[Mazda Carnage]

My decision to put a blue interior in the 666GT instead of Burgundy was for three reasons.
1- 40% of the Burgundy carpet is missing.
2- Before I got the car someone took the dash cigarette lighter and burned the drivers seat with it.
3- I prefer blue.

I pretty much had everything needed, carpet, door skins, back seat and bolsters, deck lid, dash, panels and trim.
But I only have two sets of blue MX6 front seats. Ideally a set of 626 gt touring sedan seats would be the best (what I ran in the first 666 build in early 2000's).
The mx6 and touring sedan have a lower roof line and shorter seat brackets (seats sit lower) than the 4door seats.
Both 2 and 5 doors seats have the base seat recline feature that's not available on the 4doors.
The GT touring sedan back seat cushion is 2 piece and they recline but I only have the drivers side and custom seat latch brackets are required ...

The big problem is the MX6 seat material pattern, that is the one thing I never liked about the MX6's but I got used to it, It's even uglier on the 90+ models, it really doesn't go with the 626 pattern.

626 4 and 5 door pattern in blue:

Mx6 pattern in grey (couldn't find blue picks).

That corduroy pattern makes me cringe. Don't get me wrong I love the MX6's just hate that pattern, the 626 cloth is so much softer than the MX6.

I have looked at hundreds of ugly, ricey and badly built seat covers but have found nothing that would blend with the 626 cloth.
I though about using a blue fake suede (ultrasuede) tying it into the steering wheel color but that would look ricey.

Yes the steering wheel is ricey but it's 1000X better than the hideous mx6/626 88-92 bus steering wheel in all it's variations and it's so nice to drive with, Grant discontinued this design and it's funny because now they don't sell any steering wheels I would ever put in a car.

Over the last 6 months I have looked at tens of thousands of upholstery patterns and colors, learned about material rub tests and fading, uv sensitivity... Dear god there is a lot of leather upholstery available, it makes sense given all the awsome quality's and characteristics of leather, it's UV sensitive, it fades, it dries out and cracks, doesn't breath but will absorb water and moisture and stain, it's hot in the summer cold in the winter and always slippery unless your wearing shorts or not wearing a shirt then it's sticky, hard to clean and requires constant maintenance ... I bet many years ago someones seat got soaking wet so they covered it with garbage bags and while siting on the pastic garbage bag wondered how can I get the seats to feel like this all the time.

Today I found this material/pattern:

It's royal blue crushed velvet.

It's not ideal but way better than everything else I have looked at so far, any solution to the seats is going to look modified unless I find and buy a set of 5door seats or someone cuts junk yard 626 seat cloth and sells it to me.

The pattern is smaller than in this 1min half assed Photoshop pick.
I think it clashes less with the interior than the MX6 pattern.
Changing the upholstery in the center of the MX6 seats is going to be a pain in the ass, just removing the seat upholstery is going to suck, unstitching it carefully, making templates, learning stitch types, sewing straight, getting them to fit right ... Having the wrong upholstery would erase all the effort instantly.

I intend to Hydrographic dip fuse coves and various other black plastic pieces under the hood and a few interior pieces, the shift knob, handbrake lever and possibly the climate control bezel and box under the radio (maybe the interior of the glove box because it's scratched up, but I can swap that piece). My though was blue lightning or blue flame or blue marble or something similar. Thinking the right Hydrographic color and pattern might blend well with the royal blue crushed upholstery.

The two lower white lightning films are see through so the lighting is whatever color the piece is painted.

The hardhat film is called blue inferno:

Not a fan of the sculls but I really like the color.

Custom films can be printed, could do MAZDA logo's but that would be dorky, could do carnage faces but that might be too aggressive, man I must be getting old, if hydrographics where around in the early 2000's my cars would have been covered in angry, violent gory hydro graphics and maybe some hot girls as well. I still want the interior to be trippy but I also want it to be clean and somewhat subtle. Speeding tickets have tripled in price and income has dropped over the years, keeping the officer relaxed is step 1 to getting out of the ticket, distraction is step 2, most male officers are interested in the cars I am driving, showing them the engine bays usually changes the atmosphere, once I got pulled over for speeding, talked cars with the cop, showed him the blue MX6 engine bay, talked about different traffic laws for different provinces, he mentioned slowing down for emergency vehicles, the stepped out in the street to slow someone and then got in his car and pulled him over and gave them a ticket to show off to me. I felt sorry for the guy that got pulled over but the cop was a nice guy and this all saved me 5 demerit points and 600$. (Sorry if this is sexist) If the officer is female you are pretty much screwed, she won't be relaxed when she gets to the car, she won't relax while talking to you and she won't get distracted from enforcing the law. She might give you a roadside safety and sear you and your car...

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Any thoughts, input or suggestions are appreciated.

 

[Mazda Carnage]

For fun and as a slap to people who think everything has to be factory.

 

[Mazda Carnage]

Ordered three yards X 54" of the blue crushed velvet upholstery.
Disassembled the front passenger seat, the drivers seat is at my garage, somehow I have a grey and blue set of seats in my garage at home and a set of blue and grey seats at the shop, all four where in my house garage but I needed to make room and took two to my garage a few years ago, why I broke up both sets I don't know.

