how much would it be worth to you? I'll be working with someone who can mill the center console piece out of aluminum and have it ready for you to mount your A/C controls to. Regardless if others are interested, I will be having it made for my car but was wondering if there would be any demand for it from others.

The aluminum piece is a direct replacement for the plastic center console piece and can be left as brushed aluminum or powder coated/painted/whatever. I'll be powdercoating mine black.

 

I would be interested if it was economical enough. If you could please post a ball park figure.

 

I was planning on doin these.. Dave also suggested for me to do these after he saw it in my car.. but it's a PITA and is a lot of work.. You'll still have to run longer wires .. about 26 or so..

 

Jay, when I saw yours I wanted it bad - and wanted you to do them too I dont trust myself to butcher up my plastic pieces. A friend of mine owns a CNC machine and replaced his center console with an aluminum piece he designed. So the hard work is done as the program is already made, it just needs to be modified by adding some holes and mounting brackets for the controls. Lengthening the wires is a given but that shouldn't be too difficult for anybody.

SilverR1, I should have a better price range in the near future but I would say less than $200 and possibly over $100.

Basically I'm curious what people would be willing to pay to see if it can be done for that much (how many would have to be done, etc).

 

Viper, I'd be interested for under $150, I just bought an a/c control panel as well, and if you save me a few hours of labor cutting and bondoing plastic, I'd pay that much.

eric

 

I've done this and it is a PITA. I thought about bringing a kit to the market and still am. I just don't know if it would be worth it.

 

That price sounds fine to me as long as the workmanship was good. Keep us up to date on how everything is going and post some pics as soon as possible.

 

Went and looked at what my friend has in his car and took some pictures.

One thing to keep in mind when looking at these, is that this piece was made somewhat quickly, long ago well before this idea was ever conceived.

The top picture shows the left-forward corner - you can see that its not perfect, but I think if the corner had been cut square and then rolled it would meet better. Also a little finessing of the angle its rolled at should get it to follow the lines of the other piece.

The bottom picture gives an overall view of the piece. It will need to be either screwed down or glued/taped as it cant use the prong-things that the stock one uses for mounting. Disregard how these screws look, they won't look like that. Some system for attaching the ***** and labels will need to be worked out, I kind of like the raised pieces for the switches that are on here - what do you guys think? Lastly you'll notice the small hole for the shifter, my friend wanted to remove the boot on his - finished piece will have the oval like the stock one and a system of attaching the boot will be devised; if wanted, you can get the shifter hole like this one.

Lastly, we might take a look at designing a piece to replace that vertical piece that goes around the radio and *****, etc - thats way down the road tho. Hopefully this weekend we can work on it.

Let me know what you think.

 

i would consider one of these aslong as they went around the whole dash and had a little bit glossyer finish

 

The plastic surround on my 2nd gen is cracked at the top, I'd like to replace it with something more solid. Anybody ever try this?

 

Correct me if im wrong, but wouldnt that aluminum piece get VERY hot and burn your arm if you rested it on the newly moved ac controls? maybe im wrong, i dont know...but even those damn seatbelts get hot and burn me occasionally

 

While it's certainly an interesting point you raise, it doesn't strike me as very valid: Do your fingers get burned when you operate the controls in your car?

Please excuse the sarcasm, but the only reason I could see for the aluminum to get hot from the controls would be if the wiring was shorted to it. Could you please explain why you feel it would heat up from it?

 

well i live in San Diego,CA so it gets kinda hot in the summer and fall. If you leave your car parked outside and comeback to it, it tends to be a little warm inside and sometimes the metal heats up from the sun...unless i dont know somethign about aluminum..does it not absorb heat like other metals? Well anyways, just thinking that maybe the aluminum woudl heat up and when you go to shift and your forearm rubs it, it could be pretty hot at times.

BTW: i dont take offense to your sarcasm.=) i have the best sense of humor around so i know how to take it..am i wrong about the aluminum tho?

 

Viper Jr,

Looks pretty good.. what does it look like out of the car? like the side and bottom view? Is it just flat? and how thick is it?

****, you can just get that and maybe FG or bondo over it.. maybe?

 

if you could get RX-7 engraved in it, it woud be even cooler =)

 

What would be really cool would be a chromed Ferrari type of plate to fit on it. You'd need a new stick though. But it would look badass. They make these for some cars. Like MR2 has one that I know of.

 

I'm sorry, I misunderstood your original question. Yes it will heat up from the sun. I'll have to get with my friend and see what his experience has been like with it.

 

Next time we get together to work on the piece, we'll take it out and take a shot of it. Generally speaking, it is just flat and then rolled on the one side. Thickness of this piece was (and I'm going off of my terrible memory here) 20 gauge? I think part of the plan is to make these pieces out of slightly thicker material.

 

Actually, just about anything could be engraved on it. One thought for the labels above the vent selector was to engrave in the pictograms.

Here's something else my friend made just to demonstrate lettering ability

 

I'll pass that on.

 

Oh snaps! I would pay poop loads to get a ferrari style shifter!

 

I would be willing to pay $150-$200 for it.

 

Wasn't able to work on this weekend before last but we did this last weekend. We took apart the piece that houses the controls (what a PITA! to get that thing out) and looked at how it all mounts up.

Looks like the hardest things to do will be mounting the controls to the underside of the plate and keeping light from leaking past the ***** at night. We think we've come up with a way to create the pictograms above the controls so that it'll look somewhat stock, we'll have to do some experimenting. We'll also need to come up with a way of mounting the shift boot to the plate so the original can be re-used.

As far as the gated shifter idea goes, it will require a new shifter and while it looks cool, its not terribly functional. The shifts become very notchy and much slower. Its way on the back burner.

 

when relocating you a/c controls you use bondo to fill up the blank area. by blnak area i mean the space that the gauges will not reach. what i have done so far is removed the a/c controls and viewed the area that i am going to work on. i plan on attaching a triple gauge saab mount where the a/c controls are and just above the gauges adding the greddy profec b, just on top oof that will be the apex turbo timer. i have read countless amounts of how tos, what i am confused about is what material is being used to insure a clean smooth transition in the panel. will the texture in a/c panel look dramatically different than the other panels, forcing me to paint them? (the interior will remain black)

i would appreciate it if someone can help, they are trying to charge me $375-$500 to do this and i've read in the how to it will cost less than an average of $50. i understand because it is labor intnesive that it might cost so much but because i own an rx7 i understand that that amount of money is best spent on something else on the car.

thanx luigi

 

im almost positive youll have to paint them.
but there are ways to get a texture like original