Pickup up my project car a month or so ago (72 coupe) and had originally planned on a three phase build:

1. New front/rear suspension + power steering swap
2. Engine/drivetrain
3. Interior

I had planned on doing this over three winters, with the goal of fully redesigning the interior in the third year. As I got into phase 1 of the new ride (working on the back end), I discovered there was actually quite a bit of rot in the storage compartments and I was going to have to do some serious rework that would require removing quite a bit of interior if I wanted to keep my battery along for the ride and not leave on the road somewhere. In conversations with the lady of the house, we came to the conclusion I should just tackle the whole thing at once. I have a Mustang getting interior finished up now that dates back almost a decade, so I will have plenty of fun to occupy me on the road while I work on this.

I will be doing some cleanup and will probably have the backend put back together in a week or two (ridetech swap). After that I am moving forward to the storage repairs. While I will still probably do the front suspension swap (global west) and power steering next, I am starting the redesign of the interior in my downtime while waiting for parts, etc.

I have seen many threads and posts about this type of adventure, but most threads die and go nowhere. I have seen the aftermarket stuff for the C2 and it is ok, but not great. I think the C3 body is one of the most beautifully designed exteriors for a car (period) yet the interior is just plain awful. I did the concept drawings and then did a little computer design work to visualize what it will look like when pulled together and it is evolving nicely..

I have started the CAD work with focus on the center console. Wow is there almost zero logic to the shape of that thing! I have the full center console modelled and am going to start 3d printing the parts to confirm my dimensions and fit before heading up to the dash. A few mods I will be doing along the way (note darn near all of this will be custom, so can't really say things like Vintage Air controls, etc...):

• Deleting the parking brake in favor of a line lock. With the parking brake deleted, I am adding an armrest storage box. Won't/can't be that big, but a place to put a couple things. Total height will be the same as stock with the pad that sits on top of the p brake.
• Power windows with controllers on the console just below the stick (not sure where they went if ordered stock, but mine doesn't have them).
• Moving HVAC controls to the place where the shift pattern is currently displayed. Going to try to do a 5 switch setup here.
• Cup holders plus USB in front of the stick
• Dash will get a lot more fun, but moving the vents around (and integrating the air ducts into the dash pieces which should greatly help with access behind the dash and keeping things tidy
• Will be adding a glove both
• Rearranging the instruments and adding a touch of style to the dash contours...no more "plank of wood" look
• Many different materials will be mixed in: leather wrapping, cnc'd aluminum, painted trim parts, etc.

I will post pics here as I go along if anyone is interested in following along for the ride.

 

Following! Can’t wait to see the finished result.

 

To your comment. Here are a couple of C2 pix from this year's Pebble Beach




i had wanted to stop and talk but the family wanted to move on so I didn't get any details about where the controls were but probably a touch screen. The entire body was, as I remember, carbon fiber and weighed a trifle compared to the original.

 

Curious as to what you come up with. My experience on a 78 is replacing the parking brake with E-Stopp system. Easy to do and you can put the button anywhere you want. Mine is up inside the cupholder compartment where the cig lighter went. It also doubles as an anti theft device if they don't know what the button is. As for moving the controls, adding cup holders, those were all things I did by morphing a C4 center console into my C3. Also needed to adapt a B & M 200R4 shifter into the console. ANd I Had to narrow the center glove box to fit between my C4 seats , but it all came out the way I wanted it to. It wasn't easy, and took some time to get it right. I will be anxious to watch you do yours YOUR WAY! Make it yours!

 

I remember over on the pro touring site, years back, a few guys modding interiors on C3’s. A few came out really nice. On my ‘69 (long gone), I put in a Hairy Glass fiberglass dash that was designed to look like a Camaro dash. Never got to finish the interior. Weight savings was the main goal as it was a street/strip car. Sorry, this fuzzy old pic is one of the few remaining pics I have. If you like the look, it may save a ton of fab time. Hairy Glass (if still in business) made various dashes. My end goal was to polish the seats, door panels, and do an insert in the lower dash, with holes, also polished as I wanted sort of a bomber look. I was going to continue from that lower portion of the dash, running a center console that would have terminated there, lining up with it for appearance sake. Good luck and curious to see what you come up with.

 

I have still not finished mine...I was going to make mine a resemblance of a Lamborghini Miura-
Changed direction a couple times... but now have a 3D printer witch will help big time with the gauge.


my inspiration-





Here's the progress-

 

@Richard454 That’s coming along nicely! With how tricked out the rest of your car is, it will go together very nicely! BTW, have some of your stuff faved on my ebay, waiting to get to that point in the resto/restomod and waiting on that whole “funds availability” thing, so I can install on mine in the future Look forward to seeing yours on completion!

