More interior work done

[Belair-o]

Progress! Good job, rock and roll!

[chevynut]

Trying to move forward with the interior now that the headliner is finished. With the padding that's going to be put on the front of the seat bases, and the large 3" overhang, I decided to take 1/2" off the front. It's not a big difference, but I think it will look better with the valence underneath the seats.

Early this week I went down to Denver to discuss thread size and color with Ron at Auto Weave. I didn't want to send samples back and forth so it made more sense to me to go there since we need to nail this down so Larry can do the padded dash. Larry had talked to Ron and told me they found a color called "Chinese Rust" that was the closest match to the tan leather that they could find in the larger size thread. Larry told me that he uses 138 thread and knowing that he doesn't like contrasting decorative thread I suspected it wasn't big enough for my tastes. I told him I probably wanted a larger thread. When I went to see Ron he had a sample of charcoal leather sewn with Chinese Rust 270 thread and another with 138 kind of a taupe color. This is all done with 4 stitches per inch. I think the rust color would pretty much disappear in the 138 size. Ron didn't have any of the tan leather, which Larry told me he'd take to him so we couldn't really see what it looked like on that.

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We decided that the color should work good with the tan leather and we all agreed that the 270 thread is probably too big for what I want. I'm not even sure why they used that size for a sample because I didn't ask for it. Ron said the 270 thread is easy to snag and he doesn't recommend it for seats. I mentioned a 210 thread and Ron said he's never heard of it. I pulled it up on my phone in Chinese Rust and the thread thickness is about halfway between the 138 and the 270.

I'm still unsure about what to do. Thread colors are pretty limited in the larger thread sizes. I've been focusing on the charcoal dash so much that I didn't think about the contrasting thread on my seats, which will be mostly tan with charcoal inserts. I don't know if it makes sense to use charcoal contrast thread on the seat seams or not. Usually contrast threads are lighter color than the leather. I could go with a light tan that shows up on both colors of leather but I'm still thinking about it. I have other charcoal leather areas that we could put decorative thread on at the seams, or create seams to give some detail to the interior.

I'm also looking at the rest of the interior and I wanted to use some carbon fiber accents in the car. I saw some carbon fiber work at SEMA where they used regular charcoal fiber cloth and tinted the epoxy different colors. This is an all carbon fiber 69 Camaro body.

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I ran across some orange hybrid cloth that uses carbon fiber and aramid (Kevlar) fiber to give a pretty unique look. I want to cover the wood on my door spears so I need to think about how to do that. The orange would complement the car color and the color of the thread. But the regular gray carbon fiber would also go well with my charcoal leather. Decisions, decisions....

[WagonCrazy]

This is such a personal taste/choice decision that I don't feel compelled to give my opinion. I think you are miles ahead of me on this anyway. Keep on with it Laszlo!

[chevynut]

Thanks Paul. I know this is a personal taste thing and I'm trying to visualize how it looks before I do it. I'm fairly good at that but it's a scary thing to commit to something you'll have to live with "forever". That's why I've been asking for stitch samples. The problem is Larry keeps dropping the ball on this stuff. He should have gotten me stitch samples on both colors of leather with a couple of different thread sizes and colors so we could get past this quickly. I've been asking him for some samples for months.

[chevynut]

While waiting for Larry to come over to work on the foam on the rear seats, I removed the armrests and added two stiffeners to the backside. one stiffener is at the top where a person's arm would lay, and another one is on the side where the seat foam will push against it. The armrests are made of aluminum but they flexed quite a bit and the stiffeners made of 1/16" x 3/4" aluminum angle really stiffened them up.

I also put a strip of neoprene foam on the chrome liftgate hinge cover and got it installed. This allowed me to leave the rivets intact while making a nice-looking closed gap between the cover and the body.

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I have to design the cargo area panels and figure out how to cover the tubs. In retrospect, I wish I'd not made the tubs as wide as I did. I only needed about 1-1 1/2" but I brought them all the way in to the frame rails. I was originally planning to cover the tubs with leather or carpet, but not we're going to enclose them. I also have to remove the rear structure again and raise the bottom 1/4" because Larry wants carpet and pad under it. I originally only planned for carpet.

I'm still working on the details of the color scheme for the interior.

[WagonCrazy]

Didn't you have a battery access door cut into the rear passenger inner fender? How will you deal with that if you enclose the inner fender?

[chevynut]

Didn't you have a battery access door cut into the rear passenger inner fender? How will you deal with that if you enclose the inner fender?

No, my battery is a drop-down stainless box behind the rear tire.

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[chevynut]

I got back from Montana almost two weeks ago and texted Larry when I was driving home to let him know. I heard nothing in reply so I texted him again 4 days later and asked when he wanted to come work on the rear seat foam. He replied that he'd be over "sometime next week". A week later he finally showed up. He hasn't done a thing in 6 weeks except come over for less than an hour a month ago to tell me what clearances he wanted around the seat boards.