Removing the factory upholstery was a pain, they use at least 65 Hog Rings (metal loops) to hold the bottom and central back to the seats.
These Hog rings are a pain in the ass to remove especially some of the lower cushion ones, I have no idea how they got them on in the first place, I had to cut most of them with tin snips.

Here is the lower seat foam after removing the upholster, along the cutouts you can see metal rods, there where 11 Hog rings holding the upholstery to these rods, they really wanted the upholstery to stay put. The only way I think they could have done this would be to install the rings on the upholstery and stuff glue covered rods into the foam and through the rings on the upholstery, there is no hog ring tool that would fit in there and lining up an opened hog ring with thick upholstery around the rod would be extremely challenging.

Bottom of the upholstery, you can see the strips that go down into the foam cutouts and connect to the rods.
And yes this is after I ran it through the washing machine on ultra slow and hung it to dry. Someone used their passenger seat as a coffee holder the stains came out of the middle cushion backing but stayed in the strips and on the outside fabric. These seats are from a white mx6 Lx 5speed, we bought and parted so I don't know the previous owners.

So how am I going to reinstall hog ring down there when I put the upholstery back on? I'm not going to, I will use industrial zip ties (the black plastic ones with the metal locks, not the ones that click), this way I can loop the steel rod and upholstery without having the upholstery in the seat cut out, then tighten the zip tie until it's as tight as the hog rings where, trim the zip tie and it's done (a simple durable solution to what could be an enormous frustration and problem reassembling the seats).

I machine washed it so I can take measurements, there are some burns in the blue velvety fabric, I will look online and see if they can be fixed or reduced. I will clean it properly with spot shot and run it through the machine again before separating the fabrics, although it's all pretty straight forward and all the stitching is hidden but one, I don't think the small sewing machine I have is strong enough to stitch through this and two more layers of upholstery and I really don't want to stitch all this by hand.

The seat back. Unlike the lower seat the back rest insert is only held to the rest of the seat with 7 Hog rings and the two plastic head rest inserts.

The only reason I am attempting this foolishness is because the center is not stitched to the rest of the backrest fabric.
Everyone know where to hide stuff in your MX6 now.


The plastic headrest inserts where a difficult to remove, you're working under the inner lining that can't be removed before the cushion is removed, holding the cushion out of the way while trying not to destroy it when bending against the headrest inserts and the back side has metal strips in there that are sharp like razor blades on touch and you're bleeding. The inserts look like they have a clip that locks them in place but even using vice rips to push in the clips they would not pull out, but these aren't retaining clips, just guides that keep them aligned the inserts are pressed or hammered into the seat, there are two grooves along the side if the inserts I use a set of large round tip needle nose pliers for pulling hose, inserted the tips of the pliers into the grooves and hammered on the back of the pliers until the darn things came out.

I now need to find out if this pattern will work into the new upholstery if I just stitch it over the factory upholstery.

I am contemplating having something embroidered on the new fabric that go at the top of the back rest cushions.
But what?
-Mazda. Hmm kinda lame, already has a badge at the front and rear of the car. (one step away from a giant sticker across the window with the make or model of the car written on it ).
-Mazda Motorsports in the proper light blue would be better than just Mazda but would that be like putting a mazdaspeed sticker on a Mazda after modifying it, but Mazda Motorsports don't suck Mazdaspeed does suck.
-626 would take away from the 666 badge on the rear.
-666 might not go over well with the cops, the rear badge is one thing but stitched into the seats is another.
-Carnage, probably go over like 666, or maybe if it was written in classy cursive in a subtle blue that looked good but mildly blended with the crushed velvet.
-F2T would be weird.

It could look very cool and make the seats or look very stupid and ruin the seats, it wont cost that much and has to be done before putting the new upholstery on.

Any suggestions?

 

[Mazda Carnage]

Cleaned the lower passenger cushion cover with spot shot, got all the coffee stains out.

Spot shot does an amazing job.

Pulled/cut all the stitches and disassembled the cushion cover. The patterned upholstery is made of 3 pieces, I made thin cardboard templates.

I ordered 3 yards of the royal blue crushed velvet pictured in the first post. It's patterned like picture but doesn't look like the picture.

Online Picture:

Matte, short pile suede like finish.

The upholstery:

Shinny, sparkly, long plastic pile. Shit!

Not happy with it and I could have returned the upholstery but the original shipping and the return shipping would cost more than the upholstery.

Cut the fabric to the match templates.
The foolproof plan: Stitch the new upholstery to the old, one piece at a time then use the old stitch lines to reassemble everything.

The small shitty sewing machine I have shifts the fabric when stitching, I emailed singer with an inquiry to ask if their walking foot attachment works with the machine I have but got no reply. The foam padding, double and triple layers of material and foam barely fit under the sewing foot and wants to walk its way out when sewing.

To keep on track with the fools plan, I had to hand stitch the new upholstery to the old.

