My Engine Committed Suicide Yesterday - RIP
03-19-2011, 05:27 PM
#221
Thursday, I started early and put in a lot of hours working on everything. By night time I was kind of burnt out and didn’t get too much done after that. I started by finally getting the battery cutoff switch mounted in the car. I didn’t think it would be overly complicated, but it turned into a pain in the ***. I had to drill two self tapping screws through the bracket and frame in the tiny space of the spare tire well. There were a lot of bad words said, but eventually I got everything squared away. With the switch mounted I set the red top on top of the old cardboard box that had been holding the old battery and cutting some new cables. Here it is all kind of sitting loosely in there.
I had to make a slight revision to how I mounted the bracket for clearance purposes and nicked the face plate. Oh well…
The plan is to drill a hole through the actual switch, rear of the car, tail light, and running a piece of 5-16ths all thread through it. My tail lights have all sorts of odd internal cracks on the lenses anyways. I am going to keep the one with the hole in it for the track and disconnect in the rod the rest of the time.
Here’s the new battery tray that will be going in the car. You can see the mounting holes I mentioned earlier.
With that stuff all kind of rigged out of the way I started pulling all of the interior panels for a myriad of purposes.
1. Run wiring for the cutoff switch
2. Clean and dye carpet
3. Roll bar installation
4. Mini Tub installation
5. Wrapping panels and headliner in ebony leather
I started with the rear seats and belts then pulled all of the panels, the driver seat, and finally the center console. I was planning on cleaning my carper, but didn’t realize the true extent of how disgusting it was.
Coming out
Emptied out. I found exactly $1.35 in change under the carpet along with a string of broken plastic Mardi Gras beads. I left the door panels for roll bar clearance purposes.
Getting the carpet out of the car in my cramped garage was a battle of epic proportions. It is pretty heavy and very awkward to carry. The main issue was fighting past my roommate’s girlfriend’s bike which the carpet got caught on and is for some odd reason is in my garage instead of hers. I couldn’t set the carpet down as it was caught on the bike so I ended up dragging to bike behind me with the giant roll of carpet for about 5-6 feet until I could detach it from the bike. I set the carpet by the door and promptly and need I say carefully…. relocated the bike out of my way.
Upon inspecting the inside of the car I noticed a bunch of extra wiring throughout the car. Here’s a handful of wiring I found:
Only about two of these were actually attached to something. The others were cut on both ends and just sitting in the car.
Extra wiring ran across the car. I kind of tracked it down to speaker wiring.
This was a little odd though as it was tied into the fuel pump unit:
I’m still not too sure of what all this is. I may luck out and find something like a 255lph pump in my gas tank or it may just be more gay speaker wiring, but we’ll see.
After working on the car earlier in the day and the bike incident I decided to call it a night.
I had to make a slight revision to how I mounted the bracket for clearance purposes and nicked the face plate. Oh well…
The plan is to drill a hole through the actual switch, rear of the car, tail light, and running a piece of 5-16ths all thread through it. My tail lights have all sorts of odd internal cracks on the lenses anyways. I am going to keep the one with the hole in it for the track and disconnect in the rod the rest of the time.
Here’s the new battery tray that will be going in the car. You can see the mounting holes I mentioned earlier.
With that stuff all kind of rigged out of the way I started pulling all of the interior panels for a myriad of purposes.
1. Run wiring for the cutoff switch
2. Clean and dye carpet
3. Roll bar installation
4. Mini Tub installation
5. Wrapping panels and headliner in ebony leather
I started with the rear seats and belts then pulled all of the panels, the driver seat, and finally the center console. I was planning on cleaning my carper, but didn’t realize the true extent of how disgusting it was.
Coming out
Emptied out. I found exactly $1.35 in change under the carpet along with a string of broken plastic Mardi Gras beads. I left the door panels for roll bar clearance purposes.
