Four Door F350 Interior Transformation | 1979 Crewcab Leather Interior Kit

Hey guys, this is Spencer with FatFender Garage. We're here in the shop today with this beautiful 1979 F350 Ranger XLT built here locally by Dan Maxwell with Dan's Hot Rods. He's got a lot of builds that he sends to us and we've gotten into a good flow with him on doing the interior side of things. To recap this truck, I mean, this was the top-of-the-line truck back in the day from Ford. If you were to get one off their assembly line, this would be basically the best money could buy. It's a F350 Ranger XLT, so basically their highest trim package available. This is an original F27 cab, fully freshly repainted. It's got a 7.3 L Godzilla, a 6R80 automatic transmission, and an Atlas 2 transfer case. Every nut and bolt, every component from suspension to drivetrain is all brand new. It's all been fully modernized. It's kind of the nice things about these trucks. Obviously, the wheels and tires that are going to be on it are on it yet. So, please don't judge the Rinky Dink little wheels and tires. I believe Dan is going to put some 35 in tires on it. Something real nice and beefy. Might even go up to 37. So, this thing will have a little bit of a different look once it's all put together. But, what I want to focus on today, let us show you what we've done as part of this truck. So, this is a fully custom leather interior from your friends here at Fat Fender. Uh Dan installed the AMP Research Steps. In terms of the interior itself, we've done everything in this start to finish. You got a Moren Giles leather. This is their Tribeca line. The colors on this are Mayan and smoke. Smoke is your smoky gray color. that's shown. And then your Mayan is your nice uh gold tan textured color. We expedited the material to get it here a little bit quicker just to speed up the build process. So this is one we uh we decided to get a little bit more custom on. We worked with the owner Jason on this a little bit to work on the design side of things. So some of this stuff is a little bit outside of what we traditionally do for these interiors, but it's been fun for us and we'll do more like these in the future. Keep in mind if it's something that you want something similar to this, sky's the limit. We'll do any of this stuff that you'd like. But these are our fat fender garage door panels. What we did differently in here is we did a French stitch. We did more of like an angled. Um we usually will do a vertical or a diamond stitch, but we decided to do something a little bit unique. Dan has installed New Relic window switches. So these are automatic windows. So these are the original uh window cranks and then we made a little trim ring to go around them. New Relic makes great products and we actually sell these window kits ourselves. So this is your armrest. Um very very thick and very sturdy. much much different than the factory one that was provided. That seems to be a common complaint for guys is when they try to open and close their door that the armrest just isn't sturdy enough. And we've seen people quite literally rip their door panels off of the door completely trying to close it. So, that's far from what we're doing here. This is nothing comparable to the plastic door cards that uh you know, the OEM ones or the replacements that people sell online. Down here, you're going to have your Apex uh leather. They sent us their ultra square weave carpet. This is their heathered black carpet. So, it's a really nice uh like smoky charcoal color. It went along great with the interior. The idea for this was, you know, do a fun two-tone and kind of play on the the look of the truck, but also not just so cookie cutter. Like, we didn't want to just do a red and white interior to go with the red and white truck. We wanted to be a little bit unique and add a little bit more flavor. This is where your speaker will go. This is going to be a foccal 6 1/2 in coaxial speaker that sits in there. Uh it's got a tweeter installed and it's really high quality. You'll notice a trend here. So leather more and giles very very high-end leather and when it comes to the speaker it's all foccal and muscone. So foccal makes our speaker systems door speakers rear door speakers tweeters and then Moscone has everything covered from a subwoofer and amp standpoint. The combination of the two provides quite literally the greatest sound we could ever imagine. And eventually we'll go down the rabbit hole. We might develop our own FFG internal speakers that we'll use. You got your dash pad up there. He's got your Dakota digital gauges and he has a retro sound deck that he's using to do the audio equipment. And then he's doing, I believe, a vintage air uh AC system. These are our FFG sun visors. We 3D print a sun visor clip that we install that allows these things to uh actually sit where they need to be and they don't sag down. That tends to be another problem that these trucks have had is the uh sun visors tend to hang pretty low. This is one of the parts that seems to get the most compliments on the interior. It'll be a little bit hard to tell with the lighting, but this is actually a one-piece headliner as opposed to other crew cabs that typically do a two-piece headliner. It's definitely a challenge to get in. We usually have to remove the rear windshield. So, this one is uh wrapped in Apex Leathers Dynamica suede. Adds really, really nice texture. The one piece headliner tends to draw a lot of attention, gets a lot of compliments. So, super happy with how it turned out. Another thing to look at that's actually uh this will be the first time on camera we're showing it is our seat belt retractor covers. So, as you may know, we've made these previously for single cab trucks, but we've actually just come out with the crew cab equivalent. So, those will work on all of your 73 to 79 crew cab trucks. They house the uh seat belt kits that we use. We work in collaboration with Seatelt Planet to make these. It's really cool. They'll actually have these uh woven in the same material to match the leather. So, typically how the process goes is we'll send them a small sample of the leather that we're using and then they'll use that sample to mirror the