Interior

During the winter of 2007 I started rebuilding the interior of the car. The outside was done, and with the deadline of the interiors completition set to Bilsport Custom Motor Show at Elmia during easter of 2007 and with a lot to do, many cold hours were spent in the garage. During Svenska bilsportmässan in the auntumn of 2006 I got in contact with MTX, a company that makes soundsystems. I very happy with the products they gave me, cause the sound that my car now generates is unbelievable! Double two way frontsystems driven by a 1260 watt amplifier, and a 15 inch bass driven by a 1500 watt amplifier produces an absolutely amazing sound. Of course the soundsystem wasn't all that was added to the car during the winter. I also had a crazy idea of putting a computer in the car, an idea that I went through with. Below I will take you step by step through the process of the build.

The first step of the build was to remove the interior to enable us to do all the wiring. My plan was to put a 7 inch monitor in the middle consol, but since everyone who has a screen there in an Eclipse has a flip up monitor, I wanted to do something different, so I added the screen directly to the consol. This presented a problem, since this was were the head unit for the soundsystem used to be mounted. Below I will tell you where the unit ended up! First, here is a picture of my interior looked like after I had stripped it out.

After realizing that the monitor would be in the spot where the stereo headunit should have been, I looked for other places to put it. The headunit is a Alpine CDA-9854R, and after not that much of thought, I decided to put it in the ceiling! Luckily the idea didn't present that much of a problem, at all suprisingly. In the ceiling where the unit is now placed, there was a in car light. The light was mounted very sturdy, so to mount the stereo in its place wasn't all that difficult. First we built a box from wood, in which we could place the stereo. The box was then puttied with glassfiber putty from Hagmans Kemi AB, same putty that was used on the bodykit, after which it was puttied with fineputty. Below you can see a picture of what the box looked like when it had been puttied with fine glassfiber. As one can see on the picture, we kept the in car light, but moved it a little, but it's still there in the ceiling, now placed on the box.

During the whole process of the build, the work was devided into two parts more or less. One part where the interior such as the box for the head unit, the monitor and so on was being added, and the other was the bassbox placed in the trunk. Since the bass is quite big, 15 inch, it required a big bassbox! However, we still wanted to be able to have some trunkspace in which we could place cleaningsupplies and so on. This presented some problems, but through a series of genious designs we figured it all out. It is now even possible to get the spare tire out of the trunk! The main factor that made this possible was that we built a closed bassbox. I listen to a lot of metal, and in order to get the bass to hit fast enough, I had to make it this way. Like everything else on the car, our motto has been that if someone else has it, we want something different! So instead of puttying the whole box, we decided to cover it with venyl to make it look like the original interior. Below you can see a picture of what the box looked like while we were putting the venyl on it.

Many showcars out there have been modified in such a way that the backseat is either removed or deemed unusable! Like I mentioned just above, we want to be different, so instead of removing the backseat, we added to it! Since the bassbox rests against the backseat, we made it in such a way that we could add headrests for the backseat passengers! These headrests are then intigrated into the bassbox. This being very unique, we got a lot of good remarks about it.

Since I wanted a computer in the car, I needed a way to control it. A touchscreen monitor was out of the question since so many people have that, and I wanted to be alternative, so instead I decided to mount a touchpad mouse in the middle consol! Here is where the first real snag presented itself! I didn't test the touchpad before I started to make the holder for it. This showed to be a big misstake! Below you can see a picture of what the mount looked like.

That looks about right, you place the pad in the hole and it's all done. Well, that's true in some manner, but the problem is that what the picture whos is how the box was going to be mounted in the car, with the two buttons on the pad mounted forward. This was wrong! The buttons were suposed to face the back of the car, otherwise it was upside down! I didn't figuer this out before the whole thing was done either! There was some software that came with the pad, and I consulted that, to see if it was possible to turn the pad so that it would work upside down. To my joy it was possible, but my happiness was soon smothered when I realized that the software only worked on Windows, and the computer I was placing in my car was a Macintosh! So what I had to do was to rebuild the box, which was quite annoying and required a lot of work!

When all the pieces had been fine puttied with Hagmans Micro putty, they were all "painted" with fluid putty from Hagmans. The surfaces of the pieces became completly smoth, but we didn't want that, since we wanted an original look to the interior, so to make the surface more rigid, we painted the pieces with a rough paint. There is a picture of this shown below. After the pieces had been painted with the rough paint and roller, they were once again painted, but this time from a spraycan to get their real color. The paint used is one that Hagmans sells, and it uses the RAL colorscheme. The precise color we used is RAL 1015.

During the time that all these pieces were being constructed, I had help from my friend Jimmy who did most of the wiring in the car. Since I had decided to put my headunit in the ceiling, this presented a few challenges in how to get power, but also stereocables and such up to it. I had probably not been able to get it all togheter without Jimmy's help. Totally, we drew about 100 meters of cable in the car.

When all the wiring had been done and the pieces were painted and such, all that was left was to put it all together. Below you can see a few pictures that show what the interior and bassbox looked like when the whole system was constructed. Unlike the outside of the car, the interior isn't done yet! We have more ideas of what to do to it, so stay tuned!

Interior pretty much stripped down. Guy to the left is my friend Jimmy who helped me out a lot during the build!

Ceiling box for headunit puttied with glassfiber.

Bassbox being venyled

Touchpadmount

All the interiorpieces being painted with a roller to get a original look to them.

Middleconsol with touchpad and 7" screen mounted

Picture whoing the headunit in place.

Bassbox when it was done! Here you can see the 15" bass, and below the plexiglass you can see a glimpse of the two amplifiers.