If there is one thing the J-body Imperial did right, it was luxury. Forget the sad affairs under the hood and sit on those seats! Chrysler knew how to make a comfortable seat in the 1980’s. Pillow topped and powered, there wasn’t anything quite like sitting in the car with the A/C on soaking up the miles. Unfortunately for Project Raven, after the car gave the former owner fits at just over 120,000 miles, it was parked outside in the Arizona sun and left there for years. Oddly enough most of the interior was just fine, and even the seats looked good at first, but over the last two years and 15,000 miles I’ve put on the car, the heat damage became more and more apparent until the stitching and seat foam started to disintegrate. After getting a startling estimate on repairing the bench seat (no kidding, $1700 to recover only with vinyl instead of leather) I decided instead to start hunting for bucket seats and a console. I got very lucky and “High Speed Pursuit” off of ForFMJBodiesOnly.com had a full set of seats as well as a shifter-less column and floor console out of a Cordoba for sale at a decent price. Are the seats perfect? Far from. But the foam is good, they’re damn comfortable (even more so than the bench) and I’ll feel better about paying the money to re-skin these (new shop, in vinyl, about $700 for both.) I’ll focus on the restoration and recoloring of the console and column at a later date. Besides, I have more stuff to fix, like a broken idler arm courtesy of being ran off of the road.
This is how it started out. The driver’s side seat-back is a little too far back and foam is missing.
This is hen’s teeth in the Mopar world. I’ll be recoloring this to match the gray interior, and I’m hunting for a shifter as we speak.
The new seats. They were white, but are now a butter-cream color and have been sitting for a bit. It took some cleaning to get them to an acceptable level but a little hard work never killed anyone.
Luckily, the bracketry was the same so all of the power seat pieces bolted on no issue. Even the sensor bar, which lights the dash up when someone sits in the driver’s seat, was easy to transfer.
The seat swap took about an hour. Bench out, tracks swapped, new seats in. No new drilling or any modifications. The console fits well, but brackets have to be made and welded to the floor so that it can be bolted in. I’m waiting until I rip out the carpet and heavy tar-mat sound deadener before I do that. I’ll also look at lighter sound deadening and heat shielding.
Man I dunno, I would’ve taken this opportunity to find something a little more sporty out of an import or something to swap in…. Then again, OE fit is less work.
Fair, but let’s face it: At about 4100 lbs, this thing isn’t going to be that sporty. These buckets feel just like the bench (actually better) and open up the interior plan to any transmission. I’m still contemplating the new running gear, but I can run floor-shift auto, a NAG-1’s shifter, or a manual trans with little work.
I like the idea of bucket seats myself. I have a set out of a Mirada that I have on the farm that I plan on putting into my J Imperial. But that Cordoba seat looks a little more comfortable for some reason. I think they’re the same seat though.
BTW. I’m gong with a 360. I’m planing on getting about 450 hp out of it.
It’s been a tossup between a 360-408 LA and a 3G Hemi. I need the power but I also need more forward gears and a deeper rear gear. Either way it’s not in the cards now, too expensive.
Well at least you car is looking better than mine right now. And it runs. I have at least another month before mine will run. Longer if I have no better luck being able to work on it than I’ve been having.
First off, that lead in picture is completely badass!
What made you decide to farm it out instead of attempting to recover it yourself? I’m not busting your balls, just curios.
The Chrysler “pillow”-type seats are a pain in the ass according to every upholstery shop I’ve dealt with, I can’t sew, and nobody makes seat covers for these things. This way I get good work and a matching color, and I make a local connection…one that might become handy should I decide to recover a certain Mustang’s top.
Gotcha. Didn’t think about not having pre-made covers. Wait, so that means you could have gone with fuzzy velour and didn’t?!
I did velour in the Mirada. Almost killed me when I drove it from Washington to Arizona in the summer. No thankya, not again.
Love it. I feel your pain on hard to find interior bits. I have the Oleg Cassini edition matador coupe with the split bench and have been searching for Matador X specific buckets and console. Your work is well done and will look awesome when finished. Hotrod or Car Craft needs to host a dare to be different car show.
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