meissen

Red Alert's the name of my car. If you don't know me from previous posts around the boards, I enjoy customizing and having my car stand out from the "purist" crowd. So, if purist is your deal, that's awesome, but don't flame.

Lastly, a little disclaimer, the interior isn't 100% finished, I still have tucking in to do with the brand new carpet, kick panels to install, the underdash piece that goes in the footwell area on the passenger side (and hence hiding the hanging wires), install the dash pad and a-pillars, etc. This is just a sneak peak at the progress that my interior has taken in the past 6 months.

Before:


After:

68z28

Little Over the top for me(I guess I am a purist), but I can really see the hardwork gone into that car. That Headunit screen is awesome though!!. What did you use for the dash paint, it almost looks like fiberglass.

danhr

I've been waiting for these ever since you start posting about how you did your dash. Looks nice. New carpet doesn't clash everything like the you old one did. I like how you strayed from the red vents, Looks cleaner no IMO. Where did you get the carpet btw, www.f-bodycarpet.com? Are you sticking with the stock shifter handle/parking break handle? They kind of stand out like a sore thumb.

Keep up the good work

CamaroCasanova

Hey to make the carpet form/fit better you can buy a heat gun from harbor freight/lowe's whatever and heat up the backside and it will form to the car since I noticed you are not done putting it back together. TV's are cool

Honda Hunter

Details on what you used and what needs to be done to make this work. I read in the general tech section of a guy who plans to control EVERYTHING from windows, alarm, etc on his touch screen, oh yeay including a password anti start. The possobilities are endless. My intrest has peaked 10 fold.

Heatmaker

I don't knwo about the burgandy carpet... kind of reminds me of those mid 80's pontiacs... black would bring things out much better.

meissen

68z28 - S'all good buddy, y'know how I am. It's actually just sanded down real smooth and then Duplicolor exterior spraypaint with Duplicolor Top Coat Clear Coat over it. Nothing fancy, all in the spraycans. In all honesty, if I had more money and the ability, I would've done a spraygun instead as I have a feeling it would've been much cheaper. I went through a LOT of cans of paint getting each piece the way I wanted it before it was ready for install.

danhr - The carpet was from stockinteriors.com, the quality isn't bad. Price was right too, I think it was just under 200 shipped, but I'm not positive as my dad bought it for me for christmas. Definitely planning on swapping out the shift **** and the e-brake. I actually still have the entire center console to redo. The shiftplate is the only thing that will stay unchanged, but I have to redo the carbon fiber on the console lid, and smooth and repaint the center console. You'd be surprised how hard it is to paint those vents back to match the piece that's around it! It was a bia to get it to adhere because sanding those parts are so hard to do.

CamaroCasanova - Thanks for the tip! I wish I had that tip back when I first put the carpet in! Definitely not a one person job lol. So far it all fits in there pretty good, I just need to install the kick panels and that should finish it all up, but they're both setting right now, painted them yesterday morning but I want to give them a good 24 hours before I install just to make sure it's dry lol.

Honda Hunter - For the carPC it's literally just a PC. I used a Via Epia Mini-ITX motherboard because they're so small -- only 7" square. It fits perfectly inside that bezel. A regular HDD (although some use laptop ones because supposedly they're made to be more "portable" with the laptop?), memory, a touchscreen [Lilliput and Xenarc are the two popular brands to use for this application] and a power supply. For the power supply, I used an Opus Solutions 150w supply... it's specifically made for use in a vehicle and runs off 12v. It's a power supply, regulator, and will take care of bootup and shutdown of the PC automatically with the ignition wire. 12v wire to the battery, 12v wire to a switched source (I used the fuse line for my radio since it's only on when the car is on or in ACC... or if the car is off but you haven't opened the doors yet) and then ground. When the 12v switched source is on, it sends the signal to the power switch on the mobo to boot up. When the 12v switched loses power [car turns off, door opened] then the powersupply waits 10 seconds and then sends the signal to the power button on the mobo and it goes into hibernation mode. Aside from that, when you get into controlling everything via the carPC, I'm guessing he's going to use a serial connection to do it all, but I'm not too sure on how to do all that, though I know 100% that the capabilities are only as endless as the capabilities of what you can plug into the computer and whether or not you can find software to do what you want. I was actually just thinking to myself earlier that it'd be nice to have a button on the carPC to open my garage door instead of having the opener itself.

Heatmaker - Yeah, it was definitely a tough decision to make, trust me. I went back and forth for quite awhile. The final decision though was worth it, in my opinion. I think the black would've made the red stand out way too much, whereas the burgandy/red carpet makes it somewhat look normal. My brother used to have a '77 corvette, all red interior. It was the inspiration for going the route I went. I would've done red on top, but feared it would've been too much, the half and half kinda makes it look cool and yet not as overboard as it could be.

