Next up was reinstalling the interior. It took forever to get lined up and neatly installed, but the interim step looked like this:
Unfortunately I hit a problem at this stage, the tabs that hold the drivers switch panel and passenger cover panel, both had one broken tab and had to be fixed. Then I found some of the mounting tabs were also snapped. I stupidly didn’t take any pics, but had to rebuild the tabs which delayed things. As the panels were carbon and unique to the car they are not made any more, so I had no choice but to fix..
I won't affix the passenger airbag cover or put in the dash binnacle, as I'm waiting on trimming and as it won't be on the road for a few more weeks it’s a bit pointless wasting the sacrificial tabs.
Due to Covid apparently I can't get anyone to embroider the Cup260 Logo on material at present! Its been going on months, I finally found somewhere that was going to do it in November but got delayed as they had backlog, by the time they were free lockdown2 came, repeat again then lockdown 3. They will embroider on their own material but not if I supply it due to covid risks, the alcantara has been locked in an airtight back for 4 months now - so if any bugs have survived that it probably deserves to take over the the world. Shorter story is getting custom embroidery is a complete ballache, and I think due to a lack of team sports they are all on furlough or doing corporate gigs only… So I will be trimming in plain alcantara then replacing with logo version later in the year. As with all things I have no issues with people not being able to do stuff, but long drawn out excuses and constant missed deadlines really bug me..
Another delay as I mentioned was harnesses, they had arrived but were wrong buckle. So whilst waiting for another set to be made (which took Schroth 2 months last time) I put in the set that came with the car, also added an alcantara pad to the harness bar where the seat just touches and previously chipped it, so bar was resprayed:
Seat subframes were a bit ratty, so I stripped and resprayed:
And all done
I wanted to keep both 3 points and harnesses, I rarely use 3 points but its nice to have the options, passenger harness will be rarely used but I prefer to have the pair. I am mounting with the Sector 111 kit that is now sold by Seriously Dave and MSAR, it was sitting in the parts bin from a past car as it doesn’t work with the new subframes. I'm sure its been seen a billion times, but here is the kit:
Thanks to my seat cushions being velcroed not glued in I made up some more lumbar support pads to try out in the summer, made with 3mm closed cell foam and trimmed with soft carpet
The Velcro strips on the other side to match the seats
Passenger seat back in for the first time since December:
And both seats back in (HANS logos are same colour, it was just I had a 3500k light on the drivers side)
Head Unit was also properly fitted. I previously used flip screens in other cars, but went for floating screen this time. There are a couple of options out there, from Alpine, Sony and Pioneer with screens ranging from 6.8" screens up to 9" screens. Dimension wise the big 9" screens slightly overlap the airbag cover, which would mean in the event of deployment the pass airbag may not deploy properly or I would find an LCD screen being fired at my face…
So I though I'd go for the smaller screen and picked up a Pioneer SPHEVO62DAB - 6.8" fixed screen, carplay, time correction, crossover, reverse cam etc etc - best of all it came up on ebay for half the price of a new one. Finally fitted back in:
I will probably swap to the new version that is about to be released (SPH-EVO64DAB) as it has a skinnier screen and wifi
Stereo will of course have to come out again as I wait on retrimmed airbag cover, centre vents and binnacle - but that’s life I couldn't have it on hold forever. So three more stages to interior:
• Replace airbag cover, centre vents and binnacle with trimmed version
• Seats back out to fit new harnesses and polish inside of carbon roof (I forgot)
• Replace airbag cover with embroidered version when the sewing machine folk start working again
