TrögBlog – Volvo C306 Firetruck Restoration and Camper Conversion

I’ve been soliciting local trim and upholstery shops to do the interior door panels, headliners, settees and reupholstery of the existing Volvo front seats.    The front seats are surprisingly ok, for such a simple design.

Unfortunately, 30 years of swedish flatulence has taken it’s toll on the foam as well as the rest of the seat.    Getting them re-upholstered is going to cost about $800 for the pair.    This set me on looking at various aftermarket seats.

A good seat for Trog must posess a a couple characteristics which greatly narrow down the choices.   A Trog seat must/should be:

• Low profile in the seat — I’m tall, so the ass-level can’t be any higher than the stock seats
• Low side bolsters — getting in and out of Trog is a sliding affair off the edge of a seat.   Bolsters would make ingress/egress even more difficult.

Corbeau makes a couple seats which could work.    First is the LG1

It is also available in all black.   Sitting in it was a dream — at least for my butt.    Unfortunately, the wings at the shoulder level pinched.

While trying out the LG1, I sat in a Recaro Expert M:

Amazing, but not $1000 each amazing.

Finally, I’ve settled on some Corbeau Moabs which are designed as direct replacement for Jeep seats:

Which is ok.    Build and fabrics aren’t quite as nice as the others, but it seems to be good enough, and at about $250 each they are about 1/2 what reupholstering the old ones would cost..

However, I think I really deserve this Recaro Magnifico:

Crafted from your choice of wood, leather and carbon fiber, this top of the line seat is exclusively designed for the larger framed individual in mind.

Definitely worth $7900 each, not to mention the burlwood accents will match the burlwood I’m putting in on the dash.

Trog

It’s finally time to paint the interior.    I had picked a burgandy color for the exposed metal of the rear cabin area.    Unfortunately what looked like burgandy on the paint chip ended up looking distinctly magenta (which isn’t a “real” color, btw), see bottom of this post for more on magenta.

The doors got a coat of red on the interior edges.   The red is the same color as used on the Acura NSX, btw.   R77 paint code.   I used  single stage Omni MTX paint vs the 3 stage PPG paint that yields a deeper red with a lot more gloss.

The color isn’t an exact match with the existing red even though it is the same R77 code paint.   Red fades quite a bit in the sun.   Also the new paint has a higher gloss than the existing paint.   A quick wipe with a very fine scotch brite pad blends it quite well.

Masking the front cabin was incredibly tedious.    I could have done a better job b/c there was a fair amt of overspray I had to clean up.

Rear cabin got a coat, mostly on the floor (which will be covered up with flooring).

The new color, a yellowish white,  looks more white in person than it does in this pic.

Unfortunately, the guy at WesCo paints thought it wise to use a lot of flattening agent in the paint.    So much that the finish is like a chalkboard.   Flat paints are standard on say the underhood area because they cover up defects and require less care in painting.   Unfortunately,   every bit of dirt and oil that touches it will instantly bind and be virtually uncleanable.    So, back to Wesco to get a gloss version of the same paint.  I’ll mix in some of the flat to tone down the gloss.

And now magenta, the “fake” color:

Liz Elliott of Biotele.com:  “magenta ain’t a color.”

[W]hat does the brain do when our eyes detect wavelengths from both ends of the light spectrum at once (i.e. red and violet light)? Generally speaking, it has two options for interpreting the input data:

a) Sum the input responses to produce a colour halfway between red and violet in the spectrum (which would in this case produce green – not a very representative colour of a red and violet mix)

b) Invent a new colour halfway between red and violet

Magenta is the evidence that the brain takes option b – it has apparently constructed a colour to bridge the gap between red and violet, because such a colour does not exist in the light spectrum. Magenta has no wavelength attributed to it, unlike all the other spectrum colours.

A book on a similar topic:   “Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green.“

Trog