seat belts and make sure they're the same. So, for the crew cab, you're going to have your three-point seat belts in the front, and then in the rear, you're going to have your lap seat belts. So, we'll jump into the uh rear of the truck. So, what's not listed is going to be your new Relic uh window crank. So, he's going to have to install that, and we'll have a trim ring for him to do that. So, as you'll notice, these door panels are a little bit smaller. Same design, but because of that, we add the strap up top so that way you can pull it closed because, as you'll notice, the armrest isn't big enough that we have a point where you can use it to close it. There's a lot of tape on this interior. What this is for is all of these inserts are removable and they velcro in place. So these tapes is here and make it easy to remove. Dan's got a little bit of work, for example, on these window switches. So he'll have to remove these panels to get behind the door panel. And that's kind of how we've designed these interiors. It's user friendly. We don't want to install an interior that if something were to go wrong with this window regulator that it's a oh crap, send it back to our shop. We have to do it all. So all of these panels are removable so you can get behind them and access them. Plus, if he ever wanted to, either him or the customer he sells it to wants to replace something, it's as easy as just pulling that insert and replacing it. You don't have to get a brand new door panel. So, you know, there's a lot of engineering in mind when we made these just for the end user experience. We sell a lot of these kits. These are, as custom as these look and as cool as these look, this is something that we sell pretty standardly. So, as you can see back here, we have two Moscone uh 10-in subwoofers, customuilt speaker box here at FFG. Then we also have a Moscone uh super high horsepower uh high horsepower amp. Um as you can see there, we got FFG on it. We got a really cool uh cover grill for it. These are next on deck for FFG. So if you want a speaker kit of your own, hit us up. We're at the very end stages of development, but as you can see, it's a real product. That's something that we're putting into trucks currently. If you want subwoofers, amp, and a speaker box shipped out to you with your interior kit, it's definitely something we can accommodate. So as you'll notice back here, you got a fullsize bench seat. I'll sit in it so you guys can see space back here. It definitely isn't a premium by any means, but as you can tell with a fullsize bench seat, I have room for my feet and uh my knees aren't up against this new bench seat. Like you can actually have two fulls size bench seats back here and uh it's not going to be so limited on space that it's just cramped. That's the last thing that you want is to go to all this effort and it's not fun. But what you'll notice is we have these bolsters. So we have uh bolsters on the inside and on the outside and it's kind of designed to mimic more of like a bucket seat feel. keeps you in here and it keeps you from sliding around. And to be honest, with the kind of trucks that we work on and these types of trucks, if you're gonna have a 73 Godzilla in it, you're gonna want to keep yourself from sliding around too much. So, these bolsters are a nice touch. You got the lap seat belts back here sitting in it. You're literally just going to pull it aside and you're you're strapped ready to go. So, you're not going anywhere. But, like I said, these are in a collaboration with Seat Belt Planet. They uh have made these kits for us and it's something where that we just match it to the interior. So, it looks really nice even down to the little details. Honestly, that's how a lot of this stuff is. is just details. So, when you're thinking about an interior job, there's a lot of small variables to account for that a lot of people don't. And then they wonder at the end of it, man, why did it get so expensive? Why did it take so long to make or why did it have the look that I wanted? And short answer is a lot of times because you're not accounting for all the variables up front. We've dialed it down to a fixed cost. So, if you wanted to bring us the truck, you didn't just want the kit. We can price you out fully for doing everything, doing a full speaker system in it, installing the carpet, the juke pad, uh the sound shield membrane. All right. So, as we've talked about, the primary purpose of designing these interiors is drivability, usability. So, we've talked about that a lot, but as you can see here, I'm nice and comfortable. The one complaint I would say I have is uh just the steering wheel being a little bit too close to myself. I will say this isn't something that we did as part of the scope of work. But, if we were to do every part of the truck, uh we have a steering column kit that gives you about two more inches of space and we would go a little bit smaller steering wheel. So ideally, the only complaint that would be resolved here is the fact that your steering wheel is going to be a little bit farther forward. Aside from that, as you can see, everything is in the right spot. That's the most important part of the whole build. Why go to all this effort if it's not actually functional and it's not something that you're comfortable in? So, these seats are super nice. We run them with bolsters, inside and outside bolsters. This little hump, the idea of it is just to make it more of like a bucket seat. Honestly, it's very it's very rare that they're going to have six people in this truck at all times. So the center part of the seat isn't going to get used that much. So it's more geared towards four people, two front, two rear. You don't want to go so custom that it no longer looks like what the truck originally looked like. So that's why you go bench seat in this situation. Got your Dakota digital gauges. And uh you have your automatic windows. Just click that here. Windows roll up nice and smooth. Roll them down. Same thing. And uh audio sounds phenomenal. Let's see if I can connect a phone real quick. I'm not exaggerating when I say the money seat is seriously something impressive. And what we mean by money seat is the speakers are in