Getting the carpet out of the car in my cramped garage was a battle of epic proportions. It is pretty heavy and very awkward to carry. The main issue was fighting past my roommate’s girlfriend’s bike which the carpet got caught on and is for some odd reason is in my garage instead of hers. I couldn’t set the carpet down as it was caught on the bike so I ended up dragging to bike behind me with the giant roll of carpet for about 5-6 feet until I could detach it from the bike. I set the carpet by the door and promptly and need I say carefully…. relocated the bike out of my way.
Upon inspecting the inside of the car I noticed a bunch of extra wiring throughout the car. Here’s a handful of wiring I found:
Only about two of these were actually attached to something. The others were cut on both ends and just sitting in the car.
Extra wiring ran across the car. I kind of tracked it down to speaker wiring.
This was a little odd though as it was tied into the fuel pump unit:
I’m still not too sure of what all this is. I may luck out and find something like a 255lph pump in my gas tank or it may just be more gay speaker wiring, but we’ll see.
After working on the car earlier in the day and the bike incident I decided to call it a night.
03-19-2011, 05:28 PM
#222
On Friday I started pretty early (for me) again. I pulled the carpet outside with the intent of getting it cleaned off and dyed. Cleaning it was much more involved than I anticipated so that’s about as far as I got.
Here it is pulled outside as it came out of the car. Make a special not of the blue stain in the middle towards the rear.
At first I just vacuumed off all of the random dirt, rocks, leaves, etc… off of the carpet. I pretreated the carpet with some Woolite, but ran out towards the end. I let it sit for a little while to kick in. After that I broke out a bucket, giant dairy brush, some Dawn, and started scrubbing like crazy. I have no idea what that blue stain was, but as soon as I started scrubbing it with the brush it started bleeding all over the place. It turned everything it touched bluish.
After these bubbles evaporated it actually stained the concrete blue.
Here’s the carpet completely scrubbed.
I was debating of letting it dry with the soap in it or rinsing it off and applying the dye. I ended up taking a hose to it and rinsing it completely off.
As soon as I hit the carpet with the hole I started seeing all sorts of nasty brown water just pouring off of it. This was towards the end:
I’m really glad I decided to rinse it off.
Rinsing the carpet off though left it completely soaking wet. Thankfully, I live in Florida and it was about 75* out today (jab at people freezing their asses off) so I decided to drag it up on my hand rail to dry.
I won’t lie and say that this was easy. One gigantic piece of carpet plus tons of water equals one heavy *** combination. I decided to leave it sitting up there the rest of the night to drain and dry out. I will mix all of the dye up tomorrow and start going to town on it.
In waiting for that to dry I decided to start on my next huge project of wrapping most of my interior panels in ebony leather that I got from Specialized Stainless. The first step may be the most time consuming and it is sanding everything with 100 grit sand paper. Before:
Like my fancy workspace?
After:
This is going to take a long time.
A little earlier in the day I gave Wolfe Racecraft a call with some questions about figuring out how I wanted to set up my roll bar. I finally managed to sell my Dart heads so I’m going to be buying a 6 point moly roll bar, a couple new seats, and some crotch bars way ahead of schedule. The down side is that the wait on the bar is 3.5-4 weeks for a jig notch piece.
I guess I’m going to have to figure out how to do some of the other things that are on my list.
I’m mostly thinking the next big tasks will be wrapping all of the interior panels that aren’t affected by the mini tubs, mini tubbing the car, changing the dash, ECT wiring, gauge overlays, blue bulb parts, double din installation, and gauge / shift light installation. It isn’t much to do by myself having never done anything like this before though…. Wish me luck.
Here it is pulled outside as it came out of the car. Make a special not of the blue stain in the middle towards the rear.
At first I just vacuumed off all of the random dirt, rocks, leaves, etc… off of the carpet. I pretreated the carpet with some Woolite, but ran out towards the end. I let it sit for a little while to kick in. After that I broke out a bucket, giant dairy brush, some Dawn, and started scrubbing like crazy. I have no idea what that blue stain was, but as soon as I started scrubbing it with the brush it started bleeding all over the place. It turned everything it touched bluish.
