MODIFICATIONSCrazy Ass Interior - November 2000 to January 2001
The interior of ROLLA SX was always something I was always very indecisive about. Obviously the car is heading towards the show car style so I needed to do something different, eye catching and most of all crazy!!!
I spent quite a long time thinking about what I was going to do. It was very difficult for me because I knew how I wanted the rest of the car but the interior was always something I knew would cause me grief. I had to keep the same sort of style throughout the interior as the rest of the car, and I hope I have accomlpished this.
Choosing a colour
First of all I thought about colour. I always wanted to have a straight black interior
but for a show car it isn't really the way to go. I then thought about a tan colour, but
every show car out there has a ferrari tan leather interior... how boring.... The colour of the
interior has to be one of the hardest decisions I have had to make on the car. I went through
a range of colours, blue, yellow, gray. You name it I thought about it! I thought about
what sorts of interiors did other Corollas out there have, what looked good, what looked bad. I
looked at the whole range of show cars.
Finally, Tim Ward's 'ICEBOY' Honda Civic flashed through my mind...... I thought hrmmm
a red car, with a red interior, yes that looks insane!!! So I gave it a lot of thought and pictured in my mind
what it would look like and I liked the idea of having a red interior so thats what I decided on.
The Upholstery
So I had the colour, now exactly how would I apply the colour throughout the car. Would I just do
a retrim on the seats? Would I use leather? Would I use vinyl? What about the floor, roof and doors?
There were a heap of options to choose from it was just a matter of going with what I liked best.
Initially I decided that the whole interior would undergo change, not just the seats or a few pieces of plastic on the dash. I really wanted to do something wild and different so it had to be all or nothing.
The hard decision was the material to be used on the upholstery. My original decision was leather, it just had to be leather and I was full into doing leather. However after looking at some show cars up close and personal I decided that I wanted the interior to have a clean cut, flat look. When leather is applied to seats it can be very puffy. Some cars I saw which I liked used vinyl. At first I thought.. arghghg vinyl.. nah... but it gave me the look I wanted. So I decided on using vinyl knowing that if I really didn't like it I could just retrim again in leather. Another reason for choosing vinyl is I didn't want carpet on the floor so it had to be custom made and vinyl is probably the best thing to use on the floor.
The Plastics
I already knew that I wanted the plastics to be red. The only decision to make
was how I wanted the plastics to look. You could simply spray the plastics with a can of red
and have red plastics but as always I wanted to do something over ther top and eye catching. So I thought... hrmmm..
I wonder if I could 2-Pac all the plastics in the interior so it all looked like glass? I consulted Gary at WA Motor Body Repair
and he was quickly on the job doing some experiments with a piece of plastic from inside
the car. A few days later he came back with the finished product and 'HOLY SHIT!!!!'... I was very
impressed with what he had done. The standard plastic I gave him was gray with a pattern on it. He presented to
me the plastic and it looked like a red mirror. He said the small 100mm x 100mm plastic took
a lot of preparation to get it the way it was. I didn't care, right there and then I was prepared
to spend what ever I had to to get all the plastics in the car to look like that. When I say
all the plastics I do mean all, the dash got the 2-Pac treatment, and every single plastic
panel in the car, even hooks on the roof and the revision mirror.
The Process
So I knew what I wanted, and I had the vision of it in my head and now the hard part was to turn
this vision into a reality. The first step was to totally gut the interior and it took me about 2 hours to
get the interior to practically bare bones with just the front seats in and the dash (you need these to drive the car).
Once I had accomplished this, I took all the plastics straight down to Gary to get the red 2-Pac treatment.
About 4 weeks later they had finished with the painting so I went to have a look and I was very happy, it had turned
out exactly how I wanted.
The next step was to get the car to the trimmer to start the new red vinyl trim. So I drove the car there and I picked out the type of vinyl I wanted and discussed the finer details of the job. The car stayed at the trimmer for about 6 or 7 weeks where they first worked on the seats, the roof, the floor, then lastly the doors. As they finished sections I started putting the interior back together. So when the roof lining was finished, I put back all the hooks, interior light etc.. all of which were spray painted red.