Thanks for all the comments guys, I'm really happy that it's going over well so far, normally when I post these pictures I almost expect to get flamed for doing something different.

Projects still in the works:
-Custom rear "Berger" panel -- just not painted black
-Custom fiberglass headliner with headunit's faceplate molded in
-Sanding and smoothing the entire backhalf of the car, including center console
-Rear seat sub rack to hold my subs and amp

Got a lot of work ahead of me.

thesoundandthefury

I noticed you said that you were going to redo the carbon fiber on your center console. Well check this out:



This is a form of carbon fiber called "Hexcel Texalium." It's basically carbon fiber that has had each individual strand in the weave coated in aluminum. If you used this as a base, you then used this:



...with some experimentation you could make your carbon fiber center console match the color of your lower dash. Just an idea.

http://www.robotmarketplace.com/mark...rbonfiber.html
http://www.alsacorp.com/products/can...candy_show.htm

TechCam97

I like it! Reminds me of the third gen interiors that were red and black, pretty slick! It's not all that uncommon a thing to do in older F-Bodies, I'll be doing something similar in my 81 Formula (Black dash/console with Camel Tan carpets/seats/ect). Looks good!

meissen

Thanks! I truely was going for that oldschool look with the two tones.

I like the looks of the CF, so I'll be keeping it unpainted, but I appreciate the suggestion -- for those that don't like the looks of the CF but like the strength, that's definitely cool. It's pretty easy to cover an interior piece with carbon fiber. Just scuff it up so the weave has something to "snag" on (even though you don't snag it), spray the 3m adhesive spray on it, lay the carbon fiber on it and wrap it, fix any imperfections with the weave using a toothpick, and then soak resin ontop of it. Hardest part is getting the weave to stay perfect and getting the resin to be smooth afterwards.

thesoundandthefury

FYI: the pic showing all of those colored shapes is a demo pic for tinted clearcoat. The idea here with the Hexcel Texalium is to have a neutral color underneath that will "shine" through the clearcoat,(polished aluminum), but the end result being that after the clearcoat is applied it will look like red carbon fiber. (As in, the "fiber" part will still show up.) It's a way to have the carbon fiber look AND blend with the rest of the interior.

meissen

OHHHHH... I didn't get that part, I was just seeing a candy painted object lol.

red blur

I will say that I never liked your interior. I've never posted about it, I don't like to bash on hard work. But this.....

I like. It gives an old school look to it. It is not overboard, that would be having contrasting colors throughout the two major sections of the dash. I have told my wife several times that I wish we had a central line running from door to door like many exotics and german cars have. The new Camaro has an orange line that runs around. It is just classy.

I have always thought you did quality work, just not my style of work. Only things that really jump out at me that look cheesy would be the steering wheel (looks two different colors in the pics), the AC panel should be gloss black with just ***** coming out or true CF (the one in there degrades your hard work with a cheap/free overlay), shifter **** pedals and e-brake handle look pretty worn.

I know you are not done yet, those are just things I would change for sure. My guess--those are already on your list. Overall--I really like the change! Congrats!

Jeremy

meissen

Thanks for the input, Jeremy! I definitely appreciate hearing that all the work that I've done over the past 4 months has changed people's opinions on my interior. I really appreciate that. All of what you've described definitely jump out at me on things I have to work on, it's easy to do the big things and then see the little things that still need the work now that the big stuff is out of the way. I'm actually planning on doing an automatic -> manual shift **** adapter so that I can put whatever **** I want on it, I just don't like the looks of most of the aftermarket automatic *****, and I think sticking with a new, stock **** just might not be as great of a decision as getting a custom **** for the custom interior. Thanks for the input, though!

6LITEREATER

To be honest I agree, before it was over the top AND cheap looking. You are looking good now though!

The red and black dash looks REALLY nice! I would continue the red into the console, but that's just me.

I never was a fan of the flame overlays and think red gauge faces (like the GTO has) would look killer and really match the hard work you put into your car.

Ditch the cheap seatcovers for a set of these:



http://www.arizenracingsports.com/pa...zen/CTGY/Seats

Two-tone your leather steering wheel, and maybe even do a stock shift **** (or Impala t-handle) in red leather with a matching e-brake and that would set it all off and tie it all in.

Finally, it may be the pics but the red carpet looks like spray painted grey. It just doesn't look RED for some reason...

Also, did you carry the red over to the door panels? That would be sweet..

Regardless of my meaningless opinions you do GREAT work and have and outstandingly UNIQUE car (VERY NICE WORK ON THE CAR PC)!!!!!!!!