the correct placement to provide the best sound for the person sitting in the driver's seat. So everything that's in here from your door speakers uh that have your tweeters in them, from your rear speakers to your subwoofers behind the bench seat, everyone in the truck is going to have a great experience, but it is purely tailored for whoever is sitting in this seat is going to have the best sound and the best experience with the speaker system. It's the nicest speaker system I've ever heard. I cannot express enough the fact that we have just gotten audio to a science. It's something that we used to do as just part of our full build service, but we're right at the cusp of offering them as full audio kits to go along with our interiors. [Music] It's insane. [Music] Yeah. So, there is a there's a reason they call these trucks smile machines. I would say that's like the definition. That was my first time sitting in the money seat listening to the speaker system. I poked my head in here last week as they were tuning it, but man, like it's it's stunning. And the windows are down, the doors open. If you were fully closed in this cab, you are surrounded by the sound. Other things uh from usability standpoint, these are your 4x4 shifters. We developed a cool little custom boot that goes around them, so it's real easy to just shift into four-wheel drive if you needed to. And then yeah, it's it's awesome. Sun visors, you can see here, they work perfectly. If any of you guys have owned these trucks originally and you've dealt with any of these interior components, it's a world of difference. You almost forget you're in a classic truck, but you don't because everything is still period correct. But you forget that this stuff is normally so crappy. Like your sun visors, I mean, anyone that's owned these trucks know they don't fold down like this when you want to uncip them and recip them. That that's not smooth like that. headliner. You normally have stuff falling down on your head because it's all worn out. To have a nice suede is amazing. Speaker system, same thing. Hey, it's me. It's Jason. How's it going? Wait, wait. You got to got to talk here. Pretty cool truck, right? Oh, it's fantastic. Fantastic. I was jamming out to Miley Cyrus party in the USA last night. Nice. Don't tell anybody. You don't want to take away from the truck. That's the most critical fine line that you got to ride when you do these interiors and anything in the the restood scene. You want to find a balance between modern function, but you don't want to compromise the initial integrity of the truck. That's another cool thing about this. Even with your AC, with your radio, very few things have been cut. Like the dash is completely original. Nothing's been chopped or cut. Your AC, these are your factory vents. Your unit just sits behind the firewall there or be behind the glove box. That's why it tricks the eye. That's why people don't see this and go, "Oh, so it's a it's a brand new truck that has a different interior put in it." These are period correct for the trucks. If you wanted to get really really period correct, you take out these bolsterers. So, it's a flat bench seat. Um, if you've seen that video we did previously of Dan's last truck, he went that way. He wanted to go for more of a classical look to it. Like I said, the best word I can use to describe a smile machine. You drive this and all you want to do is just keep driving it. It's just such a fun driving experience. And uh Dan builds a killer truck and we build a killer interior. So, it's kind of the marriage of two great things. So, we're super grateful to him for his business. We're super grateful that he entrusts us to sometimes take creative directive on some of these things. Like when it came to the scope of this interior, he really did just open it up and say, "What would you think would look good in this two-tone red and white truck?" And it was really easy from that point to get with our design team, look at some samples, look at the truck, and uh come up with this. I think the execution is 10 out of 10. And I think whoever ends up with this truck and is driving it is just going to have the most comfortable experience possible. The one thing that's not right, you'll notice this is barely coming out of here. It's not quite the length that you want. And then this other one is basically fully tucked. These were provided by Dan when he brought it to us. And so we're going to get with Seat belt planet. We're going to get ones that are about 4 in longer so they sit in the correct spot so that three-point just connects nice and smooth. If this is something that you either want a kit like this, we can put it into a crate for you, ship it out to you. It's very easy to install. Or bring us the truck in person, then we'll do exactly what we did to this truck for your truck. Make sure you go to our website, you check us out at FatFender Garage, go to our interior kit page. You can build out yours or give us a call on the phone. Our sales guys will walk you through it, go over options, go over price points, and uh yeah, it's a very quick process. It's a it's a four to six week turnaround time. We don't slack around here. This whole interior job did take a little bit longer uh just because there's a couple of small things we had to work through, but overall, if you wanted to do an interior of your own, you're looking at about a 4 to 6 week lead time start to finish. So, hey, what's up, bro? Hey, we're about ready to get this crew cab out of here. Um can you move that bench seat and that door? And uh if you might be able to gather some sets of hands, we'll need to just push it to the front of the shop. Cool. Thanks, brother. Well, it's out of here. Uh Dan is here right now to pick it up. It does not run under its own power. He's got to wrap up a couple of things. If you want a sneak peek, that one right behind us is next on deck and it'll be another beautiful uh leather interior from FatFinner Garage and full faith that the execution is going to be 10 out of 10. Once again, my name is Spencer with FatFinner Garage. This is a 1979 F350 with a beautiful custom leather interior. Hope you had fun and hope you go to our website to get yours today.