used a fine saw and removed the trim then grind then sand.

rh96ss wrote:

Years ago I was working on using the early Roady set for my 95 MGM wagon. Was going to go all black but the SEM wouldn't set up correctly and I never went back to working on it again. That and I wanted to wrap the moving door pull in leather/vinyl which meant I would then have to wrap the oh-SHoot! handles I added in the headliner to match as well.

the trick to SEM is cleaning, it can never be too clean. A rep from SEM told me the best way to clean parts is to use hot water, the hotter the better and mild dish soap with a 3m scrubbie and just scrub away, rinse with hot clean water, then let air dry. If you are unsure or have issues with the adhesion of the SEM then use an adhesion promoter primer.

rh96ss wrote:

The visors look good too. I know how much a pain they are as I have tried that as well. Both my visors ar the lighted mirror type now.

I found that the trick to them is to only glue the inner surface where the teeth/claw are and the portion of the fabric that will contact the teeth/claws.
Keep in mind that GM used a jig in a press and ony took secounds to wrap and close the visors up. we just have two hands and our minds. yet the prototypes were done by hand.

rh96ss wrote:

Looking good, especially because I almost purchased that wagon for parts.

I'm glad that I to it before you.

mtrhead79 wrote:

i love those p/w vent windows. i still have never seen those in jy. i always check the malibues for them. the closest i found was a pontiac wagon with p/w vent windows but they used a mtr with a rod not a cable. i took them to see if i could use a cable but never got around to it

doubt if you'll ever find em, that generation of malibu lemans are long gone from the junk yards, and not many of the four doors were saved. When they do show up they are normally pristine grandma cars with low millage that have been sitting in a garage and sold complete and not parted out....

there has to be other power systems that can be retro fitted to our wagons

i have seen p/w motors in newer cars use cables but so far the ones i have seen use 2 cables. when i see cars in jy with the door panels off i always peek in. i have bought a couple mtors from rear of mini vans but they dont fit behind are trim panels

some progress shots of the completed driver's seat next to the stock passenger seat











I'm not 100% pleased yet still some tweaking to be done.

I don't know why the stitching in the seat back shows up more in the picture than the stitching in the seat bottom does

buickestate wrote:

mtrhead79 wrote:

i love those p/w vent windows. i still have never seen those in jy. i always check the malibues for them. the closest i found was a pontiac wagon with p/w vent windows but they used a mtr with a rod not a cable. i took them to see if i could use a cable but never got around to it

doubt if you'll ever find em, that generation of malibu lemans are long gone from the junk yards, and not many of the four doors were saved. When they do show up they are normally pristine grandma cars with low millage that have been sitting in a garage and sold complete and not parted out....

there has to be other power systems that can be retro fitted to our wagons

How many do you want? Tell me what to yank, I'll send them to you to make the kits, and we can get a little enterprise going for power rear vent windows. There are still lots of G-body sedans and some G-wagons here at the yards.






God Bless Texas!!

We need to get some more members in New Mexico/Arizona/Californa to raid those yards.

-Mike