So far I've taken out all the seats, rear carpet and interior panels. it's looking pretty weirdly bare, and I want to change the interior from the brown to a cobalt blue. Is this too drastic of a color change?

I am thinking of cleaning each individual panel, then wiping it with some rubbing alcohol, then using some vinyl cobalt blue spray paint and giving it a couple coats. Is this going to work?

As for carpet I'm just going to buy 2 rolls of 6' X 3' and I think that will be suffient to cover the front and back. What do you think, can you give any pointers?

 

That depends on your taste of colors... Remember... you're the one who will be driving the car. Will that color match the other parts of your car?

If you do it right. Jmmorriso just made a thread on painting your interior parts. You should read it: https://www.zdriver.com/forums/280zx-appearance-exterior-interior-80/paint-your-interior-25193/

I suggest buying a carpet kit.

 

Ditto NismoPick's suggestion of a carpet kit. They're not too spendy, easy to install, and make a huge difference in the appearance and finish of your interior.
Some one on here, I think it was Wildman, did an interior color change using paint on the panels, and had some good suggestions, pictures, etc.
Dave

 

^ Yes I did a interior change using Dupli Color paint. And also sanding some of the plastic panels, before painting them. And I took a pair of black door panels. And painted them with the dupli color blue. And have pics of those on my page also. Check out my cardomain link in my signature if you like. I did my interior a kind of custom blue and silver. And I am still not finished with it yet. Oh I got the blue carpet from ebay for just over a $100. Not too bad, only thing was..I had to make the holes for the seats, misc. and such.

 

Yeah i took out two of the rear panels (d@mn those plastic rivets!!) and they were so brittle and cracked I'm trying to find some new ones, otherwise I'm probably gonna have to ghetto-glue them and go with it. I'm on a pretty tight budget. I've seen your cardomain before and bluestreak looks pretty awesome! Great work so far! You should post some vids of it too! I was thinking G2 or Dupli-color and more of a deep blue, my only conflict is finding a matching carpet. Any suggestions on how to handle the 34 year old panels?

 

easy to find new ones of the plastic panel rivets. my local auto paint store sells them :P

and idk, blue interiors are wierd, it workds for wildman and the car that is similare to his but other than those 2 situations, blue interiors have looked so ODD to me. its to flashy and clashes with colors very easily. go a little more conservative on color choice thats my 2 cents.