Unless you spend all your days sitting in a lawn chair next to your favorite ride, there is no other area of your car or truck you’ll see more than the car’s interior. The cockpit of our rides is where we garner the most enjoyment. It is also a perfect place to make a huge difference with your vehicle, both on the show field and the superhighway. The folks at TMI Products have been perfecting their “interior in a box” offerings for decades, and the company offers numerous custom interior design options for the DIY automotive enthusiast.

Our 1964 Chevelle has been a great ride for several decades. While the seat’s skins weren’t necessarily worn out, the dissimilar design was certainly getting long in the tooth.

We’ve put a bunch of miles on this Chevelle over the years and even enjoyed driving it in some spirited driving exercises. That’s why our aging interior featured a mixture of non-OEM seats that were conflicting with the factory seat design. With the top down, the differing patterns stuck out like a sore thumb. We decided it was time to bring some economical unity to the front and rear seating of our A-body while also still providing adequate support during spirited driving. For that, we turned to the trusted folks at TMI to make a custom interior for our ride.

TMI’s Custom Interior Configurator

Designing a custom interior for our pride and joy isn’t a place for a “try it and see” attitude. Even when working with talented craftsmen, one is often left with trusting someone’s better judgment when choosing colors and the overall design. The beauty of TMI’s Custom Interior Configurator is that it allows you to see what a custom interior design will look like before plunking down your hard-earned cash. TMI’s configurator does not illustrate every style of seat the company offers, but viewers can choose between several TMI offerings to get a very good idea of what their interior will look like when it arrives at their door. Simply start by filling in some information about your vehicle, and the configurator opens up the world of custom interior options.

We spent some time in the configurator, tweaking the design of our Chevelle’s interior. We were sticking with our Chevelle’s all-black interior, but enthusiasts are able to further customize their interiors’ design by selecting separate colors and designs for the seats and their inserts. They can also choose a contrasting color for the stitching that holds everything together. We chose blue stitching to bring the car’s exterior color inside the vehicle and give a splash of color to the car’s all-black interior.

All changes made in the configurator show up in real-time, so there’s no guessing or waiting to see what your design will look like. With TMI’s interior configurator, there are a plethora of options when creating an economical custom interior design to fit your car or truck. And, once your new, interior-in-a-box custom design arrives, it can be a great weekend project that’ll make a huge difference in your vehicle’s appearance.

DIY Re-Skinning The Factory Frames

While TMI Products is well-known for its variety of seat styles to upgrade almost any vehicle’s interior, did you know the company also offers ready-made, custom seat skins that can be fitted over the original seat frames? We opted to simply re-skin the OEM rear seat frames in our Chevelle to perfectly match our new front seats. Being a convertible, our rear seat was narrower than the standard rear seat, and TMI can custom-fabricate the rear seat skin to fit most applications. The company can also create custom-sized skins as part of its Builders Series for vehicles with modified rear seat frames due to the addition of mini-tubs or other modifications.

We carefully removed the front and rear seats from the vehicle. Each front seat is held in place with four fasteners; remove them by sliding the seat forward or back to gain the best access. The bottom of the rear seat simply snaps into place and can be removed by lifting the front of the seat up and then forward. The back of the rear seat is bolted to the divider between the interior and the trunk. Remove two bolts and lift up to extricate the seat back from the vehicle.

This is a great opportunity to do some cleaning as well. We cleaned the rear seat frames, the entire carpet inside the cabin, as well as the area usually covered by the rear seat. This is also a great time to count all the change that has fallen down between the seats and clean up the seatbelts in your ride.

Anyone who has worked with upholstery before is likely familiar with hog rings. These trusty metal clips have been holding the skins on our rides since the days of horse and buggies. To remove the old seat skin, simply cut the old hog rings, then peel the old upholstery off the seat frames. To install the new skins, TMI offers new hog rings and the necessary pliers to crimp them into place.

We started with the rear seat frame. Our new, custom rear seat covers spent some time out in the sun to help soften the material so it would be more pliable when stretching it over the seat frames. As you can see from the “before” photo, our interior wasn’t in bad shape, since the rear seat was hardly used since the car was redone decades ago. The foam and burlap covering the seat frames were in satisfactory condition. If your seats are shot or if you don’t have these necessary materials, speak with a TMI representative to complete your installation.

TMI designed the pleated rear seat skins and sewed everything together. We simply needed to fit it over the OEM rear seat frames. We let the material lie flat for a few days and put it out to warm up in the sun before trying to stretch it over the frames.

We started at the top of the rear seat frame, ensuring that the seams were aligned with the frame so everything would line up perfectly once installed. We then began stretching toward each of the sides to remove any wrinkles and keep the cover centered. We finished by securing the bottom of the panel to fasten everything. For the seat base, we started at the front, centering it up where the seat meets the hump in the floor and stretching it up over the seat. We then secured the sides of the seat cover and put the base back out into the sun to soften the material a bit more before securing the backside of the cover.

Our seat skins easily stretched over the OEM frames, and with just a bit of finesse, they fit perfectly. As we secured them, we used several locking-type pliers as a semi-permanent means of holding the skin in place while we installed the hog rings. Be careful with those hog rings! They are designed to pierce the material, but will also latch onto fingers, and they don’t let go!

We installed the upper and bottom sections of our rear seat before installing the front bucket seats, making access to the rear seat area much easier. The fact that we’re doing this work in a convertible also helps. The additional room afforded by the front-seat delete becomes critical if performing this work in a hard-top.

Finishing Off Our DIY Custom Interior Design

For the front of our Chevelle, we opted for the more common service TMI is known for in the custom interior arena. Our front seats had served us well for decades, but they didn’t match the rear seat and had a dated, non-OEM design. They’ve served us well for many thousands of miles, but the springs were starting to sag and didn’t offer the support of a modern bolster design. Adding a set of TMI Cruiser low-back seats is the perfect way to finish off our Chevelle’s DIY custom interior.

This is when you realize that TMI’s “Interior in a box” statement is true! Our seats were individually boxed and shipped with the other custom interior products. TMI did the bulk of the heavy lifting for the front seats, so installing them is a simple affair.

We mounted the sliders onto each seat and then fastened them onto the TMI-supplied custom mounts. From there, we just needed to place the seats into the car and fasten them using the factory seat mounts on the floorboards of our Chevelle. Of course, care must be taken so as not to scuff those beautiful, new hides for your ride.

With our new, custom interior installed, we were champing at the bit to put a few miles on our Chevelle and give our new seating a proper break-in. We can report that the custom interior in our Chevelle is extremely comfortable. Front seat bolsters are not excessive but offer much better support compared to the factory seat the car left the factory with in the mid-60s. The new material has a luxurious, supple feel, unlike the aging OEM vinyl, and the custom interior design has rejuvenated the inside of our Chevelle nicely without being overdone.

TMI has perfected offering DIY enthusiasts an affordable alternative to a custom interior makeover for their favorite ride. The options are seemingly endless, and the online configurator is a great way to create the perfect interior design without any guesswork. Your car’s interior will make a statement on the show field or cruise night, and you’ll likely want to spend more time behind the wheel. What’s not to like!