New Transmission  62                 July  2012

July 22nd.

I know it's been awhile since my last update but now that I'm able to drive the car again, I haven't done much work on it lately. I'm like a kid in a candy store right now, taking it out whenever I can but a few details still remain which are; making a boot for my shifter, making a new shifter lever and making a new throttle pedal.

As for the boot, I had been playing with some paper trying to make a pattern for it but I wasn't happy with my results. I finally decided to call on my good friend Paul to help me out. Paul helped me with the front and rear glass for the car when I was building it years ago and he did a great job for me. Before he became a glassier he had his own upholstery shop so I thought he might be able to give me some tips on how to make my boot.

When I showed Paul the pattern that I came up with he told me that it would work but he had a different (better) idea. He sat down and drew out a new pattern and right away I could see what he was talking about. One thing lead to another and he said that he could sew one up for me. That was good news because I just happen to bring some material with me that day so before I went home I gave him some pieces to play with.

The following week Paul came over and showed me what he had done which looked pretty good so I told him I'd let him know how it fit. The next day I tried the boot without attaching it to the console, just to get an idea how it worked. It was close but I thought it needed a small tweak here and there. Once I talked with him again he made me another one that looked great.

The material I gave Paul were two different colors which matched the ones in the car. The one he worked on first was the darker color because I have lot more of that one. But the lighter color is a different story because I only had a few scraps leftover. I figured that if any tweaking needed to be done, the darker color would be the one to figure it out with. Once everything looked good then he could use the lighter color which should contrast nicely with the darker material on the console.

Paul used the family sewing machine to make this for me which came out great. The bottom is large enough so it can be trimmed to fit my trim ring. 
 

 

 
Here you can see the bottom along with some 10-32 studs that I cut from screws. I'll use washers and nuts to hold the trim ring to the console which should work out fine.
 

 

 

Here is the top side which now needs to be trimmed along with transferring the stud location onto the console.
 

 

 
To make sure the hole location is in the right spot I made some transfer screws out of some 10-32 screws. After cutting off the heads I used my belt sander to sharpen the ends and then screwed them in till they bottomed out. With all six in place, I carefully placed the trim ring over the hole in the console and then pushed down on it. After lifting the trim ring off, I had some small indentations that I marked with a felt marker so I could see them better.
 

 

 
Once I had them all laid out, I used a razorblade and cut each one with an X shape. The reason for this X shape cut was to prevent the leather from being grabbed by the drill and wrapping around it. This worked well and once I had all the holes drilled, I used my razor knife again and carefully cut around each one so the trim ring would sit flush.
 

 

 
It took some time to trim the material so it would fit right because there were three layers in each corner. I carefully cut a few stitches (at the ends only) and then trimmed the material away so it would sit nice and flat. If I had not done this step the trim ring would have been higher on each corner and would've looked funny.

Once I put the console back in place, two studs and nuts towards the front hit some brackets and wouldn't sit in the right place. I had to remove those brackets and make some clearance notches for the nuts. It was an easy fix which my Dremal handled pretty easily.
 

 

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