Finished.........FINALLY!!!

Sept 12, 2007

OK...Here it is.... It's not what I had in mind when I took the car in, but it's logical that the shop couldn't give me the curved fancy woodwork I was planning on....they do not have the woodworking tools necessary for that.  That's not what they do.  That fact never occured to me....I guess I though the guy building it would do that part at home, but he doesn't have belt sanders and jointers, etc, either. It just isn't what he does.  It didn't help that I was 800 miles away during the time the basic designing was being done.  It took me a couple of days to get it in my mind after I first saw it, but the quality is there, and it looks good to me after I shifted my brain.  It has everything I wanted...it just doesn't 'flow' like I had in mind.  But who said the interior of a SHO had to 'flow'?   The factory instrument panel doesn't flow....it FUNCTIONS.  This console does that, and it looks good, too. I like it.  That's what counts.

Sorry about the stuff on the floor....as soon as it came home, I needed to do something else, for the rest of the day.  We're about to become the US terminal for a train of visitors from the two Chinas.  If I get to work on it at all, it will be a few minutes at a time, installing the cruise control panel just to the right of the steering wheel on the bezel, and other things like that.  It probably won't be until December or January (realistically) that I am able to hook up the gauges and possibly the E-brake.  At least the GPS/Tunes/other electronic junk works.

Yes, it is parallel to the ground/car (the camera is tilted a bit).  We had that problem earlier in production...it was tilted.  The arm rest appears to still be tilted a bit, but that is adjustable.  The 8-ball shifter is the one I got in Indy in 2005 during the give-away after the banquet.  I think I traded one that didn't have the button for this one, as I had a feeling I would need it later.  The flash is blanking out the shift pattern.  The boot and the new cover for the armrest will match the leatherette on the sides of the seats.

The more I look at it, the more I like it.  It comes out in three sections for maintenance...the vertical wooden part, then the cover in the center, then the base.  Remember, the entire thing had to be fabricated from fiberglass (the base), covered with leatherette, and then pre-fit many many times, with multiple removals and installations to make sure each separate part fit, both within the car and within the other parts.  The armrest was originally thought to be too wide, but they made it work.  I was VERY relieved to hear that news.  The leatherette will look better when it is dusted off and given a splash of Son-Of-A-Gun. When it is 100% complete, I'll either replace or add to these pics.  But it is HOME.....that's 99% of it.

It would look more at home with a bit of wood in the dash or on the doors.  That can come later.  The doors are definitely in the 'very probable' category.  The dash bezel is a bit harder, but not impossible....it would look similar to those in GL and LX Tauri, but the wood would be real.

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