After these bubbles evaporated it actually stained the concrete blue.
Here’s the carpet completely scrubbed.
I was debating of letting it dry with the soap in it or rinsing it off and applying the dye. I ended up taking a hose to it and rinsing it completely off.
As soon as I hit the carpet with the hole I started seeing all sorts of nasty brown water just pouring off of it. This was towards the end:
I’m really glad I decided to rinse it off.
Rinsing the carpet off though left it completely soaking wet. Thankfully, I live in Florida and it was about 75* out today (jab at people freezing their asses off) so I decided to drag it up on my hand rail to dry.
I won’t lie and say that this was easy. One gigantic piece of carpet plus tons of water equals one heavy *** combination. I decided to leave it sitting up there the rest of the night to drain and dry out. I will mix all of the dye up tomorrow and start going to town on it.
In waiting for that to dry I decided to start on my next huge project of wrapping most of my interior panels in ebony leather that I got from Specialized Stainless. The first step may be the most time consuming and it is sanding everything with 100 grit sand paper. Before:
Like my fancy workspace?
After:
This is going to take a long time.
A little earlier in the day I gave Wolfe Racecraft a call with some questions about figuring out how I wanted to set up my roll bar. I finally managed to sell my Dart heads so I’m going to be buying a 6 point moly roll bar, a couple new seats, and some crotch bars way ahead of schedule. The down side is that the wait on the bar is 3.5-4 weeks for a jig notch piece.
I guess I’m going to have to figure out how to do some of the other things that are on my list. I’m mostly thinking the next big tasks will be wrapping all of the interior panels that aren’t affected by the mini tubs, mini tubbing the car, changing the dash, ECT wiring, gauge overlays, blue bulb parts, double din installation, and gauge / shift light installation. It isn’t much to do by myself having never done anything like this before though….
Wish me luck.
03-22-2011, 10:00 PM
#223
I got a little bit of work done today on dyeing my carpet. I'm pretty much going to call it done although it didn't turn out quite like I wanted it to. It was very labor intensive and dirty work.
I'll let the pictures do the talking. This is the first batch of dye aka dye 1. 2 dry packets of black RIT dye, 1/2 cup salt, squirt of Dawn, and about 4 cups of water:
Dye 1 Half way (wet) vs OEM
Dy1 Finished:
Dye 2 = 2 Plastic containers of liquid RIT black dye, 1 cup of salt, and enough water to mix it all together.
Dye 2 slowly drying vs. Dye 1
I wasn't getting the dark results like I wanted so the last batch of dye aka dye 3 was: 2 solid packets of RIT dye, 1 liquid plastic bottle of dye, no salt, and the rest of dye 2 to mix it all together. It came out super black, but the results...
Dye 3 Finished:
On this round I started using the large dairy brush that I used on the carpet to scrub the dye deep into the fibers. This made a huge difference in how it came out. I wish I had done this from the beginning as I feel the results would have turned out more to my liking. I finished the third round of dye by the skin of my teeth. I completley ran out of dye with about 18ci left to go and my last squirt bottle top died with about a quarter of the carpet left to go. I ended up having to start pouring the dye on the carpet lighting and then scrubbing it vigorously to get it to even out.
This is the aftermath of this process:
1. Tons of clogged or broken squirt bottle tops
2. Black hands and feet
3. Black legs
In hindsight I wish I would have worn gloves in performing this task. After taking two showers and washing my hands multiple times most of the dye is gone, but not all of it. The dye made all of the cuts on my hands look really odd and the outline of my nails even odder. The girl who I handed my debit card to when I went to get food earlier tonight seemed disgusted by my troll hands. I was kind of running out of time to get it finished so the last picture is kind of shady. I'll get a better picture of it tomorrow once I vacuum it off once more.
