Well i may be stretching myself thin here with my engine swap at the same time on my college budget, but while i was recovering from my awful wreck i had been dying to do something on the Firebird. So i looked at how heat rotted my interior was, and decided to try my hand at building a new center console and radio pod. I went and bought some decent quality plywood, lots of wood glue, sandpaper and took measurements of the original console.

 

A side by side of new vs old. Trying to make it an exact fit, so i can incorporate the original shifter plate and glovebox light.

 

Bought some vinyl today that's close in color. Gonna do the corner stitching in a light grey to match the rest of the interior. the radio/climate control pod will be done in the same manner.

 

I'm curious to see how this turns out.

 

I'll be watching. Quite the challenge.. but, looking good so far.

j

 

Started working on the little glove box area tonight, got the base in place. Also snapped a pic of the shifter plate to show how it fits.

 

starting to come together.. were you concerned at all about the weight?

 

i was a lil when i started. the more it comes together the more solid it feels. i assume it would take as much punishment as much as the plastic would. even the upholstery guy i was talking to when i bought the vinyl laughed at how much the plastics give out in ours cars. when i make the console lid it will be solid, i feel like that should distribute the weight around it decently.

pretty much just following the factory design as much as i can seems to be sufficing in strength.

 

very nice.

 

Cool idea, a lot of work. I have done this a few time for design projects in ID school, but never installed one car. Nice idea. I am work on mine now. I stuck with the stock center, but I am making all new top panels out of laser cut polished aluminum. Then topping that with print on polycarbonate...

The reason I bring it up is the laser cut aluminum would really strengthen it up. You just need to tie some of the sides to each other. triangulating corners will seriously reinforce it. You can do it externally with aluminum (feel free to have it powder coated black if you want). You can even do it with a wooden frame internally. That is how they were all done in the '50-'60. I use work at a company that restored classic cars. One of the parts of my job was refinishing the wood components in the interior.

Good job, takes a lot of work. I would suggest deviating from the original console a bit to show-off you made this thing custom!

 

about the most custom thing im going to is wire a usb port in the glove box area for charging my phone. im also going to put a boot on the e-brake.