4/22/03
Ferrari Upholstery VII

Work continues on my upholstery. Although I’ve been very busy carving latex foam, it’s not exactly the most exciting thing to talk about, so I’m taking a break from my foam to do some work that’s more gratifying!

I continued work on the transmission cover by gluing some leather to the edges of the cover. Most of these areas will be covered by the main cover, but any part that peeks through needs to be dressed with leather. Snaps also had to be lined up for the cover, and screwed into the aluminum. It’s slow going with a lot of fitting, checking, gluing, and cutting, especially for an amateur!

Seeing the progress I was making on the transmission cover, Frank began sizing the leather for the cover. Hopefully, he’ll have this cover done in a couple of days so I can drive my Ferrari again. I haven’t been able drive the 330 America without the transmission tunnel because I’m not daring enough to drive the car unprotected from the spinning drive shaft inches away from my right elbow!

Work also continued on the door panels. With one panel left intact, we studied how it was put together. The arrows show two additional strips of masonite that trim out the door panel. These two pieces were cut out of the left over masonite I had from the 4X8 sheet I bought a couple of weeks ago.

I used a table saw at the shop to cut straight the lines and beveled the edges of some of the pieces with a disc sander to match the original profiles. Once the shape and profiles were matched, I transferred all the required holes from the original door panels to the new ones. These included holes for the arm rest pad, and the mounting holes that attach the panel to the door. Using a drill press made the drilling a little faster, but going slowly was my way of not making any mistakes!

The next step was to fit and glue foam and leather to the door panel. Although this picture doesn’t show it very well, there is a thin layer of foam in the center of the panel. The edges remain foam free so the edge pieces (previous picture) can sit flush with the panel. The edge pieces will get foam and leather for the next step.

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