Custom Interior Parts
!! UPDATED !!
Molded Guage Pod
I recently added a digital Air/Fuel Ratio Guage.
Old
New
To start this project, I took the center vent from my '93 Laser and cut out the actual vents themselves, maintaining the framework and mounting clips. By doing this, I am able to simple 'snap' the new gauge pod into and out of place whenever I may need to do so.
What I was left with was a large open rectangle. I then laid my angle gauge bezels on top of the vent piece, and got them to the correct angle that they needed to be. I secured them into place with superglue.
I then dremeled out the center bar that controls the open/close mechanism. (you may wish to do that before fitting in your gauge bezels) After this was complete, I cut some 1/8" PVC plastic into pieces of the correct size & shape, and laid those in to fill the gaps. Again, superglue was used to hold them into place.
From this point on, it is fairly simple really. I turned it over and drizzled some resin onto the back of the whole piece to help secure all the pieces together. Once that was dry, I simply used some Rage Gold body filler on the front of the pod to smooth it all out. It took a good deal of hand sanding, and relaying filler a couple of times to get it to the exact shape, contour, and smoothness that I desired.
Sorry I don't have any pictures during the body filler stages, I must have misplaced them. It is fairly straightforward though.
Then, I primed it, scuffed it smooth again, and cleaned it. I chose to paint mine gloss black to match some other interior pieces in my car, but I think next time I'll go satin black, the gloss looks nice, but shows fingerprints too damn much. Once they were snapped into place, they fit perfectly, and looked damn good too!!
UPDATED!!!
I have since changed the gauge pod and added my digital
Air/Fuel Ratio gauge... molded in of course!
Here are the pictures from building that:
I started off by scuffing the entire piece, but making sure to do a good job
around where my
addition was going to go. Then I made a 3/4" deep rectangle from PVC plastic,
and super glued it into place.
From there, I simply used Rage Gold body filler to smooth it out.
To help insure that it would be secure, I drilled some holes in the plastic
around my addition
and smushed the body filler through the holes, to create a "Grommet-Like"
adhesion once it dried.
Ready for Prime & Paint. Its actually already in the car, just need to get those
pics up here.
MMMmmm, old school Snoop Dogg... gotta love it!
Old pics
Notice the radio bezel was done in a similar manner
Notice they both have their own independent angle towards the drivers seat
The next two didn't turn out good, but you get the idea. with the monitor folded shut, the unit is pretty much flush mounted in the enclosure. it is a Metra 99-3301 kit, very nice for flush mounting head units. The monitor sticks out a bit further than usual because it has to flip upwards. But if you had a regular CD player in there, it would be totally flush. Also with this kit... no need for even the trim ring, it just looks killer!
Please excuse the fingerprint smudges... they're hard to keep
clean!
Custom Radio Bezel
(Old Version)
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