Comment

Comment by Michael Forte on March 2, 2018 at 10:58pm

You're right Tony!  LOL.  I have to give that up now.

Comment by Michael Forte on March 2, 2018 at 1:37am

Haha.  Thanks Kevin!  Believe me, there were more than a few Homer Simpson moments.  I deleted those pics.

Comment by Michael Forte on March 2, 2018 at 1:29am

Around the time I took the pic below, my friend came by to check on my progress.  He convinced me to take it to his shop to complete the fiberglass work and upholstery.

After a few days in his shop, he smoothed out and perfected my amateur body filler work, and redesigned and installed new amp and hinge cover panels.  In this pic, the white coating is a very thin foam material that adds a little texture to the covering.

Below, it's starting to come together.  He changed the secondary panel, making it thicker and adding some dimension.  The caddy V will finish it off.

The last one is the finished product.  I'm glad I was able to get as far as I did on my own, but taking it to a professional was the best thing I could have done.  

Comment by Michael Forte on March 2, 2018 at 1:09am

Thanks Tony!  I can't take all the credit for the trunk.  I did a lot of the design and even tried to execute it myself but in the end, it wasn't quite perfect.  So I took it to a friend of mine who has a pro shop here in Nor Cal and he smoothed out some things and re-designed the amp cover.

I made the side panels out of MDF, fiberglass, and body filler.  The side panels are attached to the air tanks, which are bolted to the floor.  If you look closely at the first picture above, you can see a black bracket on the tank. The compressor is mounted to that bracket above the tank (hidden behind the cardboard), but the side of it has two threaded holes.  So the side panels bolt there, and there's a padded cover that snaps on to hid the bolts.  The covers snap on with speaker grill pegs (or snaps).  The amp cover snaps on to the amp rack with the same kind of snaps. 

For the amp cover, you can see a little bit of what I was doing in the second pic above, with the caddy V and v-shaped pieces.  My upholstery guy nixed that design (I wasn't offended) and re-designed it with more of a modern, CTSV - angular look to it, and kept my caddy V idea but executed it much better than I could.  He also smoothed out my side panels before covering them in padding and a red vinyl that's a perfect match for the red leather in the passenger compartment. 

Here's a couple more pics of the design progression.  I used the cardboard as a template to make the MDF inner and outer panels.  Here's a pic of an oversized outer panel I made so that I could make reference measurements from the quarter panels more easily.  You can see the tank and compressor behind it.

After measuring, I made the outer panel the exact size I wanted.  The curve of the top of this panel follows the lines of the trunk opening.  This pic shows the outer panel bolted to the tank bracket.  I later used spacer blocks to attach the inner panel to the outer panel.

With the inner and outer panels attached together with wood spacer blocks, I filled in the gap between them with fleece and soaked it in fiberglass resin.  The wood spacer blocks have a concave curve on the top that held the shape of the fleece while the resin was setting up.  That concave curve matches the curve on the outer quarter panel, where the fin transitions to the side of the quarter panel.

Comment by Michael Forte on March 1, 2018 at 12:45am

Thanks for the kind words.  

Personally, I don't carry a spare.  In 35 years of driving, I've only needed a spare once, so not having one is a risk I'm willing to take.  I just never leave home without my cell phone.  If I was worried about it and keeping it was a must, I would have rethought the air tank and audio equipment location, and would have come up with some way to hide it.

Given the tanks and audio stuff, if I had to add a spare to mine now, one option would be to do as Tony suggested.  I'd probably weld a new hold-down bracket to the center of the floor)and then cover the spare in matching material or perhaps have a focal point on it like the Cadillac "V". 

If you don't have air tanks an audio equipment to hide, you might put the spare in the center of the trunk, pushed as far to the front as it could go, and build a cover over it, or just a simple round cover in the upholstery of your choice.  My design literally started out with some cardboard and tape to make panels to try out ideas.  You might experiment with a false floor idea with some scrap plywood or cardboard as well.  Here's a couple of pics of the early stages of design...it's kinda funny to look at now, but I'm not good at imagining the end result in my head so a visual aide helps.  Even a cardboard one!

Comment by Michael Forte on February 19, 2018 at 11:32pm

Hey thanks guys for the compliments on the trunk!  I'm so happy with how it turned out.

I've been working on blog posts (and wine) all day and I'm thinking about writing an article about the design process of it.

Comment by Jason Edge on February 19, 2018 at 10:47pm

Love the clean look!

Comment by Bill Renda on February 19, 2018 at 6:50pm

WOW I'm a stock kinda guy but that looks stunning I love it

Comment by Michael Forte on February 19, 2018 at 5:03pm

Thanks!  I have CB Chassis front and rear tubular control arms, AirLIft Dominator bags, and AccuAir e-Level controller.  There are Viair 444C compressors and tanks behind the side panels in the trunk.

Comment by Chris Codd on February 19, 2018 at 1:21pm

That looks phenomenal! What kind of air ride setup do you have?