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[MyLittlePony]

Richter12x2 just installed a tan top on the capri. Check it out!

   

It looks a little white in the pic, but in real life its tan. But a least its a better pic of the 3rd brake light delete, bumper, and tailpipe mod.

   

The afternoon sun kinda stole this pic. But you really dont see much of convertible tops in front view anyway. Oh well, atleast its a better pic of the antenna delete, and that hood scoop is somewhere hiding in the glare.

[Manicknux]

I never actually liked that sky blue color on the Capri, however, I do like what you've done with it.  It's quite a good looking car now.  I congratulate you, it's wonderful.

~Justin

P.S.  Because of all the custom work you did on the car...I was wondering if you knew anything about interior modifications, such as creating a new dashboard and center console?
 
 [ September 27, 2004, 10:59 PM: Message edited by: Manicknux ]

[MyLittlePony]

Thanx a lot, and Richter thanks you too. Interior is the new project. We had taken out the old cloth part on the doors and replaced it with light blue vinyl. The dash panels are painted in the same blue. Also, the old capri seats are out, focus seats are in. Originally we were going to see and/or cut a different cars to make it fit the capri, but what Richter12x2 is currently doing is trying to replace the grey dash and door pieces with matching tan vinyl. Since the original is vinyl too (not plastic) paint is out of the question. Everything has to be rewrapped. If hes successful, ...well, of course Ill be all in a hurry to upload pics.

[Manicknux]

How DID you change the door panels (seat design) by the way?  I can't seem to find a way to pop them out.

Now as it is vinyl...would there be a way to mold that?  Or not.

And no problem, when someone does their own work and it turns out like that, that's one heck of an accomplishment.

[Roach]

I would like to see the Focus seats!  

Where they direct bolt in or did he have to fabricate something?
How is the ride height and is the height adjustable?

[Richter12x2]

Originally posted by Roach:
I would like to see the Focus seats!  

Where they direct bolt in or did he have to fabricate something?
How is the ride height and is the height adjustable?

I had to take an inch off the Focus seat on the driver's side to make it comfortably go under the steering wheel, and it still sits about an inch taller than it used to, but you don't notice it too much.  People over 6' would definitely have a problem.

I had to custom fab an adaptor to use the Focus's much superior seat track, and I had to lose the seat track to seat bottom brackets and weld the seat directly to the seat track to lose the height necessary to turn the steering wheel.  The passenger seat went in fine though, with no mods other than the adaptor for the seat track.  The driver's side isn't height adjustable, but tilts forward and back, and moves front to back on its track.  These seats were out of a Focus 4 door, so they don't move tile forward enough to get in the back seat on their own, but the cover and speakers prohibit back seat use anyway.

[MyLittlePony]

Theses are "In Progress" pics, so if they dont look good, theres a reason...

 

 

More pics can be found  here

He did infact have to fabricate his own brackets for the seats to fit. They sit like an inch higher than the normal capri seats. If youre a tall person, you'll notice the wind a lot more than before. But if youre like me, you dont notice all that much. The headrests seem awkward, as the speedster covers are shorter than they are, but apparently the same thing would happen if the stock seats were in as well.

The seats adjust fwd and bkward, I believe it has lumbar support, and other fancy things. The cushioning is NICE. There are only 2 drawbacks. 1) seat cant be raised or lowered. And 2) since this came out of a 4 door focus, the seats do not fold down. Them means the back seats are inaccessible. Course, as little as I am, I believe they were inaccessible when they were stock! 2 subwoofers and box now sit back there, proving any possible storage back there useless.

As for the door panels. Mighty poor picture that is. It didnt even have the door pulls yet, or dusted off even! The old fabric had to be ripped out fromn the inside. The new had to be glued on the inside as well. Again, very poor pictures, but 2 sundays ago it was presentable enough to win an award at a fords only car show that contained over 120 cars!

[MyLittlePony]

Ha! Beat me to it! Best they hear it from you anyway. I sure would never attempt such feats.

[Richter12x2]

Originally posted by Manicknux:
How DID you change the door panels (seat design) by the way?  I can't seem to find a way to pop them out.

Now as it is vinyl...would there be a way to mold that?  Or not.

And no problem, when someone does their own work and it turns out like that, that's one heck of an accomplishment.

First of all, thank you - now in order -

The door panels I cut out with a razor knife, but it left hang from the fabric weave that I'm still picking out occasionally, and the best advice is don't do it that way.  If all you're changing is that panel, the best looking, easiest way to change it would be to cut a pattern out of hardiboard to cover the panel (past the vinyl stitching), then use contact cement to put whatever you want over the top of THAT, and then again to glue that piece into the car - it'll leave a little lip but look much better than what I did.  Or what I'm doing now is taking the whole thing out, stripping it back to the fiberboard, and covering the whole thing with light tan vinyl using spray contact cement and a hair dryer to stretch the vinyl.  This is probably the hardest thing I've done to the car yet, but the vinyl cost $32 for 5 yards, matches the top almost perfectly, (and 5 yards is WAAAAAY more than I needed, but gives me room to make a few dozen mistakes) compared to the $1500 price tag that the guy wanted to do the whole thing, and he wasn't going to use new vinyl, just a commercial grade vinyl paint/dye.  For the molded plastic pieces, I'm going to take a swatch of the tan vinyl down to Sherwin Williams and have them color match me a quart of nice, autopaint and airbrush it all on.

