‘97 Duetto - New Fabric to Internal Panels

Are the panels covered in a pink/beige cross-woven material? If so, I re-covered several of the panels on a similar A/S conversion (a '99 Flair) a few years back and it was not at all a hard job. I had to do it because the roof side windows had leaked and water-stained the fabric. The material is (or was then) easy to work with as it is strong enough to pull off the panel with minimal damage to the panel itself.

At the time, the material had just become available again from A/S - though of course it might not now! So it would be worth giving them a call. The replacement fabric was a slightly different colour, but it really didn't show at all unless you were looking for the difference.

Two other points: getting the panels out will be an interesting challenge if the Duetto was built like the Flair, and when you come to re-glue, don't use too much spray adhesive - it's quite an open weave fabric and it will actually soak right through and show on the front if you use too much!

Ruaraidh Watson wrote:how did you approach this?

With much trepidation! A/S do not make it easy, so on some small panels you are likely to find that they have been fixed with steel pins, driven in below the surface of the fabric. I took a fair bit of the interior out of that van (for welding, among other things) and it's not unusual to find carpet glued over the countersunk heads of screws, and similar techniques that make the conversion easy to build and hard to get apart.

IMO all you can do is to try to take it slowly and methodically, and be prepared to have to repair bits where you don't know how it was fixed until you've broken it!