9/15/04
Tweaking the Interior

Tweaking the interior sound so innocuous, but what it really involved was taking practically the whole interior our of the car! In order to fix the little problems that keep this car from passing Frank’s approval, I had to do it, so out came the front seats, rear seats,  transmission tunnel, and and rear panels.

Within minutes, I had undone what I managed to take months to build, but I had plenty of practice at getting this all back together!

Frank realized the best way to eliminate some of the wrinkling of the leather was to add some more padding. The jute backing was not giving me enough spring to stretch the leather out.

After adding about 1/2 inch of foam to the whole transmission cover, the leather cover smoothed out. I’m not sure I like the quilted look of the snaps, so I’m going to install spacers under the male snaps to bring them out a little bit, but it’s definitely an improvement from before.

Here’s the before pictures with the wrinkles.

While Frank was working on the transmission tunnel, I worked on the rear wheel well covers. The problems back here have to do with gaps that Frank and I wanted to get rid of. Not only are the two that are highlighted with the arrows annoying, but the bottom of this cover shows a huge gap between it and the seat cushion! I had this gap at both seats, so there was a lot of work to do.

To get to these covers, most of the rear interior has to be removed. I used 1/2 foam sheets to build up the areas that needed height, and checked the area by trial fitting the side panel and the seat alternately until I was happy. It was tricky to get the right thickness in the panel, all the while preserving he curve of the wheel well.

With everything reinstalled, the seat cushion fits nice and snug with the wheel well cover…

…and the gaps are gone from the panel.

At the end of the day, I still needed to install my front seats, but now Frank and I are pretty satisfied with the details!

Wanting to complete something quick on my car, I decided to install the jack plugs I got from Parker Hall. Looking at the postmark on the box, these plugs have been waiting for over a year to be installed! 

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