Reproducing Elephant Hide Seats

[Bertha]

I am considering reproducing the original elephant-hide material found in the early land rovers. I am trying to send a feeler out, to see if there is an interest in this. I would aim to deliver a complete seat set and door panel kit to oem specs. My preliminary investigation has yielded this to be an expensive proposition, so I am wondering how many people out there would be willing to pay a premium for and oem elephant hide interior?
The 2 questions would be: 1) who is genuinely interested 2) how much would you be willing to pay for this added touch of authenticity.

[Eric W S]

I am considering reproducing the original elephant-hide material found in the early land rovers. I am trying to send a feeler out, to see if there is an interest in this. I would aim to deliver a complete seat set and door panel kit to oem specs. My preliminary investigation has yielded this to be an expensive proposition, so I am wondering how many people out there would be willing to pay a premium for and oem elephant hide interior?
The 2 questions would be: 1) who is genuinely interested 2) how much would you be willing to pay for this added touch of authenticity.

Not more than the Exmoor Elephant hide that is already out there. They have good to great reviews on the Series 2 board.

I may be interested. But the original dies used to press the vynide have been missing for quite some time. How do you propose to replicate them for an OEM quality finish? What materials are you going to use?

[Bertha]

Not more than the Exmoor Elephant hide that is already out there. They have good to great reviews on the Series 2 board.

I may be interested. But the original dies used to press the vynide have been missing for quite some time. How do you propose to replicate them for an OEM quality finish? What materials are you going to use?

Exmoor trim is not even close to the original material, not to mention there assembly method is rather poor. They also are terrible to do business, while they are nice people to talk to they are incompetent. What I am proposing is an exact duplication of the elephant hide material assembled to a seat, the same as original, and made here in the USA. You dont need original dyes to to this, just a good original sample, a good mill, and quite a few $$$$$, hence my interest in seeing who else would be up for a set of seats.

[I Leak Oil]

I would encourage anyone willing to help support the series LR market to do so. Afterall, more and more parts are becoming NLA so for new stuff we will rely on this type of endeavor. Not sure what the market will bear as this will not be an origianal part but an aftermarket reproduction. Funny thing about LR stuff is you never know what people are willing to pay! Good luck with your project.
Jason T.

[Eric W S]

[QUOTE=Bertha]Exmoor trim is not even close to the original material, not to mention there assembly method is rather poor. They also are terrible to do business, while they are nice people to talk to they are incompetent. What I am proposing is an exact duplication of the elephant hide material assembled to a seat, the same as original, and made here in the USA. You dont need original dyes to to this, just a good original sample, a good mill, and quite a few $$$$$, hence my interest in seeing who else would be up for a set of seats.[/QUOTE

Good Luck! No interest in spending thousands for seats. The Exmoors I have seen have been well made and were ordered from another vendor, so the customer service was good, but delivery slow. But installed the seats were better than the OEM stuff most vendors sell. The seats were a good match in color and texture. The D-90 seats have also been well made. I have seen two sets and construction was better than OEM. My ass liked the Exmoor seats, series and 90, for sure. And you can't beat Exmoor on authenticity. The owners father designed the original hood and they still have production schema from the 50's from Land Rover. Read the current LROI 60th supplement. I suspect they have the original Vynide dies as well.

I posted a similar thread on the Series 2 board and the response was surprisingly small. One gentleman from Thailand was looking into production as well. Just not that much interest.

From personal research, Vynide is readily available. You can get it from numerous sources. Current color is difficult to match. So a custom dye run would be needed. The kicker is the production die IMO. The texture appears to be pressed into the material at high pressure and heat. No rocket science there. But if you look carefully at good grey leathercloth, the effect is a darker color inside the texture. You can get very close with textured Vynide currently available, but not exact. The Exmoor is still the best replicate to date. And surprisingly, in the aforementioned thread, most of the rivet counters in the UK suggested this route or Ebay. The color runs seem to be spot on now, from what they tell me. One UK gent spent 2000 GBP, or almost 5k USD to get original Leathercloth for his 109 off of Ebay.

A good friend has a job shop that makes magnetic components and uses dies quite frequently in production. He put me in touch with his die and tool vendor. His vendor quoted me an obscene price to replicate the texture. The tooling steel needed would be very pricey and the milling costs on the then standard 8 foot roll dies was also very expensive due to the pattern itself. CNC time to program the milling was the majority of the cost quoted.

To make matters worse, it was difficult finding a mill to do the job. Most Vynide mills that dye are oversees. From samples I got years ago, there are slight differences to materials other than Vynide which would preclude an exact match by using something different.

After talking with Chris at Badger, I came to the conclusion to either use his stuff, which was a similar Delorean Vynide, or buy the Exmoors. I think that I'll end up buying the Exmoor and have the upholstery work done locally here.

I was recently trying to confirm that the material was also used on other makes, which would make sense given UK auto industries proclivity to use the vendors in the home market. No luck confirming if it was used on other vehicles at the moment. I was hoping that someone else besides British Northwest had a roll gathering dust in some Austin or MG parts house. No luck though.

EwS

[leafsprung]

He is right, the exmoor stuff is obviously significantly different if you place them side by side. The stuff exmoor sells almost appears to have a metalic sheen. There would be a decent market for a better matterial. Personally I would sell the matterial rather than the seat sets. You would need cores to do SII seats and approximating the dunloppillo would be pretty hard. Bertha, drop me a note if you are serious about this.