I'll let the pictures do the talking. This is the first batch of dye aka dye 1. 2 dry packets of black RIT dye, 1/2 cup salt, squirt of Dawn, and about 4 cups of water:
Dye 1 Half way (wet) vs OEM
Dy1 Finished:
Dye 2 = 2 Plastic containers of liquid RIT black dye, 1 cup of salt, and enough water to mix it all together.
Dye 2 slowly drying vs. Dye 1
I wasn't getting the dark results like I wanted so the last batch of dye aka dye 3 was: 2 solid packets of RIT dye, 1 liquid plastic bottle of dye, no salt, and the rest of dye 2 to mix it all together. It came out super black, but the results...
Dye 3 Finished:
On this round I started using the large dairy brush that I used on the carpet to scrub the dye deep into the fibers. This made a huge difference in how it came out. I wish I had done this from the beginning as I feel the results would have turned out more to my liking. I finished the third round of dye by the skin of my teeth. I completley ran out of dye with about 18ci left to go and my last squirt bottle top died with about a quarter of the carpet left to go. I ended up having to start pouring the dye on the carpet lighting and then scrubbing it vigorously to get it to even out.
This is the aftermath of this process:
1. Tons of clogged or broken squirt bottle tops
2. Black hands and feet
3. Black legs
In hindsight I wish I would have worn gloves in performing this task. After taking two showers and washing my hands multiple times most of the dye is gone, but not all of it. The dye made all of the cuts on my hands look really odd and the outline of my nails even odder. The girl who I handed my debit card to when I went to get food earlier tonight seemed disgusted by my troll hands. I was kind of running out of time to get it finished so the last picture is kind of shady. I'll get a better picture of it tomorrow once I vacuum it off once more.
03-23-2011, 10:38 PM
#224
I got a little bit done today. I'm slowly chipping away at things. Recently, I've been kind of feeling like I'm not getting too much done, running into issues, and needed some motivation. I opened my garage up and started gathering the random things that I was going to need for the day. Living near the beach is nice in some aspects, but it others it completely sucks.
That's my shifter handle that I've had for a few months in my closed garage and a can of MEK that's probably 9 months old. My brand new battery box that has been in my garage for less than a month already has rust on it. I took it outside today to prime the thing to stop the rust. Any bare metal in my garage is fucked. It has to be painted, oiled, or WD40ed to survive any period of time. Seeing all of this kind of annoyed me even more.
After dealing with the rusty crap I started dragging my carpet back into the driveway to finish drying completely. Upon inspecting it I thought my carpet kind of turned out like ****, but I was 100% completely wrong.
Here's what it looked like when I pulled it back out into the driveway today:
Not exactly like I was hoping.
I noticed that when I set it down it looked like a giant dust cloud came off of it. My thoughts were that it just got dusty from sitting under out steps. It was still a little too bright for me to go out there then and mess with it as I'm pretty burnt from working on it the other day so I waited for the sun to go down a little. Fast forward a few hours, out came the same dairy brush I'd been using, and away I went scrubbing. It ended up that the nearly 2 cups of salt I used to help the dye were still in the carpet. I spent about 20 minutes brushing as much salt out of it as I could and here's how it came out:
Close:
The color is kind of washed out as it is in direct sunlight, but it came out black. Not as completely dark as I wanted it, but way better than I anticipated after yesterday's disaster and seeing it this morning. It still needs one last good vacuuming done to get the rest of the salt out and some random leaves off of it.
Inbetween working on the carpet I decided to actually try and wrap one of the interior panels with the specialized stainless interior kit before I spent all of the time sanding everything. That way if it turned out like crap or I didn't like it all of my interior panels would still be usable. I had quite a few snags as you'll see below, but I have to say the results blew me away. It was a little tedious getting everything right and time consuming, but it was completely worth it.
I finished sanding the back edges of the panel and cleaned it off with some MEK / paper towels. I laid it out on the floor and cut a nice piece of ebony leather off with some extra space on the edges or so I thought...
DOHT 1. Too short.
