Hot Rods Current TJ Upholstery Information

The horse shit is all bullshit;
In the thirties and forties, furniture was stuffed with horse hair or cotton.
Car seats were mostly steel springs and covered in burlap and then covered with cotton.
There was a couple of large sofa factories in Tijuana and and a lot of the upholstery guys had worked there as kids, so they had a lot of expreriance sewing and cutting patterns and that in turn created a large work pool for doing car upholstery.
In the late 50's foam was invented so horse hair became obsolete and a lot of the surplus from the furniture factories were sold to the upholstery shops.
So where did the "horse shit " story come from ?
Well either some body ripped a fart and crapped there horse hair stuffed seat or the more logical explation is this; In the late 60's and 70's , one of the curio shops had the novel idea of rewrapping the cheap 10 cents a pack Mexican cigarettes and calling them horse shit cigarettes as a novelty and joke. And pretty much if you ever smoked one , that's what they tasted like. They had no filters and since they came from Mexico city, they were always stale and dry.

 

That’s a great looking car. Thanks for sharing a real TJ story with us.

 

I was a kid the first time I saw horseshit cigaretts - 'Not a Fart in the Pack' the package proclaimed, laffed my little heinie off!

Without question, Champion's work looks BITCHIN, for an amazing price! Pretty cool knowing there are a few craftsman down there carrying on a tradition...

 

The birth of the T.J. tuck and roll;
Tijuana's founders for the most part
We're European immigrants and the Jewish communities started opening curio shops in the 1920's.
They would sell Mexican trinkets, gold and silver and onix jewelry, shoes and boots made in the southern states of Mexico and they started making leather purses,bags and jackets.
The Weizman family started bringing
Up leather hides from Guadalajara and Guanajuato.This in turn created another large pool of semesters and pattern cutters and leather scraps.
Luxury cars from the 30's had large pleats and guys with hot rods and customs wanted this look.
Some of the seimsters could buy the leather scraps for cheap and this gave birth to the original tuck and roll.
Each pleat was sewn into individual pockets and stuffed with cotton with a wooden paddle and then sewn on to a cotton material. The narrower the pleat the more you could take advantage of the leather scraps and this gave birth to the upholstery shops in Tijuana.
In the 40's ,the pleats were 3 inches wide, in the early fifties 2 and half inches wide and by the late fifties , pleats were two and one and half inches wide, so when doing a traditional hot rod or custom, it's important to do your interior period correct.
Now days , most shops just sew the pleats on to the foam and is a simulated tuck and roll, the real deal is labor intensive and very few shops know how to do it.
I'll try to post some pictures so you guys can see the difference.
On Dave's car, I choosed a design off a 57 T-bird and the door panels are simular to original

 

Looks great! Glad you had a good experience.

 

Well, this isn't quite an Tijuana upholstery story, but it does relate as my wife and I went there back in the early '90's to see if we could buy some leather which we were going to use to upholster our '33 Buick 90 Series Victoria. We had been to Mexico many times before and had always had a good experience, so we said, let's go and see what we can find. We used the logic that back then you could not pass a shop on Ave. Revolucion without see leather garments of every description. Ergo, lots of leather so there must be a place where we can find a shop that just sells leather hides. So, we started our investigation, going from one shop to the next and asking where their leather came from? Most of the shops had people right there who would custom make for you any jacket you might want.

The proprietors were very friendly and told us about this place or that place to go to in order to get what we needed. We finally wound up at Reuben Gold's place, a store that sold nothing but leather suitable for use in upholstery. I had never seen so many hides, thousands upon thousands of them, in just about any color you could imagine. We decided on a medium gray and Reuben showed us stack after stack of the gray color palette we wanted. We picked the hides we wanted and after some discussion we bought 10 half-hides as we were going to take the hides back to Rochester where we were going to have the work done. Reuben assured us that given the information about the car;s size, seat description, etc., that the 10 half-hides would be sufficient.

When we told him that we were taking the hides back to NY, he broke out in a huge smile and told us that was funny as the hides had come to him from Gloversville, NY! We really had a good laugh over that.

We then rolled up the hides, I slung them over my shoulder and we took a cab back to the border. We got out, got in the border crossing line, told the agent what we had purchased in Mexico, got a "welcome home" from the agent and walked to the parking lot where we had left our car, got in and were back at the hotel within minutes. Altogether, a great day. Oh, and made even better by the fact that we got all that leather, enough to do the entire interior of our Buick, including the trunk, for 400 Yankee bucks!

