I've fancied a classic car for some time, and having narrowed it down to either a Citroen SM, or a Triumph Stag, I decided on a Stag - for a number of reasons : convertible, V8, good parts availability, approval from HQ laugh

My search began last summer, after looking at and driving 5 or 6 Stags I finally picked one up.

It's a 1972 Mark 1 model, in Sapphire Blue, with a Powder Blue interior.

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The car ticked all the boxes I required - manual gearbox, overdrive, tax-exempt and able to run on unleaded without the need for additives.

The bodywork and mechanical bits were all in pretty good order, the car having been rebuilt over the last 10 years.

More recently the all the brake pipes had been replaced with copper, and the flexi-pipes replaced with braided items.

The suspension was also uprated with poly bushes, and a Kenlowe electric fan with thermostat fitted.

The interior was what really let the car down, the drivers seat was a different colour to the rest and the passengers seat was ripped. There were cracks in the rear seat and the dashboard was flaky and had been painted in what looked like ronseal red wood stain ! yuk ooo

I looked at getting the interior re-trimmed in leather (all Stag's came out the factory with good old vinyl !) - however I decided to keep things looking original, as a lot of the re-trims I had seen just didn't look right somehow.

Luckily I picked up a mint Powder blue complete interior on Ebay from a Stag Mark II - which was a real find. thumb

I took the passenger seat out of the Coupe, headed down South. The 2 big London lads who greeted me thought it was quite funny I'd arrived in such a small car - but half an hour later trusty LE 42 was loaded up with Stag front seats, rear bench & backrest, front door cards, rear cubby panels, tonneau rigid cover and a set of mats ! hehe

As the Stag is a four-seater I decided to fit rear belts, and bought some 3 point inertia items (instead of the usual lap-belts which would have been a breeze to fit!) read


Time to strip out the original interior

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I decided to underseal the rear (uncarpeted) section

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This all looked lovely and shiny, but as I had used underseal the stuff would not dry out completely !
I therefore painted over the floor with some dark blue smoothrite, which was very similar to the Stag's body colour

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I then got my big drill bits out, and set about fitting the seatbelts which was not too bad, once I had worked out how to set the inertia direction arrows, which had to be set according to the plane in which the belt reels were fixed.

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Next it was time to fit the lovely new interior

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New seats, belts, door cards all fitted - a big improvement for the old girl. smile

That's it for now, I will update this thread soon with some of the other stuff I have been doing on blue lady. laugh


Last edited by MCMike; 07/05/2010 23:45.

1972 Triumph Stag
1984 Alfasud TI
1999 Fiat Coupe Turbo LE
2005 350Z