Interior enhancement on the cheap

[Leland Pate]

Thought I'd share a couple improvements I made today on the ole Carrera.

It has always kind of bugged me for some reason that the door panel inserts were the same color as the door panel itself. I thought black would be a nice contrast since it is the theme used throughout. At first I was going to use alcantara (synthetic seude) but changed my mind after I wrestled with the fear of being overly "import" in look. So, I took a door sill to a couple fabric stores and finally found a really good match to the factory grain and texture.

When I got home, I removed the door panels and unclipped the inserts. Some have said they've had luck removing the inserts without removing the panels, but I got no joy trying to get them lose that way. Once off, they were carefully stripped and the original tan vinyl was saved and bagged up for the future. Recovering vinyl is not hard, you just need patience. If you screw it up, you just start again. Leather is another story altogether because screwing up can get expensive real quick. They turned out pretty good. The camera catches a few minor imperfections that you don't see in person but that's ok. I just wanted to give the doors some depth and I think they came out great.

Then I turned my attention to the center console. The tan vinyl there also bugs me and looks rather cheap. There is a plasticy looking sheen to the factory vinyl on these cars. Anyway, near the rear tray there were some scratches and scuffs from things being loaded and unloaded in the rear so I figured, might as well do the center console in black as well. So I pulled it out and stripped the factory vinyl off of it... ...the whole time thinking how hard it was going to be to recover it with all those curves and such.

Again, patience is a virtue. After much stretching, fanagling and more than one curse word, I managed to get it on and you can't tell it wasn't covered by Hans Grubenstein, or some other factory upholsterer. Before reinstalling it, I turned my attention to the badly faded factory shift knob. I've looked at replacing that thing for a while but just cannot justify spending $200+ for a fancy 996 knob or the like. While at Checkers buying the upholstery adhesive, I noticed they had some shift knobs in the "LED wiper nozzle/Universal fart can exhaust" isle. One in particular was a knock off of the new Momo line and looked fairly acceptable minus the fake carbon fiber button and tacky "carbon fiber" textured vinyl covering. I thought, "I can do something with this thing and bought it.

After recovering the center console, I cut the underlying rubber knob from the boot and rerolled the cut edge of the shift boot in on itself. I then took the el-cheapo knob and disassembled it. I pulled the cheaseball carbon look vinyl off and (to the horror of many here) cut up a perfectly good tan leather 996 turbo shift boot. I recovered the knob with the leather from the shift boot. It would have worked great if I hadn't thought it'd be cool to use the double stiching of the boot in the shift knob. To make a long story short, the stitching made it next to impossible to get the leather to conform to the sphere shaped knob without wrinkling. I finally managed to get it on with satisfactory results but when and if I do it again, I will forgo the stiching to make it much easier to pull and conform the leather without the wrinkles.

As far as the "phat" carbon fiber insert is concerned, it's got to go. I'd like to find a peuter colored Porsche crest (like the ones found in older Porsche lighted keys) and encase it in some sort of epoxy/resin. I think that would look very nice and subtle. But that is a project for another day. The knob only cost me $15.99. Not bad.

[strupgolf]

Damm you do good work. Nice

[Oh Haha]

Nice work, Leland. That really stands out.
I find myself scrounging the 'import' section at Autozone for pieces I can use, with a little modifying, of course. The import stuff is cheaper, too!!Woo Hoo!