Resourcing Upholstery
The fact that restomods are fetching nearly the same cash as pure restorations these days made it easy to try something unique with the Montego's upholstery. To replace the bench seat, I opted for some used Bestop Jeep seats in good condition which I'll reveal on the next page. This left only the rear seat and door panel inserts in need of upholstery. I envisioned a two-tone interior using the dark brown I showed you in the previous section for the molded plastic pieces and a factory original "Ginger" for the vinyl sections. Dearborn Classics offers full seat upholstery for the Mercury Montego, however I ordered just the rear seat portion. To match the door panel inserts to the new rear seat upholstery I was left to my own devices, a small but worthy DIY challenge.

I had already pulled the door panel inserts prior to color coating with SEM.		Before trying to locate the right material to cover the door panel inserts, I waited for the rear seat upholstery to come in from Dearborn Classics so I could make a proper color and texture match.
Not every town will have a fabric shop like this one. However, my home town (Reno, Nevada) has a good number of specialty stores that are gold for DIY'ers liek me.		Mill End Fabrics had just the material I needed. One square yard was only 15 bucks and the texture was a perfect match.
Since I chose to re-use the original insert backing material, I was careful to remove each staple retaining the original vinyl very carefully. Once the staples were all removed, the stock green vinyl came off easily.		Upholstery shops come in all shapes and sizes. I tend to search for smaller service providers when outsourcing a job. Most big shops don't want to deal with a DIY'er who asks them to take a job to 70% completion in exchange for a price break. A local shop in my area, Ace's Upholstery, was willing to work with me as long as I honored "Ace's Terms".
Troy from Ace's Upholstery cut me a deal since I supplied the vinyl and was willing to take care of fastening the finished upholstery.		For $30 a piece, this is what I came back to the garage with to cover the door panel inserts.
This is a shot of the underside of the cover, the cardboard shown here provides something for the upholsterer to stitch the vinyl to and is not used in place of the backing material.		With a specialized spray adhesive called "Stick It", I attached the re-used backing material to backside of the new cover.
The upholsterer used a generous amount of material so I needed to trim it down before I could staple it down.		Once trimmed, I pulled the material tight and stapled it at various points around the perimeter of the backing material.
The only tricky spot was around the corners. For my first time doing this, I just took a look at how the factory did it. By making small tirangular cut-outs I was able to persuade the vinyl into making smooth turns.		After stapling and re-stapling a few times, the insert was ready to be mocked up in the Montego.
Troy at Ace's Upholstery offered such a great rate and quick turnaround that I had him cover the rear seat with the upholstery I ordered from Dearborn Classics.		Anxious to see how well my concept matched, I mocked-up what I had completed so far. By attaching the insert, gently hanging the panels, and sliding the rear seat in place, I was able to catch a glimpse of the final interior. The carpet shown here was also temporarily mocked-up. Like the seat upholstery, I sourced the carpet from Dearborn Classics.