-IKe

[Eric W S]

He is right, the exmoor stuff is obviously significantly different if you place them side by side. The stuff exmoor sells almost appears to have a metalic sheen. There would be a decent market for a better matterial. Personally I would sell the matterial rather than the seat sets. You would need cores to do SII seats and approximating the dunloppillo would be pretty hard. Bertha, drop me a note if you are serious about this.

-IKe

Ike,

The last set of Exmoor I saw was pretty good. From the Series 2 guys Exmoor has changed the supplier and most of the stuff isn't shiney metallic anymore. Couple posted up similar results to the last set I saw installed here in Chicago a few years back. I think Chris at Badger mentioned that he is using their material last I spoke with him about 3 years ago.

Bertha,

Your welcome to the links I saved from last time I researched the matter. The link to the mill is dead now. It was a small job shop in the northeast that appears to have gone under. I think I still have some samples kicking around somewhere as well from some of the larger suppliers. I'll look if they survived the move.

I am heading to an upholster in the next month. I'll ask if he'll help with any suppliers that may be interested. I looked into snow mobile upholstery as well. Synthetic and very weather resistant. Couldn't find a decent color matched sample to obtain though.

EwS

[Eric W S]

http://www.heritagetrim.com/

Here was the best link I still have to a good job shop in Canada. They have the presses and embossing tools in house. They also specialize in the UK Marque as well...

The other job shops I linked seem to be dead...

EwS

[leafsprung]

I havent seen any exmoor grey vinyl that wasnt easily distinguishable from the original material . . . The last set I saw was about 6 months ago.

[adkrover]

I am currently spending way too much time and money on my Series IIa and just this winter installed a completely new interior including headliner, front seats, rear seats and rear jump seats and door panels. I would have liked to have gone with elephant hide but the only front seats I could find like that were low backs and I wanted built in headrests so I went with the Series III black vinyl high backs from BritPac. Very nice quality and comfortable seats BTW. The previous owner had wedged in some really ugly cloth bucket seats from a Chevy Blazer so I had to start from scratch. Once I had those front seats, it only made sence for me to recover the exisiting rear bench and jump seats in matching black at my local upholstery shop. The white headliner came from Badger. I had the original door panels but they were so badly damaged I had to cut new ones. Those too I covered in black to match the seats. In the end, I think I have a very nice and almost original looking (aside from the color) interior. Mines not a show truck so I'm not terribly concerned about keeping it authentic but I do try where I can. So, what's the point.....?

If there had been an option to get off the shelf seats and door panels precut and finished in "original" vinyl I most likely would have been willing to spend the extra $ on them as long as I could have gotten high back front seats. NOT ORIGINAL, I KNOW THAT. But....... since I did have perfectly good rear frames, I would have been even more interested in purchasing the vinyl and having my local guy do the recovering. So, my opinion (as a person who doesn't mind spending a little extra on my truck) would be that you should reproduce the vinyl and then just sell it to shops like Badger and by the yard through Rover's North for those who want to do the work themselves. If you have a good source of old seat frames then certainly recovering them and marketing those would be great too. Door panels would be easy to reproduce. Just find a good custom millwork shop with a CNC and have them cut a bulk run from masonite. The aluminum bits could also be done easily in bulk at a qualified shop.

How much of a premium will people pay for that? If it's a concourse winning truck then I think you could get a big premium. However, last time I watched, I didn't see too many Series Land Rovers at the Pebble Beach show so your market segment might be limited. When I last spoke to Badger, they were swamped with Defender orders and not doing much at all with Series trucks. I had to beg them to get my headliner out. It feels to me from my limited time in the Rover community that most Rover owners are very proud of their trucks and like to keep them more or less original aside from the standard safety stuff like axles that don't break, brakes that actually work and engines that can keep up in a good headwind. The overall appearance of the trucks is toward a mostly original look so a good source of authentic interior parts would be a fabulous thing so long as it doesn't cost too much more. Most Rover owners seem a bit on the frugal side (no offence to anyone). I once had a building inspector tell me I must have more money than brains so I might be right in your target market segment. Next time I'm building a truck, I hope you have it up and running.

[PH4]

I think it would do well and I would be interested if it was sold by the yard. I have no idea what the cost of non-original would be but I can safely say I would pay extra for your version if it was close to the original.

[Tim Smith]

...(no offence to anyone). I once had a building inspector tell me I must have more money than brains so I might be right in your target market segment...

Humph! I've had a building inspector tell me I've more uh... nuts [& bolts] than sense. But still.

Personally, I'd have no interest in finding original stock. I've currently run into the block of finding out that RRC seats simply will not work in my air portable because the rear bulk head is too close to the wheel. Still though, how hard can it be to cut the rear bulkhead out, rear wheel arches and weld in some sort of strengthening steel just to make the doors latch... How hard could it be?

Any way. Bertha, there is some good advice going already. I think, what you need to do is get in touch with resellers and find out what the market will support. Heck, they will probably what the best price point would be any way.

[G.G. Sprock]

Well, I would be very interested in buying the stuff by the yard for my 1965 restoration, but the price would have to be reasonable. I looked into the few options that are out there and the prices are obscene.

[Bertha]

Well, I would be very interested in buying the stuff by the yard for my 1965 restoration, but the price would have to be reasonable. I looked into the few options that are out there and the prices are obscene.

Unfortunately after much research, the cost of doing this is more than most Rover enthusiasts would be willing to pay. What have you found out there and what do you consider obscene? Most people including myself seem to be content using the seats that RN sells from Exmoor. The color and pattern is much improved and the fact that you dont have to deal direct with exmoor(which is frustrating to say the least) and can buy them from our host is a big bonus, not to mention the price is in line. My only gripe is that they dont offer the option to buy additional material to do the other parts of the truck.