Hmmm. Lots of "Likes" but no-one screaming or laughing at me. Must be doing something right then 
Moving on...
I suppose it was my fault really. I mentioned to Mrs L7 how what I really wanted to do was change the interior to a lighter colour. I know it's hard to remember now with autumn in full swing, but this summer was hot. Really hot. And the black coal-hole of an interior, with no opening rear windows, was a fairly sweaty place for the kids to be on any long-distance trip. They had my sympathy, I remember earning what seemed like third-degree burns as a short-trousered kid to the waffle weave black vinyl in our old Beetle (anyone recall the summer of '76? Never seen so many ladybirds). Changing to a lighter colour seemed a Good Thing.
I don't do Facebook. So sometimes I forget that there are a lot of For Sale things on there. Thus it came as a bit of a surprise when Mrs L7 piped up that she'd bought*¹ a whole cream interior. Where the hell did she do that, I was pretty sure she wasn't spending furtive secret evenings navigating the shops of any of the usual VW suppliers. And in no way did she have the kind of money to buy an entire interior. Nope, it was secondhand. Off FaceBook. Oooo-kay. Must be utter curse word then?
Apparently not. The pics looked good as it happened. And it wasn't a million miles away, down the coast in Poole. Coincidentally, her sister lives there so I suspect an ulterior motive but whatever. Fortunately, I'd accidentally just bought Beryl the T25 camper so we all piled in and drove over to Sis's for the day... and to pick up this amazing two-hundred quid interior. It was our first epic road trip in Beryl and went rather well, once I'd accepted that when the petrol pump clicks "off" because the tank's full, it's because it's really full and you genuinely do NOT want to try squeezing in those last few extra drops. Unless, that is, you like having your shoes abruptly cleaned with overflowing unleaded
Anyway, the petrol fumes soon faded into the background and we at least had a humorous moment as we crawled up the loooooong hill towards Rufus Stone at the end of the M27. Coming up to a long queue of traffic, I had no choice but to put Beryl into the outside lane or risk losing way like a luffing*² schooner. As we got near the front of the snake of dawdling vehicles, there in the inside lane was a Bay Window camper struggling up the incline at around 35mph. And we inched past, Beryl making an alarming amount of noise from her modern*³ 2-litre airblower... at around 37 mph. We made the top of the hill after our impromptu VW elephant race and behind us you could see the traffic jam reaching back as far as... well, it looked like it went back to Southampton 
I was expecting the radio to come up with a traffic announcement about "the entire of Southern Hampshire came to a grinding halt today due to a pair of optimistic clowns in stupid old Volkswagens thinking they can actually both climb a hill at the same time"
But we made it. And had lovely roast ham and sticky buns for lunch. And eventually went off and collected this fabled interior. And lo and behold, it was actually OK. Both front seats, rear bench, doorcards, rear panels and some extra bits like a white rearview mirror and really skanky Mountney steering wheel. Seemed quite a bargain for £200, to be fair. The guy selling it didn't seem to think it suited his Baja Bug build, and he was probably right. It was dark by the time we got home... I dunno if you're getting this, but aircooled T25s are slow... so it was the next day before I got a chance to really investigate what we had
*¹ when she said "bought" she actually meant "I've committed to buying it, but you're paying"
*² luffing. Yep, actually a thing. Google it if you don't believe me
*³ modern. A very comparative term used pretty loosely in this instance. In much the same was as Cleopatra is quite modern because she lived closer to the first moon landing than she did to the building of the great pyramids
Grime by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
well, they were dirty. Seriously dirty. Probably my fault for buying a cream interior of unknown age, really. By lucky hap, Mrs L7 has a sideline flogging organic vegan mung-bean abusing products made from aloe vera, one of which is a severely powerful all-purpose cleaner. I gave one of the rear cards a quick going-over and it came up really well.
cleaning by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
and a quick half-and half on one of the seats suggested I might not have bought a pup after all. This might actually work!
halfway clean by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
I thought I was onto a winner here. I could just give them a quick clean up and just swap straight over from the black seats in the car and it'd take me a day tops all in. But the more closely I looked, the more bits I found that I wasn't sure I'd be able to live with. Exhibit 1 for the prosecution... rear ashtray
Ashtray dirt by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
yes, that caption is a reference to the awesome post-punk legend that is Culture Shock (ex-Subhumans, pre-Citizen Fish, etc) in fact, a startling number of my photo titles seem to end up as song titles, lyrics or albums. I'm surprised no-one's pulled me up about it before. But leaving that aside, no, the kids didn't really need an ashtray and hopefully never will but it was much preferable to empty an ashtray of discarded Opal Fruits wrappers (or whatever they're called nowadays) and half-chewed Haribo than it was to unglue them from the carpet or from down the back of the seat or wherever else they'd hidden/lost/stuffed them. And without the ashtray, they'd be a big hole in the sidepanel
Exhibit 2
Tilt adjustor mank by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Mmyeahh... the steelwork and fittings of the seat frames and rails wasn't exactly in the best of condition, now I looked at it closely. And then I realised the doorcards had speaker holes cut into them. And my doors have full-length windows, so the speakers would get in the way of winding down the window. And... and...
It was around this point I uttered that fateful phrase we all speak from time to time in foolish optimism and miss-placed enthusiasm. "I might as well strip it all down and do it properly"
After all, how hard could it be? It's only a little car
Moving on...I suppose it was my fault really. I mentioned to Mrs L7 how what I really wanted to do was change the interior to a lighter colour. I know it's hard to remember now with autumn in full swing, but this summer was hot. Really hot. And the black coal-hole of an interior, with no opening rear windows, was a fairly sweaty place for the kids to be on any long-distance trip. They had my sympathy, I remember earning what seemed like third-degree burns as a short-trousered kid to the waffle weave black vinyl in our old Beetle (anyone recall the summer of '76? Never seen so many ladybirds). Changing to a lighter colour seemed a Good Thing.
