With all this enforced downtime, I figured I might as well take a look at my radio pod. I have two to choose soon, the one from parts car and the one in my keeper. The parts car one was in better shape, but. Ot as good as i had initially thought. Initially, I. Thought I only had one crack to repair. Turns out much more has followed!

The parts car pod. At first glanc, i tho8ghr only fixing one crack was needed. Wrong!

Here is rhe main crack thay i thought was the only issue.

First crack repaired with plastticc welding.

 

ABS is fun to work with. It welds back easily with a soldering iron. I use a cheap iron that has held up very well over multiple jobs. Plus, ABS cement from a hardware store can help make bonds. I bought sheets on Amazon of ABS sheets in 1/16 and 1/8" thickness awhile ago to make parts and use shavings from these for extra virgin material.

After repairing the first crack, I started to deep clean the part and realized the housing was cracked in several more places.

Cracks all around the vent hole were found. Lots of flex in the housing.

Other side had some too.

 

At this point, I likely would have scrapped both pods and searched for a better used part. However, since and project is now golden for keeping me in the garage, I decided to try and weld these all closed too.

The next thing I discovered was that the lower tabs AND bolt holes were missing from both sides and both radio pods that o had. Went online to view some pics and confirm rough placement of the holes. Used my two cover plates to see the location of the slots for those to fit into.

Time to rebuild some more of the structure!

Using a scrap piece of ABS sheet, I cut out this section to build up the backside of the brace. Piece is shaped to make maximum contact with rhe original material, yet leace room for the slot for the radio faceplate.

Cemented in with ABS contact cement.

Toop piece cemented in to create the slot for the faceplate.

I am going to follow up with some welding to help blend the pieces together and build strength. Use lots of virgin material to fill the gaps. For the lower holes, planning to build up more material behind, the drill thru it after everything is bonded.

More pics to follow! Need to repeat all steps on the other side too.

 

A pic of the backside with all the welds on the cracks and the finished slot.



All welded in wuth new material. Feels very solid.

Used a needle file to carefully enlarge the hole foe the faceplate clip.

First side done. Now have the second side to do. Thats a job for tomorrow...

 

https://www.hawksmotorsports.com/198...io-bezel-trim/

 

LOL Remember when the pod was $40, and the trim plate was $12? Even accounting for inflation, Hawk's price is $50 too much. And undoubtedly typical reproduction quality.

 

Nice looking piece, and good to know there are options out there. However, since currently my time is worth nothing, and my cost to rebuild this part is zero, I am hopefully ahead of the game by rebuilding my own part.

Plus, this gives me quiet time out in the garage, away from my unplanned, home-schooled kids!

 

Nice work thainglo! If mine breaks apart again, I'll try some of your methods.

 

Worked on the second side this morning. With experience from the first round, went a bit quicker.

Made this piece larger to allow for more overlap, notched to fit around the molded support on the side.

Firat layer cemented in place.

Second layer cemented in to create the slot. Now need to file it down to fit the tab from the faceplate.

Once the faceplate fits in nicely, I plan to use two layers of thicker ABS sheet that I have to build up the backside to allow for drilling the lower radio mounting holes.

also going to try my hand at Gorilla Glue to pull the vinyl wrap back into place. It has pulled away on the bottom - good place to test as it ends up being fully covered by the faceplate. Also have some slight pull away around the vent holes. Those will be step 2.

 

I used Gorilla Glue on mine as well. 5 years in, and it still looks good.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/memb...ml#post5908467

 

I spent an hour this morning reading lots of your thread. Wow, great work! Really glad you linked it in as I was also trying to figure out how to cure the peeling vinyl around the vents. Seeing your example, I just picked up some small trigger clamps that should fit thru the opening.,

First, to fix the loose material at the bottom:

No adhesion along the bottom

Clamped up and will let sit for a day

 

I'm glad it was helpful.

I'm sure yours is going to look great when you're done.

 

After 24 hours of clamping, the bottom looks great. Feeling that taste of success, I moved to the vent cutouts, which were also peeling. Bought a 4-pack of mini trigger clamps from Home Depot just for this job. Perfect size for the opening, but $24 with tax seemed massively excessive. Harbor Freight has little 4" clamps for $2 each. Would have gone that route, but knew a trip into Austin would make the wife very upset, given the situation. So... buckled under and paid for the HD pack. As I said, good tool for this job.

Both sides of the pod were peeling like this from the top side of the opening.

These little clamps were just small enough to fit thru the opening. I hope i can come up with some other uses for them in the future!

 

Clamps removed. The foam is nicely bonded back to the plastic housing.

Looks like a robot design one of my kids would draw.



A little disappointed when I installed the vent. The vinyl no longer folds up and away, but the edge is still visible as it is not tucked behind the small lip of the vent. Certainly an improvement, so no complaints there.

Also, can anyone confirm this is the correct orientation of the vent? The actual holes are towards the bottom of the pod in the way I have it installed. Used my other pod as a reference.

 

Nearing the finish line. Over the last couple days, I built up the backside of the mount so I would have plenty of material to screw into. Used 1/8" ABS sheet, cut into small rectangles. Four layers with ABS cement spread between each did the trick.

Terrible view of the layers, but I wanted to show the high dollar clamps getting a second round of use!

Better picture of the layered backing piece. I have just started to notch the area to make room for the single DIN housing.

Both my project car and parts car came with single DIN aftermarket stereos and the adapter. While the project car adapter was missing some brackets, the parts car unit was complete. That helped locate the holes for the lower section that I had rebuilt. It also let me to realize I had to botch the area to accommodate the bolts that attach the bracket to the shell.



Never showed the cement I have been using. Had this for years from when I had to repair cracks in an old Suzuki Katana fairing. Works great, smells terrible.

 

Done, and very solid. No squeaking or rubbing sounds when I tried to twist the housing.


Next job is to clean up this crap-tastic example of wiring. Making good, solid connections with solder is so easy to do adter just the least bit of practice. Guess this one isnt the worst I have seen - the parts car had house-style twist nuts connecting the wires.

 

My work area to remove old connections, solder and heat shrink. Had seat out already for under dash work and steering wheel was only finger tight. Managed to break the rab on the brand new horn wire when I yanked the wheel off. Sigh. More soldering.

 

All back in and in place. Took awhile to adjust the aftermarket housing and adapter once I had the wiring all figured out. Very pleased with results.

To facilitate the radio pos installation, I removed the center console as it desperately needed work as well. Made it MUCH easier to install the radio pod and route the wires too. Another project to help absorb the stay-arlt-home time.

Waiting to unstall the faceplate after center console is in place, minimizing the chance of scratching it up. Want to rry some wet sanding on it too.,

 

Nice job!

I have to work on my console too.

 

You're inspiring me to fix mine.

I've been home 4 weeks now and was hoping for some time to tinker on stuff but it's turned out to be no time at all because of all the panic to keep production lines going at work. Who knew working at home was harder than being in the office?

 

Nice thing about working on 30+ year old cars is there are plenty of projects to work on!

Now turning my attention to the center console. No major damage but it has the typical covering pulling away from the edges, both top and bottom.