The last thing to do once the trim was finished was to hook up all of my AutoMeter gauges, and many thanks Leon Popovich for all of his expert help here. I also got myself a new MOMO Tornado Steering Wheel from John Fowler at Wheels World which sets it off.
Overall I am very happy with the way it has all turned out and a big thank you to everyone involved in the process. The interior of the car was finished just in time for its debut at Motorvation 2001.
Special Thanks
 |
| A very big thank you go to Peter and Eddie down at Classic Motor Trimmers. They had the car for about 2 monthts and it really shows in the
quality of the workmanship. I went in there with a idea and they did a great job turning that idea into a reality. |
 |
| Another special thank you has to go to Gary and Laurie and WA Motor Body Repair. They have worked
on my car the whole time I have had it and they really do a great job. Thanks to Laurie who spent hours preparing all the plastics and painting them. They tell me he was about to resign after he finished.. :) |
The first step was to get all the plastics in the car properly prepared and painted by the spray painter. All of the plastics filled up a room as you can see below.
Here you can see the trim work done by Classic Motor Trimmers. It really is an excellent job.
The dash was removed by an electrician because it needed to be prepared and sprayed
by the spray painter. In the car it looks amazing, like red glass.
Here you can see me having fun in my car. This was the first time I saw it after the painted dash was put in by the electrician.
The following pictures were taken as Eddie started designing and making the new floor.
And the finished product.. well I'll let you be the judge of that...
Crazy Ass Interior Part 2 - July 2001 to October 2001
What more can I do you ask? Well, your about to find out..... the sequel to my Crazy Ass Interior (as it has now been phrased) is the addition of a full custom dash housing seven new AutoMeter gauges to replace the standard gauge set. Thew new gauges include Water Temperature, Oil Pressure, Air/Fuel Ratio, Fuel Level, Voltmeter, Speedometer and Tacho.
A custom dash was always something I had planned for ROLLA SX. The main purpose was to get rid of the standard gauges and to customise the dash in certain areas, especially in the way the gauges are mounted. Just by looking at the dash you will notice the side vents and rear vents are gone and the gauges are raised out of the dash creating a variety of *evil* bends and curves.
The entire dash, was the creation of myself and my very good friend James Mandy. About 1000 hours (over a 4 month duration) of research, design and labour was spent in creating the dash, as well as a few dollars on gauges, fibreglass and a few other bits and pieces.
The first thing we had to decide was how we were going to make the dash. Would we chop up the current dash? Would the new dash be an entire fibreglass mould? etc.. We decided that the best thing to do was to get another dash from a wrecker and modify that. So, we contacted Tyson Fraser at Just Toyota O'Connor and after a short drive, a carton of beer and an hour ripping a front cut to bits, we walked out with an AE92 dash.
As you all know, a car dash is coverd with padding and vinyl. This was in the way of what we wanted to do, so we ripped it all off the new dash so that we were just left with the plastic skeleton. This was the base of what we were about to conjur.
The next step was to fit the dash in the car and design what we wanted the new dash to look like, and put our heads together to decide how we were going to acheive it. Upfront design of what you do may seem like a waste of time to some people who like to just jump in, however it does save you a lot of time in the end because you have already decided what is going to be done and how. Of course there are always stumbling blocks in the way for you to sort out, but it wouldn't be any fun if it was easy now would it?
We decided that the new dash would be stripped of all vents, that is the two on either side of the dash, and the rear demister vents. The idea being to make the dash as smooth as possible so as to direct the viewers eyes on the *evil* gauge pods we had created decided on.
Another idea we had was that we wanted the gauges to be visible from wherever you stood around the car. So that if you stood in front of the car you could see the tops of the AutoMeter gauges sitting in the cabin. All stock dashes have a viser which goes over the gauges to keep sunlight out. What we did was chop the viser off. Simple.