DOHT 2. I laid the panel upside down when I went to cut it out. It ended up working for the passenger side kick panel, but I had to cut another template out.
DOHT 3. My younger brother came looking for me and decided that my roll of leather was a perfect place to leave his panda prints.
After cleaning the leather off I made a few extra cuts for other interior pieces out of my earlier miscut and set them aside. With one properly sized template cut out I finally got to work. The kit includes directions for most of the panels on how / what order to glue them down. Here is the start of the driver kick panel:
I had to use my heat gun a generous amount to stretch the fabric over turns to keep it from wrinkling up. Here is the top side completely set:
This part was extremely difficult to get right. The 90* angle right into the texturing was a battle. I honestly messed it completely up the first time and had to peal it back to start over. Here it is done correctly:
To put it lightly I think the wrap looks fantastic. To compare a stock 13 year old beat up panel to one wrapped isn't even a comparison of the same caliber. The wrapped piece blows the stocker out of the water. I still need to wrap the edges, poke some holes for the attachment screws, and the hood latch release, but I'm stoked. Seeing how my carpet turned out well and the interior panels turned out fantastic so far I'm pumped to get working on everything tomorrow even though I may not have too much time to get things done.
My only concern is that I may not have enough material because of all of my retard cuts. I really hope there is enough to get the sail and rear panels finished, but we'll see I guess.
That's my shifter handle that I've had for a few months in my closed garage and a can of MEK that's probably 9 months old. My brand new battery box that has been in my garage for less than a month already has rust on it. I took it outside today to prime the thing to stop the rust. Any bare metal in my garage is fucked. It has to be painted, oiled, or WD40ed to survive any period of time. Seeing all of this kind of annoyed me even more.
After dealing with the rusty crap I started dragging my carpet back into the driveway to finish drying completely. Upon inspecting it I thought my carpet kind of turned out like ****, but I was 100% completely wrong.
Here's what it looked like when I pulled it back out into the driveway today:
Not exactly like I was hoping.
I noticed that when I set it down it looked like a giant dust cloud came off of it. My thoughts were that it just got dusty from sitting under out steps. It was still a little too bright for me to go out there then and mess with it as I'm pretty burnt from working on it the other day so I waited for the sun to go down a little. Fast forward a few hours, out came the same dairy brush I'd been using, and away I went scrubbing. It ended up that the nearly 2 cups of salt I used to help the dye were still in the carpet. I spent about 20 minutes brushing as much salt out of it as I could and here's how it came out:
Close:
The color is kind of washed out as it is in direct sunlight, but it came out black. Not as completely dark as I wanted it, but way better than I anticipated after yesterday's disaster and seeing it this morning. It still needs one last good vacuuming done to get the rest of the salt out and some random leaves off of it.
Inbetween working on the carpet I decided to actually try and wrap one of the interior panels with the specialized stainless interior kit before I spent all of the time sanding everything. That way if it turned out like crap or I didn't like it all of my interior panels would still be usable. I had quite a few snags as you'll see below, but I have to say the results blew me away. It was a little tedious getting everything right and time consuming, but it was completely worth it.
I finished sanding the back edges of the panel and cleaned it off with some MEK / paper towels. I laid it out on the floor and cut a nice piece of ebony leather off with some extra space on the edges or so I thought...
DOHT 1. Too short.
DOHT 2. I laid the panel upside down when I went to cut it out. It ended up working for the passenger side kick panel, but I had to cut another template out.
DOHT 3. My younger brother came looking for me and decided that my roll of leather was a perfect place to leave his panda prints.
