I’m out of town on business right now so I won’t be doing anything to the car till tomorrow night. I’ve got a ton of ideas running around in my head and since I’m chillin’ in my hotel room I decided to put write some of them out. I have a couple of goals for the interior, mostly it’s to get rid of the blue, but I also want to see if I can make it look a little more modern as well. Here’s the list of what I’m thinking I’ll do in this project (this is mostly for me).
AC Repair: There’s something behind my glove box that sounds like a cat being slaughtered when I turn on the window defogger. It also smells like burning plastic. I haven’t looked through the manual enough to know what this is, but something clearly needs to get fixed.
Recaro SE Seats: I love these seats. They don’t make them anymore so I’ve hung onto them. They’re a great daily driver seat because they have good side bolstering for the upper body but not so much on the lower body that you smash your boys on the way to work. I’ll probably use the OEM brackets and weld a few pieces of steel to them to mount the seats. From the searching I’ve done on here it doesn’t sound like most of the ones out there fit right.
Carbon Fiber Shifter Surround: I know how to work with CF and the area is relatively flat. The OEM piece is a little bulky for what it does so I want to make something to hold down the shift boot that doesn’t look like crap. I’m not going to cover the entire shifter plastic bit, I’m just going to do a ½” thick ring.
Seats Belts: You can’t recolor seatbelts. I’ve completely struck out on finding a set off of a wrecked MR2 and new ones are $150 each. Yeah, that’s not happening. I don’t know if I’ll do a harness bar/harnesses or if I’ll just try and find a belt off a different car that will do the job. Once I get the OEM belts out I’ll hit the junk yard. Hopefully Subaru belts will do it because I’ve “got the hookup” on local salvage.
Custom Center Console: Basically I’m going to sand down/paint the interior plastics for the center console and the gauge shroud till they look like black glass. I’m also going to put in a few integrated gauge slots on the top side of where the OEM deck sits now. I did this on the Subaru, which also had a super huge OEM deck.
Side door handles: Most modern looking cars have these. Think S2000. They run vertical to the door, and attach the arm rest to the top of the door. The car currently has these stupid cup things like on my Subaru. I have no idea how I’m going to construct these yet because they’re dependent upon a solid mounting surface. We’ll see what’s there when I get the door torn apart.
Door inserts: The part that right now is a super awesome blue cloth is going to get recovered with black leather and red stitching.
Cupholder: I’m thinking I’ll put these either in the door – just past the pocket – or in the center console where the ashtray is. I don’t smoke and I don’t keep change in there so it’s useless to me. The tray goes deep enough to lead me to believe there’s enough vertical space for at least a 12oz soda can sized cupholder.
iPhone Holster: Depending on what I do on the cupholders this will probably go near the ashtray.
Aluminum window handles: I like the roll-down windows but the actual handles are atrocious. I’ve got a bunch of spare aluminum laying around from old projects so I’ll cut/polish some up and create a mount to attach it to the window mechanism.
Steering wheel: I bought one off of eBay with a quick release. Normally I’d never do this because of the airbag but with good aftermarket seats and a strong chance I actually go with a belt harness I decided to buy one.
Stereo/Speakers: I put in an order at Crutchfield for a deck and some 6.5/4” replacement speakers. Nothing special – I’m not an audiophile.
Re-carpet: Depending on how it looks/smells once I’ve pulled it out, I’ll either just paint the carpet or get some material and cut up a new one. I also got some floor mats from Twosrus.com
Clean up the HVAC controls: A few buttons are completely worn down to the point where they’re transparent. I’ll need to paint them and find some appropriate stickers.
Paint everything else black: Self explanatory.