Thank you very much for the appreciation my friend. Now before I answer your question, I recieved the seats back and had them installed back in, so I'm going to give in my observations on them before that. So I only had a small sample patch of the sample fabric before I decided on my shade of leatherite. And in my mind I had a darker richer shade, because I tried matching it with an actual leather sample taken from the shift lever and handbrake leather wrap I had done for the Civic. Now the actual shade, after the seats have been stitched, has come out very bright, much brighter than I expected or desired, instead of the rich dark supple brown I had in mind for the interior upholstery. So there is some disappointment thereabouts about it, generally, all around.
Now onto the actual seats, stitching, and fitment quality: The front seats are done really nicely and I was generally impressed with the workmanship of it all. The rear seats are not as impressive as they are originally bench seats, and without side bolstering or center bolstering, are generally flat, so you can only do so much with them; that and plus since the craftsman doing the job refused to do the cross stitch pattern for breathability,across the center back leatherite panels because it was above the paygrade that I was giving, so they are much more bland/blander.
So with that, and my observations about it, out of the way, the upholstery shop that did the work on the car is in F-10, Islamabad, next to the Shell petrol station, and has possibly the worst name you could come up with for your own shop - I'd love to troll someone else's shop with it though. Its called Honey Autos, and the proprietor is called Sheikh Sarfaraz, and the craftsman is from RYK, his name is Bhatti, I believe.
The other observations I have are about the quality of interior trim piece/plastics, and the partial floor insulation that i have laid out in the car. So the secondary or peripheral trim pieces that are your non-touch/non-see plastic surfaces are really thin, and well - I dont want to say it - but terribly low quality. These would, for example, include the foot trims of the center console, the floor trims near the doors and the eat belts, et al. The Baleno, City, and Civic, all have/had vastly superior peripheral trims, generally uniform in quality with the tactile and visually available plastics and trims. How do I know this, you ask? Well, because I had to tuck the insulation carpet into the trim sides, and also because my brand new car has two deep gashes on the plastic trim on either side of the drivers seat where the metal came into contact with the plastic. On either of the other cars, this would only have resulted in maybe a few minor scratches at the most I believe.
One other fun fact, the power windows go up and down in a hurry, like the Chinese themselves. These are probably the fastest power windows I have seen on any of the vehicles we have owned in the family to date, so if speed is what matters to you, this car has it... in the windows.
Now onto the insulation, both the front footwells are still left to do, and I have ordered the felt fabric for them, as well as the spare leatherite to stitch in the steering, handbrake and shift lever myself. With the insulation that i have done/undertaken so far, and with the seats installed, the car felt buttoned down on the road, and notable noise isolated inside the cabin. Do please note that this has not dimmed the engine note, which is still very audible even inside the car, but has reduced the car's noise ingress from the road, towards the floor and upwards. As a result, while accelerating, or at higher RPMs, the engine noise is just as audible as before, since the firewall has not been insulated, just the floors have, but at steady RPMs, or gradual acceleration, the cabin accoustics are much better, even the stereo sounded a little more fuller, and much less tinny. Or who knows, maybe this is all just one big placebo, we shall never know. I expect this to improve further as I do the footwells as well, as I expect atleast some degree of engine noise might go down after it. Ideally, I would have removed all the trims and done the transmission tunnels, firewall and door cards too, but I do not want to take apart a new car for diminishing returns. Yes, I might pony up the money and by a can of ruberised undercoat and paint the underbody and wheel wells instead at a later point in time. But that is a story for another day.
Yes, it might not feel like a two million car inside still, but its also no longer a one million car inside the cabin, and I'm pretty happy with the somewhere in between that it is right now. All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with the quick insulation hack that I've undertaken.
Pictures to follow in the next post for all those waiting or wanting on some, even though the wood trims are still left to measure, laser cut, and add, since I'm guessing pictures draw more attention than words do. Or well atleast thats how it used to be when we were kids, because picture books, you know.
Addendum: There was also a Suzuki Hustler parked next to my car at the time I was getting the seats fixed back in, suffice it to say, the interior and cabin fit and finish and quality of plastics was better than what you sit in in the FAW V2, and I also learnt today that it is a somewhat mild hybrid, in that it has regenerative braking, and very small Li-Ion batterypack stashed away inside under its seat. For perspective, it was also 1.25 million, and the onroad price was coming out higher than that after all things were said and done, it needed new tyres, a new stereo/navigation unit, registration costs et al, so on and so forth. In retrospect, the Japanese have had half a century odd of time arriving at a stable design language, the chinese on the other hand have only had a decade or a decade and a half of it. Also, word of advice, always stand over the electricians head when he is touching your car even with a ten foot pole. The guy I saw just indiscriminately cut twenty odd wires off the preinstalled stereo to install the Delson navigation unit. When I asked him why he cut all the wires instead of just taking off the grips and attaching the head unit's grips into it, he just said, "Sir yae angrezon waalae kaam hamsae nai hotae, hum Pakistani haen." Facepalm. -___-
Further Edit: The Suzuki Hustler was also a 100k run mileage.
-- Werentuckl