After cleaning the leather off I made a few extra cuts for other interior pieces out of my earlier miscut and set them aside. With one properly sized template cut out I finally got to work. The kit includes directions for most of the panels on how / what order to glue them down. Here is the start of the driver kick panel:
I had to use my heat gun a generous amount to stretch the fabric over turns to keep it from wrinkling up. Here is the top side completely set:
This part was extremely difficult to get right. The 90* angle right into the texturing was a battle. I honestly messed it completely up the first time and had to peal it back to start over. Here it is done correctly:
To put it lightly I think the wrap looks fantastic. To compare a stock 13 year old beat up panel to one wrapped isn't even a comparison of the same caliber. The wrapped piece blows the stocker out of the water. I still need to wrap the edges, poke some holes for the attachment screws, and the hood latch release, but I'm stoked. Seeing how my carpet turned out well and the interior panels turned out fantastic so far I'm pumped to get working on everything tomorrow even though I may not have too much time to get things done.
My only concern is that I may not have enough material because of all of my retard cuts. I really hope there is enough to get the sail and rear panels finished, but we'll see I guess.
03-25-2011, 08:13 PM
#225
Gotta say, the dye story made me laugh.. I especially liked the "Troll hands" part. I've seen that look a hundred times. I walked into taco bell one time soaked head to toe in ATF, i was solid red, after a T56 install without any type of jacking device, and the employees looked at me as if I was bigfoot. They were even more pissed when I paid cash 
03-28-2011, 12:40 AM
#226
Gotta say, the dye story made me laugh.. I especially liked the "Troll hands" part. I've seen that look a hundred times. I walked into taco bell one time soaked head to toe in ATF, i was solid red, after a T56 install without any type of jacking device, and the employees looked at me as if I was bigfoot. They were even more pissed when I paid cash
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I got a little bit of work done of Friday. I mostly just finished up wrapping the driver side kick panel, did a little work on my 95, and started sanding some other panels.
More picture talking:
Before I cut the hood latch opening and poked the holes for the fasteners.
These were the only two areas I wasn't super happy about. It still turned out fantastic though:
Wrapping the edges and the back was extremely difficult and time consuming.
Cutting the hood latch opening didn't turn out quite like I expected. When it is installed though you can't tell, but...
I wanted to snap a couple pictures of it in the car even though there isn't much else in there.
I plan on getting some more done tomorrow. Progress has been kind of slow as wrapping the panels has a lot of prep work and actually wrapping the panels is really time consuming.
03-28-2011, 10:46 PM
#227
I ordered a couple small things today; a gauge, and some more gauge angle rings. Like was mentioned above I've been working on researching parts so there may be some more ordering coming soon. The next couple things on my list are getting a 6 point roll bar, mini tubs finished, new seats, gauge overlays, and some LED stuff. All of which is being put on the back burner because I'm either waiting on responses from people or can't find what I need.
On a bright not the post man delivered one very Chinese package that was drop shipped from DDM tuning.
It is a 55W 880 kit for the fog lights. My memory isn't quite sure on the bulbs, but they should be 500K or so. They should be the same as the headlights, but it took so long for them to be delivered I don't remember. They do come with one really odd warning though:
I still need to either go to the junkyard, find someone selling them, or track down some sort of glass lensed fog light housing. The ones I bought a while ago were advertised as being from the years that had glass housings, but when they showed up they were very much plastic.
On a bright not the post man delivered one very Chinese package that was drop shipped from DDM tuning.
It is a 55W 880 kit for the fog lights. My memory isn't quite sure on the bulbs, but they should be 500K or so. They should be the same as the headlights, but it took so long for them to be delivered I don't remember. They do come with one really odd warning though:
I still need to either go to the junkyard, find someone selling them, or track down some sort of glass lensed fog light housing. The ones I bought a while ago were advertised as being from the years that had glass housings, but when they showed up they were very much plastic.
04-20-2011, 09:39 PM
#229
4/7/11
The A pillars will make you want to kill someone. Pre warn the people around you that you will be getting very angry over the next few hours.
I had to see what it looked like in the car…
More sanded panels ready to be wrapped.
The A pillars will make you want to kill someone. Pre warn the people around you that you will be getting very angry over the next few hours.
I had to see what it looked like in the car…
More sanded panels ready to be wrapped.
