GT6 Interior Refit - Part 3, Driveable Again

I'd got the bit between my teeth and decided to get the car driveable again today, so it was another morning spent in the garage to finish the last major parts, while listening to Andy Murray lose the tennis.

First job, refit the central armrest and tunnel cover. This involved drilling new mounting holes, then fudging around with the self tapping screws through the carpet until they located, just a bit fiddly really.

Next was to fit the Roll-Centre rollbar I'd taken out of my MKIV Spitfire before selling it. This was the other reason I had to remove the Britax inertia reel belts. As well as them hitting the seat, they were mounted exactly where the lower legs of the rollbar would sit.

10mm bolts hold the bar in place, so once I'd got over the apprehension of drilling 12 holes in the bodywork, it was done.

Finally, fit the seats to the frames, only 2 bolts per seat, but not a job for the fat fingered. The seats also came from my Spitfire as I wanted some headrests in this car. I had them refurbished 22 years ago and although the covers are still in very good condition, the foams have turned to breadcrumbs again, leaving them looking a little deflated.

When Chris sold me the car, he gave me the original MK2 tan seats which also need refurbishing. Having looked at the cost of covers, foams, and professional fitting now, I think they'll stay in my shed a little longer.

Once the seats were in, the last job was to re-route the seatbelts through the rollbar as the route I originally picked forced them down too low.

And that's pretty much it. Although the seats should be Tan, I like the Brown and Black contrast. There's just the H dashboard support frame to fit now, but I'll leave that for another time.

The weather's been glorious today and the snow has gone, so to celebrate, I took the car for a blast to my parents and back. A very productive weekend's work.

GT6 Interior Refit - Part 2, Carpet Complete.

Spent the day in the garage today finishing off the carpet. Order of fitment was : 

• Central Tunnel Cover - and fit seat belt receptacles to hold in place.
• Passenger Sill Cover.
• Passenger footwell side panel.
• Transmission Tunnel Cover.
• Passenger Box Section cover.
• Passenger Seat base section
• Passenger footwell carpet.

After that lot and fitting the new static belt, this was the result.

Then repeat the whole process again on the drivers side. Here is my patented method of holding the carpet in place, until the glue dries enough to re-fit the door seal.

Must buy better pegs, those cheap ones have pathetic springs. Once complete, I refitted the seat runnners.

I'm quite pleased with the result, despite the crispy nature of the carpet backing. 
However, now it's all in place, I feel I need to call the car 'Bungle'. Can't think why :-)

Only a couple of real issues, the drivers side footwell carpet went to the same height as the passenger side, which meant it fouled all the pedals. 6 inches lopped off with the scissors fixed that, which gave me some spare to fix this ...

 

 ... grrrr, why can't they cut that sill panel to the right length. The drivers side is fine.

GT6 Interior Refit - Part 1, The Rear.

It seems that when I acquire any new car, no matter how good it is, there are always things that need doing to personalise it to my tastes.

Even with the little use I've given it so far, a couple of things in the GT6 were starting to annoy me. The carpets were fairly loose and rucked up in places and the bulky Britax inertia seatbelts were hitting the back of the seat.

So, I'll start with the carpets and ordering a brown tufted set from Rimmer's as part of their sale was also a chance to change them all to one colour, as the boot and rear wheel-arches were black.

When they arrived, I was a little disappointed. The colour and shape is good, but the backing is very stiff and cracks quite easily when flexing. This is the 5th car I've fitted carpets in, I've always bought budget carpet from a number of suppliers (including Rimmer's), but this is the first set I've had like this.

Anyhow, I thought I'd persevere with it. First job was to stitch the rubber trim for the rear deck to the front seam. Took about an hour and I only punctured my thumb with the blunt end of the needle about 4 times.

Start in the middle and work out ....

... and it's done.

I'd already stripped most of the interior out, so here is the (almost) blank canvas.

Once the boot floor, the cross beam between the rear wheel arches and the rear trim panels had been removed, I could get to work with the evostick. The order of assembly was : 

• Wheel Arch panels
• Thin vertical panel in front of rear deck.
• Rear Deck Panel

Put back all the rear panels and cross beam and lay in the new boot carpet. Here is progress so far.

A couple of wrinkles on the arches, but I should be able to smooth those out. The boot carpet doesn't have the press-studs on yet, that's why it sticks up in the corners.

So far so good and very 'cosy'. All my other cars have black carpet, so this is going to be like sitting in a teddy bear!

First post for new blog

I've got so much useful information from other people's blogs over the years, I felt I should start my own. This post is just a test for me to get the formatting right. Whether anyone will want to read my tales of hammering and swearing remains to be seen, but with 4 Triumphs and an old Ford theres always something I'm tinkering with.

To kick things off here's a picture of my latest purchase, a Mk2 GT6, bought in November 2012 from local TSSC member Chris Downs. It's in lovely condition, as Chris performed a complete ground up restoration on it in the early 2000s.

More on what I'm doing to it will follow later, but the only work so far has been replacing the 'noname' black coil, with a Lucas DLB105 to cure an ever worsening misfire. It runs a treat now.