1997 Pewter Gray Progress Thread

Awesome to see another person on the forums with a Pewter Gray Base 97, i think counting myself and you that is a total of 3 of us on here. i also bought mine with about 114,000 miles for 2500$, that automotive touch up paint looks like it did fantastic, i need to do this myself on my front and rear bumper, and also on my roof as the clearcoat has begun fading, if you are looking at your car upclose can you see any visual diffrences in the new paint vs. the old existing paint? i literally had the exact same idea to do the lsc moldings since no pewter's came as LSC's, i just wouldnt want anyone to be able to tell the newer paint is new due to shading or the age of the older existing paint, thanks for sharing and hope i didnt hijack the thread here, awesome work !!!

The paint that I got was probaly a 99% match. I painted half of my old moulding and put a tape line to compare and you could barely see the line it made. My paint is in good condition with very little fading though so it might not be the same for everyone. But even it not 100% my guess would be that it would only require just a little blending.
 
Nice job on the Led's and seats. I did a CE wheel as well as my door panels last summer.

Thanks I feel I will be doing the cruise and doors here pretty soon I hate leaving something half done. How bad of a job is it to do them.
 
yeah im glad i did the seats I was a little worried about messing them up because they wern't in that bad of condition but I just went for it. Now I just hope that they will stay good for awhile.
 
Thanks I feel I will be doing the cruise and doors here pretty soon I hate leaving something half done. How bad of a job is it to do them.

Lots of prep work on the doors, just when you think they are clean... Clean them again. Test the door panel with water, if it still beads up its not clean yet.
It was a little bit of a pita taking the panels all apart, lots of pieces to them and about 30 screws in each one.
I put new cruise buttons in mine, not bad at all. If you are going to put blue led's in the cruise buttons that will be a treat. Door handle pockets would be easy.
 
This is my new favorite thread! WOW! I love EVERYTHING you have done to this car. I'm going on the website right now to see if I can get that leather repair kit. My leather is not as bad as yours but I still have all the little cracks everywhere as expected with an older car!
 
Now on to the seats. I used leatherrepairkits.com for the products. You can select your interior color code and it also comes with repair compound and everything else you need to get the job done. I was very happy with the results and the color matched perfectly.

Some problems i was dealing with:

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Repair compound done and ready for the color:

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Done! The seats came out way better than I expected:

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I just ordered the kit for my prairie tan. How about odor? Is it odorless? Does it smell like leather or does it smell like chemicals?
 
Actually I don't remember any smell at all. And I was driving in it 3 hrs after with my wife and she definatly would have said something:) One thing that I would add is they only give you a couple of alcohol pads which isn't even enough to clean the seats and you also need them to smooth down the repair compound. Get a big bottle of rubbing alcohol and an old white t shirt and youll be thankful. The repair compound is harder (longer) to smooth down then they lead you to believe so dont leave high spots or your arm will be toast by the end.
 
Actually I don't remember any smell at all. And I was driving in it 3 hrs after with my wife and she definatly would have said something:) One thing that I would add is they only give you a couple of alcohol pads which isn't even enough to clean the seats and you also need them to smooth down the repair compound. Get a big bottle of rubbing alcohol and an old white t shirt and youll be thankful. The repair compound is harder (longer) to smooth down then they lead you to believe so dont leave high spots or your arm will be toast by the end.

Thanks for the heads up. I am looking forward to this restoration BIG TIME!
 
Time for the white face gauge install, interior lights, puddle lamps and night pics to see it all in action.

Scrape the old white paint off of the needles with a razor blade and repaint with a flourescent red paint. I used the white face gauges form Temple Performance and they are awesome. They are a true replacement not just stickers and are of equal to better qualiy then OEM. Just peel off the old decal remove the double sided tape and stick on the new one.

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Interior lights: dome, glove box, ashtray, quarter panel and under dash are all T10. I used white in the dome, quarter and glove box and blue in ashtray and under dash. The doors are 36 mm festoon bulbs and I used blue. The puddle lamps are T10 as well.

And now time to see the night shots!!

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FordGuy;

Can you please explain how the white face guage change works? I'm unclear if those are actual guages, or stickers over the original guages, and how you accomplished it? Man, those look fantastic! If it's not to pricey, I would like to do that on my 98 LSC.
 
How did you manage to swap out the stock puddle lamps with L.E.D's ? I have spares but couldnt never figure out how to tear them down and rebuild them. Kinda made me nervous to even touch it hahah
 
Has been a while, so much been going on in life haven't been able to post much or respond to previous posts (sorry :) ). But the Mark has been gettin some love (didn't do any pics though). Start off with Cobra brakes all round, complete front suspension redo - air shocks, built a 300+ bulletproof trans w/jmod, installed a 3500 stall Edge racing converter, 93 1 piece driveshaft w/new joints and to put it to the ground 4:10 gears with a 28 spline IRS SC posi w/carbon clutches. So yeah been busy actually moved up to Michigan in Aug to help my dad run Downriver Transmission in Wyandotte. But I will be leaving soon to head to Houston, TX so let me know whos around there so we can meet up!!!!
 
Hey, just wondering on the durability of the leather repair kit. Your seats came out looking great! It inspired me to buy the leatherepairkit for my Mark. I'm just a little nervous of the color coming off long term with cleaning etc

If anyone has any experience also please comment, thanks!
 
congrats on the baby.
I didn't know you came to htx, league city even?
I'm in webster off 3
 
Damn, someone got a great car here. I have been following this thread for awhile now.

Fordguy hope your doing well!
 

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