04-20-2011, 09:41 PM
#230
4/14/11
The A pillar panels are by far the largest pain in the *** in existence to wrap. Their convex figure refuses to agree with the material. When following the main contour down the panel it is a constant battle with attempting to stop the material from bunching up and wrinkling.
With the way the panel contours it pulls the material towards one side or the other. I had to fight it back towards the centerline of the panel as it was going to make the end too short to wrap the top of the panel.
Progress:
Finished:
6LE Bezel Wrapped, but not quite trimmed yet.
I’m still not sure on how I want to trim the rest of the radio bezel to fit the unit. There isn’t much room on the back to adhere the material to. It would almost be overlapping in some areas and I’m not sure if that’s what I’d want. If anyone has any advice or pictures on how they trimmed and wrapped the opening / rear of the panel I’m all ears. Here’s what I have so far.
The A pillar panels are by far the largest pain in the *** in existence to wrap. Their convex figure refuses to agree with the material. When following the main contour down the panel it is a constant battle with attempting to stop the material from bunching up and wrinkling.
With the way the panel contours it pulls the material towards one side or the other. I had to fight it back towards the centerline of the panel as it was going to make the end too short to wrap the top of the panel.
Progress:
Finished:
6LE Bezel Wrapped, but not quite trimmed yet.
I’m still not sure on how I want to trim the rest of the radio bezel to fit the unit. There isn’t much room on the back to adhere the material to. It would almost be overlapping in some areas and I’m not sure if that’s what I’d want. If anyone has any advice or pictures on how they trimmed and wrapped the opening / rear of the panel I’m all ears. Here’s what I have so far.
04-20-2011, 09:42 PM
#231
4/16/11
I finally devoted my whole morning and afternoon towards finishing this leather wrapping project and made some good progress. My goal was to finish all of the small pieces that I had to do. That didn’t come to fruition, but I did garner some steam towards feeling like I could get it done if I just sat down and did it.
All of the small panels:
Sanded:
Just as everyone else’s is, my center console lid is cracked:
I broke out some PVC plastic glue and with a Q tip did my best bonding job:
I started with the small panels that the rear of the T tops seal into. They were impossible to due in one piece without having to seam the material. Unfortunately, that left some visible white lines on the material where it was cut once installed.
That was all taken care of by my friend Mr. Black Marker.
Driver’s Side:
Both door panel switches:
I noticed that the charcoal door panels with the ebony accents look like garbage. I’m going to have to save up for some nice ebony door panels later on once I get the car running. Either that or figure out some way to make them match the rest of the interior. I thought about wrapping the whole door panel, but I’m not sure if I want to take on that kind of a task right now.
I’m going to work on the car a lot tomorrow and hopefully knock out most of these interior panels. My main issue now is that my 95 Camaro DD finally gave out on me. It made it to 174,988 miles and finally lost a head gasket in a traffic jam. A large truck full of trees decided to break down in the left lane on 95 North and completely **** me over. My radiator fan decided to give up the ghost and to take my engine along with it. I’m going to limp it to work and back until I can get something figured out, but I’m not too excited about the whole series of events and future prospects. The only minute bright side of the situation is that my 93 now has a donor for all of the parts missing from it.
I finally devoted my whole morning and afternoon towards finishing this leather wrapping project and made some good progress. My goal was to finish all of the small pieces that I had to do. That didn’t come to fruition, but I did garner some steam towards feeling like I could get it done if I just sat down and did it.
All of the small panels:
Sanded:
Just as everyone else’s is, my center console lid is cracked:
I broke out some PVC plastic glue and with a Q tip did my best bonding job:
I started with the small panels that the rear of the T tops seal into. They were impossible to due in one piece without having to seam the material. Unfortunately, that left some visible white lines on the material where it was cut once installed.
That was all taken care of by my friend Mr. Black Marker.
Driver’s Side:
Both door panel switches:
I noticed that the charcoal door panels with the ebony accents look like garbage. I’m going to have to save up for some nice ebony door panels later on once I get the car running. Either that or figure out some way to make them match the rest of the interior. I thought about wrapping the whole door panel, but I’m not sure if I want to take on that kind of a task right now.