I don't do Facebook. So sometimes I forget that there are a lot of For Sale things on there. Thus it came as a bit of a surprise when Mrs L7 piped up that she'd bought*¹ a whole cream interior. Where the hell did she do that, I was pretty sure she wasn't spending furtive secret evenings navigating the shops of any of the usual VW suppliers. And in no way did she have the kind of money to buy an entire interior. Nope, it was secondhand. Off FaceBook. Oooo-kay. Must be utter curse word then?
Apparently not. The pics looked good as it happened. And it wasn't a million miles away, down the coast in Poole. Coincidentally, her sister lives there so I suspect an ulterior motive but whatever. Fortunately, I'd accidentally just bought Beryl the T25 camper so we all piled in and drove over to Sis's for the day... and to pick up this amazing two-hundred quid interior. It was our first epic road trip in Beryl and went rather well, once I'd accepted that when the petrol pump clicks "off" because the tank's full, it's because it's really full and you genuinely do NOT want to try squeezing in those last few extra drops. Unless, that is, you like having your shoes abruptly cleaned with overflowing unleaded
Anyway, the petrol fumes soon faded into the background and we at least had a humorous moment as we crawled up the loooooong hill towards Rufus Stone at the end of the M27. Coming up to a long queue of traffic, I had no choice but to put Beryl into the outside lane or risk losing way like a luffing*² schooner. As we got near the front of the snake of dawdling vehicles, there in the inside lane was a Bay Window camper struggling up the incline at around 35mph. And we inched past, Beryl making an alarming amount of noise from her modern*³ 2-litre airblower... at around 37 mph. We made the top of the hill after our impromptu VW elephant race and behind us you could see the traffic jam reaching back as far as... well, it looked like it went back to Southampton 
I was expecting the radio to come up with a traffic announcement about "the entire of Southern Hampshire came to a grinding halt today due to a pair of optimistic clowns in stupid old Volkswagens thinking they can actually both climb a hill at the same time"But we made it. And had lovely roast ham and sticky buns for lunch. And eventually went off and collected this fabled interior. And lo and behold, it was actually OK. Both front seats, rear bench, doorcards, rear panels and some extra bits like a white rearview mirror and really skanky Mountney steering wheel. Seemed quite a bargain for £200, to be fair. The guy selling it didn't seem to think it suited his Baja Bug build, and he was probably right. It was dark by the time we got home... I dunno if you're getting this, but aircooled T25s are slow... so it was the next day before I got a chance to really investigate what we had
*¹ when she said "bought" she actually meant "I've committed to buying it, but you're paying"
*² luffing. Yep, actually a thing. Google it if you don't believe me
*³ modern. A very comparative term used pretty loosely in this instance. In much the same was as Cleopatra is quite modern because she lived closer to the first moon landing than she did to the building of the great pyramids
Grime by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
well, they were dirty. Seriously dirty. Probably my fault for buying a cream interior of unknown age, really. By lucky hap, Mrs L7 has a sideline flogging organic vegan mung-bean abusing products made from aloe vera, one of which is a severely powerful all-purpose cleaner. I gave one of the rear cards a quick going-over and it came up really well.
cleaning by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
and a quick half-and half on one of the seats suggested I might not have bought a pup after all. This might actually work!
halfway clean by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
I thought I was onto a winner here. I could just give them a quick clean up and just swap straight over from the black seats in the car and it'd take me a day tops all in. But the more closely I looked, the more bits I found that I wasn't sure I'd be able to live with. Exhibit 1 for the prosecution... rear ashtray
Ashtray dirt by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
yes, that caption is a reference to the awesome post-punk legend that is Culture Shock (ex-Subhumans, pre-Citizen Fish, etc) in fact, a startling number of my photo titles seem to end up as song titles, lyrics or albums. I'm surprised no-one's pulled me up about it before. But leaving that aside, no, the kids didn't really need an ashtray and hopefully never will but it was much preferable to empty an ashtray of discarded Opal Fruits wrappers (or whatever they're called nowadays) and half-chewed Haribo than it was to unglue them from the carpet or from down the back of the seat or wherever else they'd hidden/lost/stuffed them. And without the ashtray, they'd be a big hole in the sidepanel
Exhibit 2
Tilt adjustor mank by Nick Liassides, on Flickr
Mmyeahh... the steelwork and fittings of the seat frames and rails wasn't exactly in the best of condition, now I looked at it closely. And then I realised the doorcards had speaker holes cut into them. And my doors have full-length windows, so the speakers would get in the way of winding down the window. And... and...
It was around this point I uttered that fateful phrase we all speak from time to time in foolish optimism and miss-placed enthusiasm. "I might as well strip it all down and do it properly"
After all, how hard could it be? It's only a little car
In the photo above, the stock untouched one is on the right. On the left is one I treated with some leftover leather re-connolising dye I had from doing the RX-7 interior, which though not a perfect match for the seats, was a hell of a sight closer than the zombie's knob grey of the Heritage ones. It took quite a few coats to get even coverage because they're sorta vinyl covered foam, not leather, and I've no idea how long it'll put up with wear and tear but it was a better option than using the old black ones. In between coats of that, I got the passenger seat disassembled fully. Or sort of ish
