Finishing the Interior

With the interior stripped out of the car, what better time to make some improvements that don't cost a lot to do. First up was a new poly transmission tunnel. My old fiberboard tunnel wasn't in the best of shape and ended up in even worse shape when I missed a screw way up by the firewall. Hmmmmm.......seems stuck.....better give it a good pull and....Oopssss.......why is the tunnel in my hand and yet there's a big hunk still attached to the car?!? The downside of the poly tunnel is the fit. Shape-wise they fit fine. Mounting holes are another story. And center console fit is another matter altogether. The holes were an easy solution. All I did was drill out all the floor holes with a 1/2" drill. Then I did a temporary fit, got under the car and marked all the firewall holes on the tunnel and drilled them out. The rubber sealing strip was test fitted to the floor, notched to flow with the bends and each hole was punched out with a grommet punch. When it came time to do the final install, I laid a bead of Ultra-Black on the floor, smoothed it down and put the sealing strip over it. It looks like a nice tight seal.

All the holes were drilled out to 1/2" which made installation relatively easy.
FatMat and new padding adds to sound deadening and heat control

Last year I installed FatMat sound deadening on the floor, trunk, gas tank and in the doors. This made things a lot quieter and the doors closed with a nice THUNK. One thing I learned when doing that project was that, 10 years ago, I used way too much spray adhesive on the carpet padding and the carpet itself. Carpet padding was stuck everywhere! So I decided to toss the padding and buy some new padding at Lowes. This is a synthetic fiber pad that's very light, about 1/2" thick, easy to work with and tough to cut. I used one long piece in each foot well, two pieces to cover the tunnel and one piece for the driveshaft cover. The floor pieces are held in place by heavy duty Velcro and the cover pieces have a minimum of double sided carpet tape on the edges. For the carpet I used the Velcro so everything should come apart a lot easier the next time.

Padding complete with bolt holes cut out.	And all back together...finally!

The only problem I had was getting the center console to fit between the tunnel and the dash. Between the solidity of the poly tunnel and the 1/2" padding, I was cursing the console as I tried to work it into place and get all the holes to line up. I thought about just using a BFH but.............went with patience instead.

Yes.....I've assumed the LBC position. We've all been there!