I’m going to work on the car a lot tomorrow and hopefully knock out most of these interior panels. My main issue now is that my 95 Camaro DD finally gave out on me. It made it to 174,988 miles and finally lost a head gasket in a traffic jam. A large truck full of trees decided to break down in the left lane on 95 North and completely **** me over. My radiator fan decided to give up the ghost and to take my engine along with it. I’m going to limp it to work and back until I can get something figured out, but I’m not too excited about the whole series of events and future prospects. The only minute bright side of the situation is that my 93 now has a donor for all of the parts missing from it.
04-23-2011, 04:34 AM
#232
Here are the pictures from Thursday. I mostly did a really crappy job of wrapping the center console lid. It was a pain in the *** with all of the outward spreading contours. Thankfully, the bottom of the lid will only be seen by myself and most of it is covered.
Here's the bottom wrapped and looking like garbage:
With the cover back on it looking a little better:
Installed:
There's those two slight wrinkles in the back, but they are out of sight fromt both the driver and passenger seats so it doesn't matter too much.
This was honestly the most difficult panel I've wrapped so far. The A pillars sucked, but at least I could got them right after spending a ton of time on them. This piece was basically impossible to get 100% right so I just settled with the way it ended up as I knew it wasn't going to get any better.
Here's the bottom wrapped and looking like garbage:
With the cover back on it looking a little better:
Installed:
There's those two slight wrinkles in the back, but they are out of sight fromt both the driver and passenger seats so it doesn't matter too much.
This was honestly the most difficult panel I've wrapped so far. The A pillars sucked, but at least I could got them right after spending a ton of time on them. This piece was basically impossible to get 100% right so I just settled with the way it ended up as I knew it wasn't going to get any better.
07-09-2011, 01:27 PM
#233
Support the build and get some parts at a great price. I finally made it all the way through my garage and am ready to make some space: https://ls1tech.com/forums/parts-cla...-cleanout.html
08-24-2011, 09:15 PM
#236
^ Thanks for the kudos guys. I'm very slowly getting there.
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This may be old news and honestly it is not much in regards to directly working on the car. Most of what I've been working on now has been going through my garage, cleaning things, creating space, and attempting to sell everything not pertinent towards getting my car running.
I added a few new items to my for sale thread the other night and should be adding a lot of lab equipment as soon as I can finish my inventory. Here's a link to the thread: https://ls1tech.com/forums/parts-cla...-cleanout.html
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7-18-11
I was working on finishing off the interior panels. I got my roommate to help me out some with the prep work and cutting some of the openings in the panels. We mowed out a good amount of work in a few hours. It was nice having some help.
Pics:
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This may be old news and honestly it is not much in regards to directly working on the car. Most of what I've been working on now has been going through my garage, cleaning things, creating space, and attempting to sell everything not pertinent towards getting my car running.
I added a few new items to my for sale thread the other night and should be adding a lot of lab equipment as soon as I can finish my inventory. Here's a link to the thread: https://ls1tech.com/forums/parts-cla...-cleanout.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7-18-11
I was working on finishing off the interior panels. I got my roommate to help me out some with the prep work and cutting some of the openings in the panels. We mowed out a good amount of work in a few hours. It was nice having some help.
Pics:
08-24-2011, 09:21 PM
#237
7-19-11
I work from 6am-3pm ish about 4-5 days a week. I get up at 5am so by the time I get home I am usually pretty wrecked. Over the past month I've been trying to not take a nap in the afternoon and get something done in regards to working on my car or cleaning out my garage. Up to this point it has been going pretty well.
I work from 6am-3pm ish about 4-5 days a week. I get up at 5am so by the time I get home I am usually pretty wrecked. Over the past month I've been trying to not take a nap in the afternoon and get something done in regards to working on my car or cleaning out my garage. Up to this point it has been going pretty well.