 

Quick update on this. I am still mostly working getting through the rear end in suspension upgrades on the 72, but have been chipping away at the interior project along the way. Step 1 was to model the center console in CAD. I don't intend to change the general form of the center console all that much (the vast majority of changes will be on the dash)...rather just rearrange what all is on it. That said, it is one crazy shape! As such, I needed to get a 3d model going that fit the envelope before getting too deep into the design specifics. After ripping out the old dash and center console, taking a whole lot of measurements, and trying to model out some truly strange geometry, I had something that was ready to check for fitment. A couple screen grabs of the first version are below and you can really see how odd this shape is (note the armrest is 2 inches taller here as the parking brake is going to be removed in favor of a line lock).




After getting the general shape modelled, I need to next check for fitment. For this I have been waiting on a 3d printer, which has arrived and has been printing nonstop the last couple days to get the first prototypes out for envelope check. The first image below was attempt #1 at printing the first part (the armrest components, which have to be printed in two pieces given the overall size. This was attempt 1, which ended up failing due to something I need to change on the design. In short, where I designed in a large radius at the front of the armrest, I got some goofy geometry that resulted in half of that "cut" not resting evenly on the print bed, so I lost adhesion on that part. This was the attempt before it failed:


After figuring out a little more of how this 3d printing business works, I started getting some of the pieces out. This is part #3 (going from back to front) being printed...what I call the rear center console:


The final assembled armrest through center console turned out ok (note the colors are all wonky as I was using up some free filament that came with the printer...not intentional!). Also, the wife loves it when I do this kind of stuff on the kitchen countertops...this round thrilled her too!




The pieces will go in the car sometime this weekend. I am sure the overall geometry will need to be changed and I will get working on that. The other benefit from this exercise is getting a little more hands on experience with the required wall thicknesses for 3d printing. Right now I am using PLA as it is easy and cheap, but it won't hold up in practice, so eventually it will need to move probably to a glass or carbon fiber reinforced nylon, but I still have more research to do on that. After rough fit, then details will come in the way of control layout, plumbing within the structure for electrical, stereo and other runs, etc. A very, very long way to go, but thought I would post a small update.

 

Interested in the finished product.

 

Following!

 

Wow! This is interesting!

 

A quick update here. I have finally gotten the Ridetech rear end in. That was a little more work than I thought it was going to be. Thankfully only resulted in one cut on the head, but plenty of skinned knuckles along the way!..hopefully I did it right.

As for the console, I did do the first test fit. Here are pics from the driver and passenger sides:



A few observations from test #1:

• Thank goodness I am out of the color filament.
• The passenger side tells the story. You can see a faint white chalk line I put on the carpet before taking the old console out to make sure the new design rested pretty much back in the same location as the original. Kinda shocking how well the very first iteration of this fit considering how difficult it was to model it. I was very pleased with the general result here.
• The "attack angle" of the armrest coming into the console is too aggressive. Further, I will need to be running wires through this area and, as it turns out, the point where the armrest meets the console pretty much rests on the top of the tunnel. As such, I plan on shallowing the slope of the console (as viewed from the front) so that the console is higher where it meets the armrest. I am also going to add some contour between the armrest and console so it isn't such an aggressive angle where the two meet.
• The armrest door was obnoxiously large. That will get shrunk down to a more reasonable size in the next iteration as well.
• The shifter hole was close to being right, but was off by about a half inch.
• There is a lot less room before the console meeting the firewall than I thought. I had originally planned on cupholders in the space in front of the shifter, but that plan is going to have to change. I specifically don't like how "recessed" the gauges are in the stock dash, which I can now see why it is like that. In order to get the gauges in with the console designed as it is, the gauges have to get pretty close to the firewall. This creates one of the primary looks that I don't like with the recessed controls and significant overhang of the dash pad. Further, that is what makes it such a pain in the *** to work behind the stock setup. Anyhow, the path I am going to head is to begin the upward movement form the console into the dash pretty close to the front of the shifter. The head unit will be on that "rise", which I believe will put it in perfect arms reach...a little closer than stock. I will figure out the cupholder situation as I get a little deeper. 3D printing is so amazingly helpful to this process. I can kick out changes and print another prototype in a day or two. Total cost of the material for what we see in these pictures is $25-$30. I can iterate through this process and actually sit with the models...so unbelievably helpful. Now, final engineering cost to print will be much higher because those filaments are $$$, but doing a turn once per week and burning $30 to get full 3d models sitting in the car is invaluable to the process!
• Lastly, while this fit was really good, I am also learning about 3d printing. This model was printed with the walls too thin. While this is just PLA and the final will be an engineering filament, the walls were still too thin. I suspect the walls may have been flexing a bit to result in a fit this nice. I have a feeling once I thicken the walls and they get stiffer that I might need to make the model wider to rest in the right place. More on that in round 2!

