I've had a set of aluminum gage trim rings for a number of years now and I decided I wanted a matching piece for my shifter. I was fortunate enough to learn Solidworks through my job and I used it to create a 3D model of what I wanted and had a machine shop make it for me. Below are some pictures of it installed. The machine shop bead blasted the part to give it the matte finish, but I plan to polish it to match the trim rings.

It was pretty expensive, but I think it was worth it for a very custom look, plus I was able to use an easy to find automatic shifter plate and convert it to manual rather than spend lots of money on a good condition original manual shifter plate. Let me know what you guys think

 

Nice personal touch, that is what third gennen is about taking a car and making it your own.

 

dude thats kickbutt! love the trim

 

Dude you're such a ***** w/that fake plastic trim painted white and calling it chrome. And ever hear of a vacuum?

 

Wow..board censor's r1c3r now..interesting. And before this turns into a flame war...i was thinking i should mention i've known jeremy a while now and he's used to my harassment. Ya need to polish that thing up - if it shines as nice as the trim rings on the gauges do it'll look good.

 

Funny....but you are right. It needs some polish and it should look great. Let's see some more pics when you have it finished

 

Leave it to Tom (KCobain147) to ruin my thread! Obviously you don't come on here much since "the r word" has been censored for as long as I can remember. I usually wait until something is 100% done to post it, but I couldn't hold back on this one. The interior is nowhere near where I want it to be yet and it'll probably be another year or more before it gets there.

 

once you polish it I think it'll look great. I'm not normally one for polished pieces, but I think it will match your cluster setup nicely.

 

I like that idea. Is it possible to make the profile a bit thinner? It almost looks a bit thick and imho might look even better if it were a little thinner

 

I love where your going with this and I agree with just a little bit thinner profile it would look amazing. I can't wait to see this polished up.

I had thought about doing something similar with my camaro, and using drilled "dimples" around the trim, and powder coating everything black, but the inside of the dimples.

 

You're right - your post about the headliner got me back for a bit. Was all the same threads..post pics of your car, debating the same stuff...dunno got bored. There were a few nice build threads, plus kandied..but that kinda died off. ***** ***** *****. Haha. Anywho - back on topic. You have that polished yet? Wanna hit up my stock rims when you're done?

 

I would like to agree that I think it might look better a little thinner but it needs to be polished up to match the gauge rings first. Then I could decide.
I does kind of look like white plastic in the pic but I know it is as you said a matte aluminum.
It still makes the shift plate look more designed for the standard shifter though. I certainly understand about finding good manual shifter plates too.

 

I played around with a lot of different options when I designed it for both the thickness of the perimiter and the overall depth. I decided to go for these dimensions thinking that the thinner walls of the gage trim bezels would look too thin, but I could be wrong. I'll see if I can polish it this weekend and post new pictures.

If there were enough interest, I would consider having more made but they will be fairly expensive. I could make some changes based on what people seem to want and post up an image of a 3D model. I would also verify that it works for Camaros as well, which I'm pretty sure it will as-is. I'm using a 4th gen shifter boot since I already had one and nice inexpensive replacements are available on e-bay. I'm pretty sure a 3rd gen shifter boot would work as well since the trim piece is very close in size to the original openings on 3rd gen shift plates.

 

Looks great. I am glad you swapped out the Camaro console for a Bird console.

 

Looks good.Will look great polished. I agree with others might look better thinner. If your interested shoot me an email with the DXF file and solid works file and I could quote you on a batch of parts.

 

Looks good and killer looking car man. Love the wheels.