Anyhow, he took the seat boards and I told him I needed them back finished with foam so I can contour the rear of the console to match. I'm heading to our place in Texas on the 4th for a week and I hope he gets it done before I leave, but I'm not holding my breath. He still has several weeks of work on his shop and his telling me last August that a June 1 completion "shouldn't be a problem" seems to be a problem now. Even with Ron doing the seats the rest of the interior needs work. If push comes to shove I will have Ron do some more of it and bill Larry. If he doesn't like that I'll fire him and have Ron finish the car.

I've been working on doing the final riveting on the front part of the console. It's been held together for a long time with Clecos. I also added some detail to the console trim pieces to complement the door spears. They will be covered with leather.

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[Belair-o]

Very cool custom work you are designing and building!

[567chevys]

Very Nice work Laszlo ,

Should be a very bad ass 56 Mad when you get it done

Sid

[chevynut]

Thanks guys.

I really think with all the work I've done on this interior that I'd be way better off having Larry pay me what he owes me and get the interior done elsewhere. The shop doing my seats said they did a similar Nomad interior and it was 400 hours at I think $80 per hour. That's $32K for building and fabbing everything in the car. I've done 80% of the door and side panels, I've done 75% of the console, and all the rear seat, front seat brackets, dash valence, and 25% of the cargo area. I'm guessing there's about half left or 200 hours. That's only $16K and Larry owes me a lot more than that. If he doesn't deliver my foamed seat panels before I leave for TX I'm finished with him. It'll only be 8 weeks until June 1 by then and at the rate he's (not) working it won't be done for many months.

I've been working on the front console outside the car. There's tons of little details like adding PEMs for screws and riveting everything together. I had to make some pieces to simulate the base that's still in the car and won't come back out. It's a lot easier and cleaner to work on the console out of the car.

I'm trying to design the top covers now. I machined a slot under the trim piece below my stereo to capture the panel, then I need to split the panel in front of the shifter to be able to get to my fuse panel and control modules without removing the entire panel with the shifter boot. I formed a 3/16"x1/2" stainess bar on my tube bender so it wouldn't just be a boring straight piece of trim. This is where I plan to split the panel. Access would be by removing 3 screws. I'll do something similar behind the console box.

For the shifter boot design I'm thinking about complementing the door handles, lights, and the A/C vents by making it oval too. The boot is offset to the driver's side because the shifter is offset. The light sensor bezel for the Dakota Digital automatic headlights is oval and it's almost done. It will go on the leather dash near the windshield. Here's the 3D rendering of it.

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I need to have Larry, or whoever is eventually doing the leatherwork, add a little foam to the console lid to make it fit the console a little better. The three hole piece is something Sid laser cut for me many years ago and it's for my window switches and door locks. I'll weld some threaded studs to the plate and epoxy it to the bottom of the cover to attach the switches. That's the way I attached the switches to the valence. The black line is where I think I want a seam stitched to add some detail so it's not so boring...ideas would be welcome. Still not sure what color leather I'm going to use on the console.

By the way, Sid also laser cut the aluminum top plate that holds the lid. Thanks Sid!!!

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[chevynut]

Here's the whole console with the valence pieces in place before I made the latest changes. Notice the rear console is still only roughed out....that's why I'm waiting for Larry to bring the seat boards back with foam on them.

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[chevynut]

The boot is offset to the driver's side because the shifter is offset.

I just realized that the T56 shifter is actually centered over the tailshaft. I now remember taking the Hurst Billet Plus T56 shifter and rotating the internal lever 180 degrees to put the splines/grooves on the opposite side so the stick mounts on the opposite side. The shifter stick is 10" long and it is straight but bent sideways on the bottom. My intention at the time was to move the shifter stick closer to the driver's side. I may have to re-visit that and see if I can or want to center it better.

[chevynut]

Working on colors. I printed out some pics I have in monochrome and used colored pencils to give me an idea what the upholstery will look like when done. I can visualize some of this but it helps to see it on paper. Good thing I paid attention in kindergarten.

Here's the door. The area above the armrest with the dots is perforated tan leather. The dark areas are charcoal, but I don't know if I'm using carpet or leather at the very bottom of the door.

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Here's the entire side of the interior drawn before i built it.

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Here's the cargo area plan with the cover on. Still haven't built much there except the speaker area.

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Here's two options I'm considering for the console. I originally planned for the valence to be charcoal along with the "spears" that go down the top of the console. Then the console itself would be tan, with the console lid two-tone with charcoal on the sides. After seeing it, I was concerned about too much charcoal in the dash area since the top of the dash is charcoal leather, and the dash is painted charcoal. So I tried making the valence and the spears tan, with the console charcoal and the lid two-tone but charcoal on top and tan on the sides. The charcoal top would go well with carbon fiber on the top of the console. If I use orange carbon fiber the tan may be better there. The tan valence also flows better with the tan on the doors and probably the kick panels.

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[Belair-o]

Chevynut,
Clever and helpful idea to colorize the pics!
Thanks, Doug