Part 3: Carpentry for the Car.
October 13, 2012
It's a cold, rainy day in mid-Michigan. There's still some color left on the trees, but wind and rain have brought down most of the leaves. Over in East Lansing, it's Homecoming weekend, and rather than joining the miserable, wet crowd in Spartan Stadium watching MSU lose to Iowa in overtime, my son Seth and I headed out to the barn to spend some quality time with the Corsa.
The first step was to find my old torpedo heater. When we poured the floor in the barn we put in all the tubing for radiant heat, but it's probably going to be another six to eight months before we finish the barn, so for now we have to work with the blasting kerosene heater. Still, before long it's comfortable enough to work. With the convertible up in the house garage we have some room to work.
Today's project is to start work on building an improved package shelf. The deck of the package shelf will be made of 1/2" MDF. The vertical portions of the old cardboard package shelf will be replaced by Masonite. The package shelf will be raised to accommodate the taller speakers we will be installing. Parts of the old cardboard package shelf will provide templates, and the lowermost portion will be reused.
To begin, we cut the vertical part that stands above the package shelf away from the rest of the cardboard. Then we cut the horizontal piece away from the lower half of the shelf.
As you can see, the old cardboard was squared off in the rear corners. We don't want that because the Masonite that will replace the part under the window will need to curve to follow the shelf. We had marked the curve followed by the top half of the cardboard, and Seth carefully cut away the corners.
Once we had trimmed the cardboard to the shape we wanted, we used it to trace the cut lines on the MDF with a Sharpie. I then cut the package shelf out with a jig saw.
Test fitting the shelf:
The next task was cutting holes for the speaker grills. These came out of an early seventies Chevy intermediate of some sort, probably a Chevelle or Monte Carlo. We marked the positions for the posts with a Sharpie, drilled the holes, then dropped the grill in place so that we could trace out the shape of the grill. We then marked out a smaller interior area and cut that out with the jig saw. Here Seth is drawing the cut line for the opening. You can see one of the grills in the foreground.
Because the shelf is higher than the original part, we know it's going to have to be trimmed a bit shorter. In order to figure out how much, we need to next build the replacement for the vertical cardboard below the package shelf. We traced that out, measured how much higher the package shelf would be than its original position, and cut the Masonite to fit with a circular saw. We then clamped that to the original cardboard and drilled all of the mounting holes. Ultimately, we will glue the old cardboard to the back of the Masonite and reuse it for the area behind the seat. Here is the assembly viewed from the back:
We won't glue it together until we're sure that everything fits together properly. Since some of this is a bit of a guess, we might have to redo some of these pieces, so I don't want to make any permanent commitments until I'm sure it's all right. Here is the front view:
This will all get a coat of low gloss black before it's finished. I ordered matching cut pile carpet from Clarks, and that will be glued to the Masonite on the front. Masonite and carpet will also replace the cardboard on the back of the rear seat.
We put the package shelf and the vertical part in the car to test fit. We want some overhang but right now we have too much, as you can see. The next step will be to trim down the package shelf a bit for a better fit.
I am going to get some 90 degree metal trim and cover it with matching factory black vinyl. That will be screwed to the front of the MDF package shelf and form a bit of a lip to cover the transition from the package shelf to the carpet.
Yesterday I was in Grand Rapids and I dropped off the seat back hinges and all the metal trim from the rear seat with my powdercoater. All of those parts will be powdercoated a nice, low gloss black.
That's it for now. Seth and I will probably be back out in the barn for awhile tomorrow afternoon.