We used foam to blank out the left and right vents and to pad the dash in certain areas where padding once existed. To blank out the rear vents, we glued small pieces of laminex on the back and used bog to fill the holes.
Once the holes were covered up and the appropriate foam was used to pad the dash, we spent hours bogging and and sanding the dash to make it as smooth as possible. The next step was then to make the frame for where we wanted the gauges mounted. We did this using James's old Twinpole popsticks, PVC piping and MDF. This stage if the project took about three weeks. The hardest thing to do is to get the templates mounted at the right angles and in the right places. Once we had that, we then concentrated on making it all strong to withstand the lycraq, which was to be stretched over it.
Once we were happy with that, we were then ready to stretch lycra over the gauge pods. The idea is, by stretching lycra over the pod area and pressing MDF rings over each gauge (secured with a bolt through to the other end), you create the final shape of what the dash will look like. There are no photos available of this as we didn't want to let out too many secrets.
Once the lycra was in place and secured, we resined the lycra to make it strong and then fibreglassed using 2-ounce chop strand. Once that was dry, we ripped out all the pop sticks, PVC and MDF because it was no longer needed. We then also spent some more time cleaning up the dash more and prepared it for the final fibreglassing.
With the gauge pods all glassed up and looking good, we had reached a major milestone in the project and we were full steam ahead. The next step was to fibreglass the rest of the dash so to create a one-piece dash. After we did that, we did the first fitting into ROLLA SX to make sure everything lined up properly, and that was a complete success. The dash lined up perfectly, and look fantastic in the car.
So with the dash completely fibreglassed, the next step was to get it as smooth and defect free as possible so we spent hours and hours bogging and fairing the dash. Thanks also to the help from Paul Budimir.
With the dash nearing its finishing point, it came time to drilling out the holes for the gauges and rectangle for the Wolf 3D. We decided that we would do the gauges first and leave the Wolf 3D for the very end. Drilling into the dash was a very nervous task, as one crack in the fibreglass could end months or preparation. Lucky fibreglass is string and help up nicely to the drill piece. Thats Kevin Mandy you see in the pics below drilling into the dash.
We were then ready for the final fitting into the car, which I must tell you was pretty exciting!! Seeing those gauges in the car in the dash was pure bliss. The mountings for the gauges and the angles turned outperfect and as planned. As you can see, it brought a smile to my face!
Well, we were getting pretty excited at this point and our project was finally coming to a near end after 3 months of work!! The next step was to prime the dash so we could see all the imperfections in our handy work. With the primer on, you can really see the shapes of the dash, which is really when you get a smile on your face! After the first priming, we cut the Wolf 3D hole and then spent about 8 hours bogging and fairing the dash to make it perfect before the final priming.
Here is James after we spent all day sanding the dash. Looking pretty tired, and excited all at once!!!
We primed it for the last time that day, which brough out work on the dash to an end.... and what a journey it was. The day after I hand delivered it to the painter, who then again spray puttied the dash, and then spray painted it 2-pac red.
And the final result, well.... I'll let you be the judge of that again....
While the dash was out of the car, we completed as much of the wiring as we could to make the job easier.
And the finished product in the car.
Special thanks to James and Kevin Mandy for all the help and expertise, without them, the dash would never have been.
"What The?" Body Kit - July 2001 to October 2001
You may be wondering why I have captioned this "What The?". Well its because now, I get a lot of questions asking what the car actually is. Need I say more about that then?
I had been planning to do a lot of diffent things with the body of the car. Modifications like this do take months to complete because of the work involved. For this reason, I had to strategically perform the mods in between shows. I do this so that the car can appear in every show during the calendar year.
