RZ/Sp-R Recaro fabrics. Alcantara help line!
 

Hello
If you don´t like reading much, the actual question is the part in bold at the bottom...

Having finally traded my entire summer bonus for a set of 25 year old set of seats with the specs "worn, discolored, botched repair, and drenched in Japanese bodily fluids" i am a starting the restoration and reproduction(!) process.
The seats are from a Eunos Roadster RS Ltd. and thus came without the highly sought after tit rails. Luckily (and the reason i could pounce on them) @garage alpha will be sorting that issue for us pretty soon.

Now the second issue is that i have both a Miata, and a FD. But having watched at least 100 hours of YouTube videos on the subject, i am now an expert in vacuum bagged resin infusion of carbon fiber:biggrin:. I will give that, and mold making, a try.

The last issue remains tho. What fabric to use. My re-upholstery guy gave me a lot of good advice both on why Recaro used the fabric they did, what fabric i need to get, and also told me that the expensive part is the 1st set of covers. The following ones are 1/4 the price at least. So here i am wondering what to go with.

I ordered a set of fabric tests of Recaros "Perlon Velour" fabric, and it seems to be an identical match to the black RZ seats. Not having a Sp-R seat nearby its hard to say if the red also matches, but one should think it does.
So there is my two sets of OEM reproduction covers covered (hah!).

Then for Alcantara....
Alcantara is like this closed mysterious wizard sanctum. Real information and vendors are rare. I have found that there are two different lines (Autmotive and Fashion), three different types (backed, not backed, and foam backed, and then the fashion type comes in three thicknesses. And on top of that, the color codes are not the same on Automotive and Fashion.
Does anyone here have experience with Alcantara either as a DIY or professional? In that case, could you help me out trying to figure out exactly what i need for this, and where to get product samples? Ill let my reupholstery guy get the fabrics, i just need to tell him what to get as he is not to experienced with Alcantara (he uses a different brand of the same stuff).


http://www.zepticon.no/images/RX-7/IMG_0423.JPG

Don’t use t cheap ebay china “Recaro” fabric....its crap, it stretches too much especially where the thread holes are.

acantara is apparently not flexible enough but could be done by an experienced upholstery company.

I have access to a really good OEM quality material. Send me a PM for more details.

One of the things my guy told me was exactly what you said. The regular Alcantara is not flexible enough.
But they do use it to make seats, dashboards and interior pieces that require more flex than the RZ seats. I think on of the keys here is the different backing material used. Regular does not stretch, while foam backed do stretch.
You will get a OM pretty soon :D

I think for interior stuff it doesn't matter that much once your upholstery shop does the work... seats on the other hand are dealing with you constantly deforming the material, so the differences in grade you use will be more apparent.

I don't have specific details, I just remember at a shop I worked at, they kept rolls specifically for seats and specifically for display pieces like dashes and such.

That was what i thought. Good to have it confirmed!
Tho im not sure if its even possible to make a more fragile material than the OEM ones. It has so many different strange types of damage.