To lock the fabric to the seam across the cushion in place I hand stitched it using invisible nylon thread which likes to knot, bind and twist, is very hard to see and almost impossible to thread and tie off.

After a full week of hand stitching and fumbling with the sewing machine I got the lower passenger cushion cover 98% complete.

This is just a test fit over the base, the fabric will tighten up when it's fastened back on, however there are some creases in the base foam I would like to work out or add foam to fix before installing the cover.
The flash on the camera makes the factory blue look lighter than it actually is, it almost looks okay. Shit that's a lot of work for almost okay. I contemplated dying the factory blue fabric black but I would have to remove the fabric from the back rests, the head rests and the rear seat panel that is attached to press wood, too much work.

Wrapped a piece of fabric a around to back cushion to get an idea of what it will look like completed.

Again the flash makes the factory blue look pale, so will the sun.

The armrest between the seats looks a little off, it was covered in crap and got stained, it's been cleaned but impossible to get back to factory, any cleaner strong enough to clean it damages it, I will hydro dip it, if I can find a graphic that works well with the seat upholstery it might help them blend, will have to dip some other plastic trim pieces to match also.
Chasing ugly down a rabbit hole.

I looked at 100's of car seat covers and couldn't find anything that would work.

In the early 2000's I bought some super cheap car seat covers from princess auto, I stitched some elastic fabric straps to the inside of the seat covers and tied them behind the backrest cushion, then removed the bottom of the seat from the backrest and installed the rest of the seat cover and cut through it to join the back rest to the seat, reinstalled the molding and levers.

15$ seat covers and a couple hours work, they looked ricey (so do the car mats), the lower cushion cover floated but the blue on the backrest covers matched the seat shape perfectly and covered the head rest making them look like racing seats but feel like Mazda MX6 seats. If I ever got sick of them I could just cut them off the seats and go back to stock.

They have since faded in the sun and I suspect left purple stains on the factory seats as the black and blue bleach into the seat, maybe it will leave a cool pattern.

I could not find any seat covers made like these, wasn't looking for the same pattern or anything just the same stretchy material and design. Oh well, back to the current headache.

I grabbed the drivers seat from my garage last night, the seat mechanism was broken and someone tried to weld it back together (in the wrong place), some of the mechanism is disassembled and some fasteners are missing. Neither of the seats have seat belt connectors bolted to them?
The foam is crushed on the base from the way the seat was stacked for so many years, possibly beyond resurrection.

I have many grey MX6 GT seats, so I will use the seat mechanism from one of those and possibly the base cushion. More work.

 

[Mazda Carnage]

In an effort to improve or make the seats look even worse I have been working on embroidery designs.
Found the correct MAZDA Motorsport file years ago, not a pixilated image but the correct format for vinyl printing ...

Unfortunately it looks very pale compared to the actual logo blue.

Found the Mazda color codes online and edited it using the online color positions not those on the cap.

The "gun metal" for motorsports is to dark to show up on the fabric so I changed it to the grey.

Called a bunch of local embroidery shops some advertising embroidering car seats told me the do minimums of 12 or 10 depending on size... I finally found one who sorta didn't want to but listened and let me talk him into looking at the fabric to see if it's even possible, he told me it's 80$ to convert the program and set up the machine and bout 45$ per piece. with taxes that 200$.

Do I get the disco, 80's prostitute, sparkly faux shag seat covers embroidered?

Looked at hundred of cursive version of CARNAGE on a font site, none where what I'm looking for, copied a few.
would put it at an angle, I do not like that font, it was one of the better fonts out of 3758 results for cursive fonts .

If I have embroidery done I have to have it positioned perfectly so I can line it up properly with the seam across the cushion.
To add to the headaches there are black seams in the pattern of the material that run near the center of the role length wise, I used both edge pieces of the first 30" for the passenger cushion and had to cut the side strips twice. This left more than enough to to the drivers seat cushion and all 6 small pieced for the backrest cushion but it has the black seams in it an looks odd next to the piece I completed. So I will have to use the edges of the roll for the drives cushion and both back rests and cut all the small pieces from the center of the roll.

This leaves far less usable fabric from the 9 foot X 54 inch roll it the the fabric gets ruined trying to embroider it (he says it happens). I would have to pay for embroidery that cant be done and use the sections with the black seams, and although the pattern was listed as non directional there is visible difference when the fabrics direction is turned, the black seam would have to go up and down the back rest to match the base.

Here you can see the black seam across the lower back rest at an angle in this picture. I can't run the seam along the cushion seam cause the pattern looks off

Where to put the embroidery if any?

HaHa, I can hear you thinking everywhere, or is that me.

but seriously with the back rest cushion seam in the middle of the cushion, where should the embroidery go?

F*@k I wish the fabric looked like the picture.

 

[ugly mx6 guy]

I like stock better...

 

[Mazda Carnage]

I like stock better...

That's helpful. I do to but the MX6 seat pattern looks really out of place with the 626 interior.

 

[matt89glturbo]

What about putting the embroidery in the headrest?

 

[Mazda Carnage]

What about putting the embroidery in the headrest?

That could work, I will have to pull out a headrest and see what it would look like.