I'm not sure what you mean by molding the vinyl -this basically comes as an almost fabric from the fabric store (not like vinyl bodygraphics) think more like leatherette than vinyl.  However, if you heat it up with a hair dryer, or let it sit in a hot car all day, you can stretch it really well, you just have to hold it down or brace it until the glue takes.  Still learning how to work on it, but it worked AWESOME on the lower door panels.  

If you try this at home, I've discovered that it's best to NOT try to remove the dash, but if you take the screws out of the top and the bolts out of the sides, you can pull it forward enough to wrap it without having to disconnect everything and remember where it goes.  I haven't wrapped the dash yet, so I'll keep you advised on how well it goes without removing it all the way.

[Richter12x2]

Originally posted by Manicknux:
I never actually liked that sky blue color on the Capri, however, I do like what you've done with it.  It's quite a good looking car now.  I congratulate you, it's wonderful.

~Justin

P.S.  Because of all the custom work you did on the car...I was wondering if you knew anything about interior modifications, such as creating a new dashboard and center console?

Precious little, but as I've come to discover, with enough work, you can make anything look good, just don't get discouraged.  I'll give you two possible ways to do it, though.  

First, you can find a car with roughly the same measurements (you want it bigger rather than smaller, but THAT won't be hard to find) and you can take the dash and console out of that.  Easiest way to do that is to get the dash in, and then cut it to use your stock gauge cluster - you would almost definitely have to reprogram your CPU to drive another car's gauge cluster.  Expensive alternative - standalone engine management, if you plan to go nuts, that may be the best bet for you anyway since you can program it to run whatever maf you want, whatever injectors you want, whatever boost you want, whatever timing you want (even based off RPMs)

To remember on interior swaps:  Newer cars, particularly Dodge brandings have reaaaalllly deep dashboards - they call that Cab-forward.  If you take a dash from them, look forward to a lot of cutting.  Also to note - Rearwheel drive cars have a transmission tunnel, so fitting a console from them would be much more difficult than a front-wheel drive.

Second alternative, is you can take your existing dash completely out, and build your own from scratch - you would use cardboard templates to get a pattern, then transfer it to sheet metal - use a mig to tack weld it all the way around (doesn't have to be REAL strong - then coat the whole thing with bondo or fiberglass and prime it (to fight rust) then either wrap it, or sand it and paint it (can you imagine the shine?  THAT would be a sight to see!  A dash as shiny as your exterior paint!  I've also seen people make a skeleton of a speaker box and make curves and whatnot using plastic sheeting and some kind of rosin, which seems like it would make an awesome dash, but be a LOT of work.

A little homework to get you started -
Late model (2000ish) Dodge Neon is about 1/4-1/2" wider than Capri (easily cut to fit width wise, depth is a LOT) (Got most of the way through the deinstall in a pick-n-pull, when after about an hour and a half with no water in the Texas Summer (June) I decided my dash was fine after all (and it really is, the doorpanels are the bad part).
Ford Focus is almost a perfect fit, and the climate controls and everything are arrayed almost identical.  The only one they had took a hit in the driver's door, crushing the side of the dash.

[Richter12x2]

Originally posted by Manicknux:
I never actually liked that sky blue color on the Capri, however, I do like what you've done with it.  It's quite a good looking car now.  I congratulate you, it's wonderful.

~Justin

I actually wouldn't have picked it either, but MyLittlePony wouldn't let me get rid of it as it was supposed to be a 1993 only color, but came from the factory on my '92.  I have to admit though, it did make painting easier since I didn't have to do the engine bay, inside of the door jams or trunk over again.

I had actually been thinking about these two colors

  Mustang Mach 1 Blue


or  
graphite gray metallic

But then I would have to change my signature

[MyLittlePony]

Originally posted by Richter12x2:
But then I would have to change my signature

Yeah, and thats MUCH MORE WORK than repainting engine bays. Plus, you see that graphite everywhere, why you can pick up a can of it in any auto store...   ...where else can you fine stratosphere blue?

I love that color so much! Plus, I believe thats probally the only car that could get away wearing it.

[Manicknux]

I actually know EXACTLY what you mean by saying the dash is a pain in the butt.  When I bought my working Capri, the dashboard was absolutely messed up.  The trim was painted silver in places and was falling off, the main part was coming undone from the interior of the car (and had been until very recently when I found a way to secure it), and the instrument panel wasn't lighting (....and I still havn't gotten that fixed, driving blind at night, and I cannot find a reason to why it's not working, and I'd rather not take the dash off until I absolutely have to...or have a custom dashboard).

Luckily, I had an extra parts Capri in which I removed the trim from and replaced the silver crap and used some bolts from it to secure the dash and fix some of the damage done to the interior (that includes the seats).

Right now, however, the car is now black (beautiful I might add, save for some body imperfections that I wasn't able to see while it was silver...).  I'm going for a burgundy (or maroon, very similar) soft top and I kind of want the interior to match.  Now, I was going to go with dash covers and such, and just redo the interior that way plus the carpet, however, there are no dash kits for the Capri (go figure).  If I could find a burgundy wrap or cover, that'd be great.  I WOULD like to redo the center console (but that might just screw up the meshing in design between the two).

It's just one of those things that I'd love to do, but would have no idea where to start.

~Justin

(Yes, that's one heck of a ramble.)

[drbob]

Justin, check out the interior of mine.  (at least the red seat part)

[Manicknux]

Yeah, I do like yours drbob, very different and yet still very appealing, but I think I'd like a more burgundy leather if I can find it, but I'm getting the red stock seat upholstery soon, so I might just forget about changing the upholstery...well, probably.

~Justin