All together a wonderful experience. However, I will say we have been back to Tijuana several times since then and the complexion of the city has definitely changed. To our minds, not for the good. However, I just wanted to relate a story of Tijuana with a happy ending.

 

Well I thought I had heard it all, that our climate has changed, we are lucky to get a few days a year that get above 90 degress.For the most part ,It's in the seventies all year long

 

the governor had it burned done in the late 60's

 

Never bring a gun into mexico,you will do more time than if they caught you with a truck full of drugs

 

Haven't been to TJ since 1987 and will never step foot in TJ again.
In fact, I would never step foot in mexico, either.

 

Sometimes it's nice to be corrected, or straightened out. Thanks Miguel and Klaw.

 

Yes, as a kid I worked at a Big Boy Restaurant in Tijuana, In the last few
Years , they have open restaurants with cuisine from all over the world.
This has replaced the curio shops and a lot of tourists come down just for dinner.

 

Here is a picture of the Taco Stand where we ate just before heading back to the states.

 

Photo didn't load the first time. Here's the second try. Hopefully Miguel will provide some history.

 

These photos should dispel the quality of the material BS. Top grade marine vinyl and stitching. Maybe Miguel will chime in with the history of TJ Upholstery.

 

This was the first carne asada taco stand in Tijuana and it's been there since 1960, so why is it good ; Tijuana still has old school butcher shops and the meat is from young free range cattle which is slaughtered fresh every day and the corn tortillas are fresh too with no preservatives.
The hot sause is made right there ,no can crapp down here.

 

Still looking for the horse shit stuffing.
The marine naulgahyde and the foam is from the state's, if you go with leather,it's from Guanajuato and Guadalajara and is much cheaper than the states.

 

TJ is nothing that most of the guys on here are used too. I went several times for cheap booze and college girls while in the Corps, and it was fun. Had young kids trying to sell me weed. Early 2000's.

Now, there is no way in hell you would catch me there. Factor in that your bringing a "look at me" car, you will get double the attention. Drugs, violence, and a corrupt police force could lead to a very bad trip.

Sometimes you've got to risk it for the biscuit....

 

I just returned from Tijuana Monday. Yes the border crossing sucked, it was a holiday weekend. I have traveled to Mexico several times over the years. It is as safe as you make it in fact I have driven from Tijuana to Loreto on highway 1. Great place to visit and great food.

 

As long as the seams are straight and the pleats line up I would be happy. I’ve seen jobs here in the states where they don’t and in a car with vertical pleats it’s the first thing I look at.

 

Does anybody know if there are upholstery shops in the Texas border towns similar to TJ? I've heard about California guys going to TJ for upholstery since I was a kid.....not sure if the same applied to more eastern border towns.

 

I was curious about the same when I drove through the El Paso Tx area a couple times last year, the border is right there next to El Paso ....

 

I've been following this thread with interest and it has got me thinking. I had a leather sectional made 30 years ago, when I was still single. When my wife and I got married 25 years ago, we sold both our homes and got one together. The sectional wound up in the media loft deal so no problem for a number of years. Retiring from Houston to the TX Hill country was the latest leapfrog for the sectional. We agreed the new place would be ranch style furnished but She Who Must Be Obeyed insisted on the classic couch/love seat/fat chair in the liv-fam room and the sectional is crammed in the study. Bottom line, I'm thinking about selling said sectional.
The leather is full thick hide, not a split with a reground finish or bi-cast coated. You could make belts from it. The hassle of selling and maybe settling for less than $1000, leaves me thinking of salvaging all the leather and dumping the stuffing, frame, springs. I don't like the oyster color interior done by the PO of my '50 Chevy truck. Too plain is another reason. The leather happens to be the color I DO want. (It's slightly more Chestnut Brown than the orangy camera flash effect.) I'm really thinking this is a no brainer for me.
Note the large pieces of leather all around the back.........


In East and Central Texas, we call the border trip, "Going to the valley". I don't have a clue who or where to locate service there, but I hear of a Mexican ex-patriate family the next town over from me that is highly recommended. I have noooo problems with spending my money locally.
..

 

Salamander Taco's ?

 

For those of you going to the NSRA Nats, in Middletown Kentucky we have Señor Iguanas restaurant. Best Iguana I've ever had. Not sure they have Salamander tacos.

 

Or Canada, either.

 

Has that actually happen to you? If so, where did it occur? This I gotta here......

 

We took a couple of cars there for upholstery 60-61. Heard the horse shit story then--the finished jobs were very well done and no horseshit

 

Yep, that was me. A lot of members are talking out of their A#@ ! And like one member said, the nay sayers / whiners haven't been a thousand miles from TJ