 

Wow that's looking great already! Can't wait to see where you take this.

 

 

A thought about your gauges being to far recessed that you mentioned above. In V 3.0 of my project I had mocked up a center gauge panel with 6 Ultra Lite gauges in it and came across an option for those gauges that was a plastic piece, almost the size of a quarter of a lemon. It mounted on the exterior of the bezel and the gauges fit up against it. One for each gauge. That put the gauges out further and at an angle better for the driver to see them rather than flat on the face of the bezel. Maybe you could program that into your next phase.
It is very impressive how you are working through this vision. I must admit the 3 D printer makes it a lot easier to see what works and what doesn't before you get too deep into it. If I was younger I think I could have had lots of fun mapping things out and then printing them up. Although drawing a picture, thinking of how to screw it, bend it, glue it, glass it and then paint it has a certain charm to it. IN an old school way. Not to mention the cut hands. Great work and I appreciate you taking the time to let us watch.

 

A little progress here. Still a bit sidetracked on the suspension stuff. All of the rear Ridetech is in. This weekend new Wilwoods are going on the rear along with some pre-work on the front end. Along the way I have been chipping away at the interior project with some decent progress; Here is the last pic:


Notes on additional findings:

• It is visually so much more easy on the eyes all printed in black!
• I shortened the door opening on the armrest and am much more happy with this size. The actual storage area extends 2.5" back from the opening...right up to the cut you can see in the armrest.
• I changed the armrest door style from what was going to be a center cut to be the entire width of the armrest. I did this because the center cut approach made the opening super narrow considering the available width for the armrest is already very limited. Further, all of this will be wrapped in leather, and using the full width for the door will greatly improve/simplify how the leather will be applied.
• I had originally planned on going with a separate "drop in" storage container for the armrest that would allow full access to below the storage as I will have both wiring as well as brake lines running through there. This will be the passage area for the brake lines to the parking brake replacement line lock. This would also allow me to obscure any fasteners to the tunnel. I decided against this though because, again, space is super limited. The storage bin will now be molded into the entire section. I am utilizing two of the parking brake bracket bolt locations for mounting, so these will now be visible at the bottom of the armrest storage, but that is a fair trade for the extra storage I will get.
• You can see the center divot at the front of the armrest opening...that is where the armrest door (not pictured) can be grabbed and opened.
• This design also has the less aggressive contour in the transition from the armrest to the console - MUCH bigger fan of this look. It also gave me addition clearance at the connection, which will allow the wires and brake lines to pass cleanly underneath. I have also started adding additional details like the radius on the edges of the armrest. As I get pieces settled into where they go and how they attach, I will begin adding these in. You can see the third piece forward from the back (where the shifter goes), has not yet gotten attention for fastening and additional fitment, as such its corners are still squared off and not much detail is seen.
• This was the first pic of the transition to the dash itself. I printed the blank seen in this picture to get some super rough ideas of the slope into the dash as well as where I needed to begin reserving space for gauges. I actually am printing the first fitment pieces right now that will provide a view of how the gauges will be situated on this piece and extending over to the driver side...print job will be done in 29 hours. Overall on the blank, though, the angle off the console is really nice when sitting in the seat, so the test was a win in that regard and I couldn't really do much more until that angle was confirmed along with visualizing how the dash pad was going to need to merge into this area.

Along the way I am also starting to think through the actual controls, switches, etc. I believe for the gauge surrounds (this will be visible in the next update), I am going to go milled billet aluminum. I am getting super carried away and am considering grabbing a fiber laser to do some deep engraving after I get these milled for some crazy detailed design work in between the gauges. I need to build support on the homefront for this...in process.

That's all for now!

 

WOW! Really starting to take shape more towards your intended/desired end product. I'm sure the printed stuff can be sanded to flow and textured for the desired finish when ready, so bet this will all look phenominal on completion. Watching with admiration and curiosity as you go. Sure wish I had your equipment and skills over the years, both for car projects and other custom stuff I've worked on.

