So.....time for some more interior work. I decided to have a go at fitting the dashboard and the air vents.
Some of you may remember that I have bonded the HVAC front into the centre airvent moulding you get with the dash kit, so now I needed someway of mounting the HVAC controls to enable the front panel, now bonded to the air vents, to screw back into it without any force.
I pondered on this for a while and started with a couple of metal brackets to extend the hvac control mountings forward enough, this became hard to do, as its hard to fix the bracket to the original hvac control mounting points and then to secure the hvac controls to the bracket...hmmm...then I had an idea! I just need to put a spacer behind a longer screw and I should be able to use the existing hvac control mounting screw holes....I just need some small tubes to use as spacers...I know...rivnuts!, I used a medium one plus a washer behind the top holes in the hvac control and a smaller one behind the bottom holes..perfect! it tightened up nicely and was held solidly in place at the correct position and angle, I then placed the centre airvent over it and made sure the top edge of the air vent sat nicely inside the cut out in the dashboard, it did and it worked perfectly!
Now, its only held in place by the 2 screws that secure the hvac front panel to the hvac controls, so, when I come to fit it properly, I think I will add a bit of velcro under the top edge of the centre air vent unit, this way it will be held solid and is still removable.
Pic 1, The centre air vent held in place and also I have added the new graphics for the controls and a set of "madmans" replica knobs!
Pic 2, this is the gap at the side I will need to fill, but I will just shape a piece of plastic to fill this nicely
Pic 3 and 4, I then just taped on the outer air vents to stand back and see what it would look like with all the dash in place, well pleased!...just need to sort the stereo surround out as I dont think I can cut out my existing PFL one as no way will it fit over the screen, I still need to find a facelift one, so Im still looking....
...and yes, I still havent done anymore with my centre console as this is going to need a lot of work and I wont have time to get it all done before Stoneleigh....