This was the NAUGHTY CORNER

I think that paint will stick to the vinyl better than ali - MNSHO

Creeping along slowly with my interior. I decided I need to use the original fascia piece and that it just needed cutting down a bit. Actually it slots in very nicely and I'll just need to do some creative bodgery to elegantly conceal the join between the old cut off dash in my car and the substitute cut off piece I'm replacing it with.

I also just unscrewed the two massive slabs of timber that have been housing the stereo speakers on the outer walls of the foot wells, where they made an already cramped driver's footwell even more so because the timber + speaker front jutted out a good three inches, maybe more, into the footwell.

Between them they weigh about 4 tonnes, so I've just added about 30BHP per tonne to my car bringing it up to an estimated 690BHP now.



I also just made as precise a cardboard template as I am able to, so that as soon as the sheet material arrives I can start to hack out a fully enclosed interior sub-dash console and footwell wall thingy.

I'm going to have to improvise as I go as the transmission tunnel is a wobbly wad of rattle trap insulation which I don't wish to remove, and there are a few mystery, off-true, level-steps between the tunnel and the area where the dash fascia piece needs to go.

There's two months until RRG, and I'm starting to feel panicky about whether I will get everything done that I want to get done (which is hardly anything by anyone else's standards) or whether I'm going to end up skipping bits I'd really like to do in order to have something that just looks a bit better but doesn't have the switches and things I want in place, and doesn't have some smaller, lighter speakers embedded in the walls of each footwell.

I think the next task before I do the interior properly ought to be the windscreen rubber replacement. Then when I've done that I can decide what to do to finish the sunroof delete, and then I can focus everything else on making a halfway decent interior.

Paintwork is going to have to grumble on as the mess that it is for this year.

Ehhh hahaha, it's not about the crowds for me. Nobody is going to have the slightest bit of interest in my old jalopy... it's actually more of a self-imposed deadline to incentivise me to get to a certain point with the car after a very long, inactive winter of doing almost nothing to the car at all. More of an excuse to crack on and make progress.

Just been reading about fibreglass repairs on a boat website. Seems to be a lot less stressful on a boat hull... they just slap it on and rub it down and bingo... there it is.

I guess boat owners are less precious about the perfection of the hull, especially if it sits below the water line covered in barnacles.

I did make me think I should ultimately plan to glass my hole in one day though. I also have a few cracks in the roof paint which look like they might be swelling a tad after a long wet winter... which is what sent me off to the boat sites in the first place.

I should stop being such a wuss and enjoy the ability to do my own bodywork without having to shape metal and weld.

Maybe that will be my summer mission, post RRGoodwood.

Finally had an invoice paid. Annoyingly my days are getting filled up with requests for meetings which mean I have some materials arriving to continue working on my car, and now I don't have very many days coming up where I can do it.

Always the way.



On cheeky little mini-step forward though. I have a lot of useless holes in the piece of fascia I'm now going to use. But I can repurpose a few things in order to fill them. The big rectangular hole in the centre – which I assume would once have housed a couple of sliding levers – can be used as a dropdown/lift up panel to a small compartment.

So I've just used a bit of offcut to try and size up what would be needed there.

The roundel to the left will be a flick switch and the roundel to the right will be a small light.

If done properly, maybe with a piece of metal that has some small louvres cut into it just for a bit of fancy-fancy, I think this could work as a tiny cubby hole...



(obviously done much tidier than that when I do it properly ^... hopefully)

Hahaha WOAH there fella.... I'm actually terrified of filling a hole. Maybe one day I'll have made enough progress that I make a fibreglass console but thats a long way off and frankly this isn't the car for that kind of involvement. A bit of half-decent bodgery will suffice here I think. My target for the interior is merely to end up looking a little bit better than the gaping hole plastered in rattletrap that I currently have.

NOBODY HAS COMMENTED!

THAT'S IT!

I'M QUITTING!

(^ Parody post.)

Don’t let the door hit the back of your fat head on the way out. Drama llama. **






** Parody riposte. 😉

ja, off you go then, need a lift?

oh that vid made me laugh thank you .,if you were closer i would have those speakers in a shot for the back of my 95 astra estate !