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Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2020 12:12 pm
by FRUNKenstein
Dr_Strangelove (whew!) wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 11:49 am Going to throw a curve ball here and say how about black seats, green stitching, NO piping? I feel like the car is very green as it is.. I'm honestly going to be the lone vote for #4 overall if you need to give a reference to your upholstery guy.
I met with the shop installation technician today, who will handle design. He liked #2, and they can embroider the stylized "X1/9" logo in the headrests and do the diamond stitch pattern. He is going to send me a rendering of his design after he speaks with the guy who sews the covers. The installation technician is a young guy, and he's really excited about doing it. I told him that I'm pretty flexible and to have some fun with the project - if I was uptight, I wouldn't own a car like that in the first place. Got a laugh out of him over that comment. We'll see what he comes up with.

Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2020 12:39 pm
by gnat
Dr_Strangelove (whew!) wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 11:49 am Going to throw a curve ball here and say how about black seats, green stitching, NO piping? I feel like the car is very green as it is.. I'm honestly going to be the lone vote for #4 overall if you need to give a reference to your upholstery guy.
Yeah black with green stitching would look nice.

Can't find a good picture of the peridot stitching on the Cayenne GTS. Looks really nice, but subtle.

Ooohhh.... While looking for this I found this thread that I had forgotten about. Given that Frunk is a cheap ass miser, this may be up his alley: https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/cay ... beige.html

It's actually easy, but REALLY tedious. I never actually did it cause those samples took forever and there is a LOT of stitching in the 958 even though I went cheap and just got the partial leather interior.

Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2020 1:22 pm
by FRUNKenstein
gnat wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 12:39 pm
Ooohhh.... While looking for this I found this thread that I had forgotten about. Given that Frunk is a cheap ass miser, this may be up his alley: https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/cay ... beige.html

It's actually easy, but REALLY tedious. I never actually did it cause those samples took forever and there is a LOT of stitching in the 958 even though I went cheap and just got the partial leather interior.
Actually very ingenious idea, but

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Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2020 1:58 pm
by gnat
FRUNKenstein wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 1:22 pm
gnat wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 12:39 pm
Ooohhh.... While looking for this I found this thread that I had forgotten about. Given that Frunk is a cheap ass miser, this may be up his alley: https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/cay ... beige.html

It's actually easy, but REALLY tedious. I never actually did it cause those samples took forever and there is a LOT of stitching in the 958 even though I went cheap and just got the partial leather interior.
Actually very ingenious idea, but


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Image

you're not really a tightwad after all.

Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2020 10:05 pm
by Dr_Strangelove

For the rest of my life I'm calling JoAnne's Fabric "Johan's Fabric"

Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 11:09 am
by FRUNKenstein
Dr_Strangelove (whew!) wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 10:05 pm

For the rest of my life I'm calling JoAnne's Fabric "Johan's Fabric"
The scary part to me is that this is 2 JoAnn's Fabric name encounters in less than a week for me. My son was home for the holiday, and last weekend, he and my wife (his mother) got into this big discussion about whether it was pronounced as "Joan's Fabric" or "Joe Ann's Fabric". I'm not even sure how the topic came up, but it went on for some time. To put it into context, I may have had occasion to even acknowledge that company's existence maybe, at most, one time in my life. I'm chalking it up to a glitch in the matrix.

Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 11:19 am
by Dr_Strangelove
FRUNKenstein wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 11:09 am
Dr_Strangelove (whew!) wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 10:05 pm


For the rest of my life I'm calling JoAnne's Fabric "Johan's Fabric"
..he and my wife (his mother) got into this big discussion about whether it was pronounced as "Joan's Fabric" or "Joe Ann's Fabric"...

LOL, well now you have the answer. Practice your Swedish chef accent before you correct them.

Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 11:21 am
by FRUNKenstein
I just got back from the upholstery shop as they called because they wanted to show me what they had come up with. They had both green thread and green vinyl already in stock, and of course the black vinyl is one of their standard stock vinyls. They described what they plan to do. It all sounded good. Then they hit me with a $2,200 plus tax price. That seems really high to me. Rather than just saying no, I asked them to do it for $1,800 plus tax, which still seems pricey. The boss was out, so the installer I was working with said he would talk to the boss and get back to me. This is not a "high end" shop - just a small, unpretentious operation in a safe, but lower rent part of town. The past work they've done for me seemed very reasonable, but this job bid seems excessively high. I noted in the estimate, for example, that they are charging like $230 for the logo embroidery on the 2 headrests. I've had enough stuff embroidered over the years (youth sports team logos on ballcaps and backpacks) to know there's a lot of profit built into that price. I mean it's a one-color, outline embroidery of 4 characters. So, we'll see.

Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 12:08 pm
by gnat
FRUNKenstein wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 11:21 am I've had enough stuff embroidered over the years (youth sports team logos on ballcaps and backpacks) to know there's a lot of profit built into that price. I mean it's a one-color, outline embroidery of 4 characters. So, we'll see.
Leather/vinyl used for seats is substantially tougher than your average sports team gear and requires a machine capable of tolerating the extra work (at least if it's not a one off job).

$2200 feels high for vinyl, but not unreasonably so. Keep in mind that this is a custom job that is going to get done by hand. Did they break out the material and labor hours/costs?

Shit. At that price, drive the Turbro over there and get them to do a quick estimate for a full leather redo (dash, center console, door cards, seats, tunnel, visors, steering wheel, steering column, vent slats. Between these guys and your paint guy, maybe I need to bring the 996 to visit rice (heh) country for a bit...

Re: 1987 Bertone (aka Fiat) X1/9

Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 2:43 pm
by FRUNKenstein
Well, I got a call back and they're doing it for $1,800 plus tax. I think that's a fair price. I was expecting around $1,200, but you are correct in that it is a custom job.

Hopefully the install of the 914 seat covers comes in at around the $500 they charged to install the pre-fab 944 seat covers. That would make the total cost for the covers and install right at $1,000.