I originally had an EVO 3 front bar, USC side skirts and the USC rear bar attachment fitted to provide a custom and personalised look on ROLLA SX. This of course didn't really satisfy my need for real custom work so I began doing some research and investigation as to what I wanted to do. The Australian market for bodykits is mainly "off the shelf" type kits, which I find extremely boring, timid and just too repetitious. I really like to add a custom touch to my car to make it different. There are not many people out there willing to take the extra step from "off the shelf" to completely custom, I guess I'm just one of those nutters. Some people say it takes a lot of money, and in some cases I would agree, but a lot of the time you can do simple custom modifications at minimal expense. I have seen people spends hundreds on "off the shelf" products when custom work was only perhaps a few hundred more dollars around the corner. Its worth looking around and really thinking about what you want to do.
The first thing I did was consult Bruce down at Fibrevision. He and I have always had plans to tackle my car with something different, it was just a matter of deciding what we wanted to do. I went through a ton of magazines getting ideas, mostly Japanese magazines, thats really where a lot of the good ideas have come from. Like I said, stay away from the Australian market, just too boring in most cases.
One cover car I was looking at really caught my eye. It was a 2-door Honda Civic with the FEELS wide-body kit on it. It looked pretty wild and there were certain features which attracted me to it. The first thing I did was draw sketches of the kit on my car to get an idea of what it looked like, of course adding my own touch of custom work in the process to come up with a design that I was happy with. Its worth noting here NOT TO RUSH!!! The worst thing people do is get so excited they rush into selecting kits when they have no idea how they look on the car. Its a must to draw sketches and design what you want the car to look like.
There were a few key points that I wanted to satisy, these are listed below:
- Every panel on the car had to be customised in some way shape or form;
- The car had to appear wide;
- All the lines and small features had to be removed from the car;
- Door handles had to be a thing of the past;
- People could not recognise it as a Corolla; and
- IT HAD TO BE TOTALLY WILD!!!!!
The car was at Fibrevision about 4 months from June to October 2001. In that time, they managed to get most of the kit done including the sik ass front bar, rear bar, front and read quarter panels, all the doors and the side skirts.
The front bar was the only item which wasn't the whole FEELS item. I always liked my EVO style front bar, but I wanted it to appear more aggressive so we added a Blitz front lip and we moulded the FEELS gills in on the side from the FEELS front bar. The end result is something very different and is actually a combination of 5 different products.
To add to the customisation of the car, we added in a genuine SPARCO Fuel Filler and removed the standard Fuel door. The polished billet item looks a treat against the wide body and really sets off the side of the car.
Well... I guess theres not much more to say except there will be a part two to this!!! Scope out the pics below for some close up action!
[cabin] Final Battle 2001 Preparation
Getting ROLLA SX to the [cabin] Final Battle has always been a goal of mine and getting there required a lot of hard work, sleepless nights and help from a variety of people.
The car was painted in the last week before it had to leave for Sydney. Thanks to Dave from Fibrevision who performed the amazing task of getting the car fully sprayed to a high level of quality. Under such harsh timeframes and poor working conditions, Dave returned a great result. Thank you again Dave!
After the painting was finished, I was left with the daring "put together" and I only had two days. As you can see from the pics below, the car two days before it left for Sydney was almost a shell, It had no door panels, no interior and was a complete mess. When you looked into the engine bay you didn't see chrome, you saw dust, just mountains of dust. Thanks to the efforts of my close friends James Mandy and Paul Budimir, we managed to get the car complete and to the depot ready for the long trip accross the Nullabor.
"What The?" Body Kit Part 2 - December 2001 to March 2002
Last year we sent the car to Final Battle 2001 not quite complete and how we wanted and we always planned to get stuck back into it on its return. So, as soon as it got back it was traight back to Fibrevision where it would receive the finishing touches, modification and final painting. It is unbeleivable how much work has gone into the car to get it to where it is, every panel has pretty much been modified except the bonnet. Part 2 of the body kit includes:
- Removal of aerial (smoothing a-pillar)
- Removal of AE92 style rear vents on rear quarters (smoothing rear quarters)
- Removal of roof gutters (smoothing of roof)
- Addition of FEELS rear wing blended into car
- Other fixes
The car was shown to the public with these new mods at the 2002 Perth [cabin] Auto Salon. Check out some of the development pictures below.
