Profile: Tru-Fit Carpets by Vision Auto

It's a part of the car we rarely think about, but when it comes to a resto, these people can be crucial

Out in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs is a company that you may never have heard of, but has become of importance to anyone doing a full resto, particularly if it’s an Australian car you’re working on. Meet Tru-Fit, which does carpets, vinyls, insulation and a host of other things.

Run by Neville Eloeg, the company has found itself caught up in the current tidal wave of resorations, but also does some OEM work.

“We stick to flooring and carpets,” he explains. “However we do things like under-bonnet insulation and even under-cab insulation for things like Kenworth trucks.”

So how did you make the patterns? “In the old days we’d give a towtruck driver $50. He used to drive past us and leave the car with us for two weeks. These days I go through marketplaces and wreckers. If they’re a customer, sometimes I’ll offer a free set of carpets to get the mould.

“The market has changed and these old cars are now worth something.

“We stopped making one-piece carpets in 2013 when that part of the business was sold off. The moulds weren’t kept – they went into the bin!

So you haven’t been able to buy a one-piece carpet for say a VB Commodore for seven years.

Old rolling shells are useful for making templates

“When I came into the picture we started making them again. I found a manufacturer who can make the carpet big enough and to my specifications. We’re even custom-dyeing it, so the coppers and sage – all the weird colors they came out in.

I’ve tried to stick with an Australian focus at the moment, so your Holdens, Fords and Valiants. We already had a big repertoire of Jaguars and I started Benzes a few years ago because that’s where some of my interests are.

“It all depends on what people are calling for. If I get a few calls on a Datsun 1200, we’ll recognise the demand and do something about that.

“But the nature of the market means I can compete for work with Walkinshaw on converted Silverados and Rams. And we’re just 15 minutes down the road, so if there’s a problem it’s easy to fix. All our materials are Australian, so there’s very little shipping involved and the turn-around is reasonably quick.”

Neville from Tru-Fit with a fresh-cut bonnet liner for the Ed’s W126 Benz

The cost is not outrageous. For example an XR Ford can be fitted out with a one piece carpet for around $500. In the overall cost of restoring a car, it’s not much.

“The process is we cut a blank carpet off the roll and run it through the oven – it’s classed as an infra-red and takes about 60 seconds – then it’s lifted out by two or four people, depending on the size, and then put in a fibreglass mould for the press. It sets within three to five minutes. It’s pressed, then set and locked. Then it receives a final trim, though the overlocker and the sewing machine. What I’m trying to do is make it finish to factory specs, so if you have an XR Falcon or VB Commodore it has the correct heel mats or insets to the original pattern. That’s the difference with what we do.

“We have 14 colors in our standard range, which is available for anything, in three different piles. That covers 90 per cent of what we do. But there are variations. For example VL had a sandalwood interior, VK with copper, avocado and sage, Caribbean blue for Falcons. We’ve been getting them colour-matched and have a lot in stock already. It’s important, because these are becoming show cars and are looking for perfection.

“We’re aware of people starting to restore later cars such as VN and we’ve got them as well. They came out as one-piece carpets originally, made by Kennans – I remember watching them being made.

“With specialist makes such as HSV and FPV, they tended to keep the original carpets but change the mats. The company who used to make them went out of business and I bought it up.

“When it comes to doing a mould, we have our own engineer who has being doing it a long time – there’s quite an art to it.

“If it’s a car we can sell ten of, we’ll make the pattern and put it on file. If it’s a one-off, we’ll look at the situation and see what we can do to help.

“We do get some interesting jobs. For example the Range Rover Sport two-door is being remanufactured in the UK and we’re exporting carpets and vinyls for them.

“If you’re tackling a restoration, my advice is do plenty of research. And don’t throw anything out! Sometimes we’ll get customers who get all enthusiastic and strip out the carpets and toss them in the bin, and say to us “You know what colour it is.” And we respond there were five different ones, three of them are tan. So it’s always good to keep original swatches.”