Topic: Drive it or change it?!

[Drive Fast]

I?m still restoring my 69 Mach 1. My car has original upholstery in decent condition but showing cracks. It hasn?t been driven in many years. Do you install the original upholstery and drive it, or install sacrificial seats to preserve the comfort weave?

[Coralsnake]

I guess Im not seeing the "cracks"

The material is actually supposed to be perforated .

Those are excellent looking seats

[Drive Fast]

Generally the seats are in great condition. The car was out of the sun for many decades. But there is a crack developing in the center of the drivers seat, and a few other small tears. I can only imagine that it will continue and others will form. I feel like this upholstery should be preserved.

[Bob Gaines]

Generally the seats are in great condition. The car was out of the sun for many decades. But there is a crack developing in the center of the drivers seat, and a few other small tears. I can only imagine that it will continue and others will form. I feel like this upholstery should be preserved.

Although getting hard to find you can still source real comfort weave material to use to make up or repair original seats . Tears in the pleated comfortweave material panels can not typically be repaired or repaired reliably and cost effectively.  You typically replace the entire pleated seat panel . You use NOS comfortweave or pleated panels from donor seats to repair ones like yours . With all that said for a pleasure driven car I would use it and not feel guilty about it. But that is just me.

[J_Speegle]

How is the rest of the interior. Door panels and dash pad showing some age?  They likely will and some slightly worn original seats will match the over all look with the "badge" of being all original. Now if you doing a full restoration you'll IMHO want to have a restored interior. Just depends on your plan for the car, your planned usage and how much the wear and tear bothers you. For one of my cars I choose to have the a couple of panels replaced on my seats using a donor rear seat so that the material remained all original. That is on a presentable but not perfect driver/survivor sort of car

[Drive Fast]

Hmmm. Good point. The interior will be new headliner, carpet, dash pad and door panels. The console and rear side panels will be cleaned and painted. I still need to figure out the package tray and sail panels.

Sounds like there is no harm in using the seats as is and recover or repair if needed in the future.

My plan is to burn some rubber and enjoy the car for awhile.