 

Looks interesting.

It would be nice if you could get that darn emergency brake lever out of there...open up a lot of room.

Keep the pictures coming!!

 

Litevette - In order to paint the printed stuff, it does require some filling/sanding, but nothing more than any other project any of us have done. It does print in thin layers, which can be seen up close (and you can pick some of it out in the pics I have posted) that require filling. But honestly they are so narrow they can easily get filled with some filler primer. There probably won't be too many pieces that I end up painting. There will be a few, but most of this is going to end up being covered in leather or will be milled aluminum.

Marg G - The e-brake is being deleted as part of this project. The open space you see in the armrest is actually a storage compartment I am introducing. I will be getting more detailed pics of these areas as I get past some of the rough-in/fitment.

So here is where we are...I am starting to work my way up onto the dash and did a very rough layout of where I want the gauges to go. The goal here is to make sure the angles of everything work when seated in the car and that the general elevations for where the dashpad goes will work. So, I got everything modeled up and even did a quick mock up of what the milled aluminum will look like in this area. After a print failure and having to learn how to be a 3d printer technician, I printed it all up and sprayed the mock up of the milled insert with some silver paint I had laying around just to get the feel for what it might end up looking like. The "all black" starts to get difficult to make out against all the rest of the black of the interior...even when standing in front of it all. Here is where we are:








Comments and observations from this round:

• In the first picture, I printed the black parts with the holes for where the gauges go. This part actually won't end up having the holes. In fact, the entire recessed area where the holes are will be void. I am going to leave all of this area open so that, as the dash is being installed, none of the gauges will have to be attached. This should leave a ton of working space behind the dash after it is installed to mess with wires, etc. The gauges will then be attached to the aluminum insert and make the whole assembly/disassembly process much, much, much easier that the normal way of dealing with these cars. I will be using this same convention where the brake line lock, power window switches, and HVAC controls will go. You can see this part back behind and next to the shifter. What goes in this area will be an insert that has the controls mounted to it. In this way, everything will stay very open during install and if I need to get back in to service something. The cuts aren't in yet, but the same method will be applied where the head unit will go.
• Overall on measurements I was pretty close on how to get all of this lined up with the column (which was job 1 for this round). The opening for the column was a little high, a little too far to the left, and a little too big...between 1/4" to 1/2" for all three. I will take that. It is tricky to figure out these dimensions when everything gets tweaked along the way.
• In the second picture, I sat the painted mockup of the to-be-milled-aluminum insert in. The third picture is just a little further back for perspective.
• So, here are my thoughts. The RPM and Speedo openings are for 4 1/2" gauges. At first I thought about reducing the size, but I actually think I am going to stay with this size (I think 3 3/8" would be the next size...probably need to confirm that as I will probably go to 4" if available). I reserve the right to change that opinion, but for now we will roll with it.
• One thing I am going to do is move the left-most 2 1/16" gauge up between the RPM and Speedo. When I do this I will widen out the two big gauges a bit. The one that goes in the middle between the big gauges will be the fuel. In the current config, the left-most little gauge gets significantly obstructed from view and is difficult to see. Further, keeping only three gauges on the right will look nice and be very symmetrical in the dash.
• I am considering making the "borders" you see in the mockup of the aluminum piece a little thinner. But before I do this, I am going to re-do the piece to be a little thinner and make the recesses in the piece shallower. These are all set at .2 inch recesses, and that is too deep. A shallower piece might change my perspective on whether the boarders are too thick.
• I will probably also move the entire cluster up a little...maybe 1/2". I can't go too far as the air vents still need to go on top of where the little gauges are, so I need to reserve room for that.

Next up, I am going to continue to refine the dash layout, but most of my attention is going to be back at the armrest and the rear-most console piece. I almost have all of the attachments done on the armrest...two bolts using the existing e-brake bracket and then one screw utilizing the hole in the back where the current armrest attaches (this one goes in from the compartments behind the seats and threads into the back of the armrest). So, with the armrest almost ready to be fully stationed, I need to get the next piece up all locked into position. I can do the rough fitment I am doing now, but as I am approaching the dash and front of the car, I need the rear pieces to be in their final resting place to get super dialed-in. When I do the next round of updates I will get some good detail pics on how all of this goes together and attaches...along with probably a revision to the dash too!

 

You have some GREAT plans. But....if your significant other thinks like mine....you might want to put an E-Brake Pedal under the passenger lower dash (my wife is stomping the carpet flat her side of the lower inner firewall...NO it won't stop the car but maybe she'll feel in control)