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Interior hacks - when engineering and thinking go too far


sprout1600itb

1,537 views

Ok, so here is the part where i reference a plan, but you'll also realize that in each post I've yet to reveal a plan.

I want to say there is a method to my madness. I want to say something about knowing; and having a designers mind toward things, but that would be absolute BS.

I had a lot of inspiration between Performance BMW, the FAQ, my time modifying VWs and Porches and Audis...but largely I just dove in.

Let's be clear, there's no plan at this point. Learn from my mistakes, because I can be an idiot around cetain things and this was one of them.

So I head out into the garage and just tear into the interior. I just do it. I start by unbolting the seats. Then I pulled out carpet.

Why? I have parts sitting in boxes that need to go into the car. Plus, if there is rust hiding away I want to find it now before I go any further.

Sounds very sound. It wasn't; I just litterally had it in my head that I could just jump in, fab up seat rails, and then put the carpet in, probably two or three solid weekends of work.

Not sure, what I was thinking.

Clearly, I wasn't thinking. I guess I wanted some activity.

Maybe it was an escape from my crappy job where I barely used my brain and never used my hands, maybe I just needed to go back to creating something. Maybe I just assumed it would be easy.

So i just got in and started tearing things out, but as I got into it I decided I was going to dynomat and paint. Out came the heat gun and the scraper.

This project was spiraling out of control. Then it hit: rust in the back foot well. Great. Now I am going to be cutting and welding.

Grr.

Meanwhile I started working with my father to fab up brackets for the e30 seats I was going to put in. I just started cutting one day and pulled the original rails out. I would NEVER recommend this. NEVER. It was a huge mistake to pull those rails out.

I'll cover the whole e30 seats in my next post. They are infinitely adjustable and pretty comfortable. They are WAY cheaper than the e21 recaros and in someways they are more stout.

So very quickly I was knee deep in it. The first weekend of cutting and removing I was essentially buggered, bummed, and on my way to over engineering. Forget about it not being a restoration, it was a full on modification, and my first two attempts at the seat brackets were extremely ghetto epic fails.

I'd read about these brackets on the forum and it seemed like they would be extremely solid, they were, but the first ones had the seats too high in the car. I felt like my head was near the ceiling, I didn't want to feel like I was driving my ML. The second set had the seats two close to the door, so on the passenger side the recline and rear seat egress levers hit the doors. On the driver side, we had the same problem and i was so far off center from the steering wheel and the gas, brake, and clutch it felt like i was reaching over from my seat to drive.

I had some nice carpets in a box too ready to go in. They stayed in the box for a really long time.

I guess poor progress is still some kind of progress. I was still showing up to work on the regular, so I guess in some ways it did what it needed to do.

Extremely light on planning. Did i mention what a mistake this was? :D

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