allinon72
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I've had my car over a year and I thought it was time for an interior change. I have a black interior with IUP package. While I don't mind the silver and chrome, it really doesn't fit in with the looks of the rest of the car. I was reading the thread in Pimpin It about textured carbon fiber vinyl and decided that's the way I wanted to go.
Before the hate, I am a fan of carbon fiber IN LIMITED USE (in this case, just on the dash panels).
First step is removal of the dash pieces. All are quite simple except for the airbag panel, which is just a bit nerve racking. I can explain how to remove each if necessary.
Before I could begin the wrap, I wanted to paint the vents and surrounding parts flat black. This required disassembly of the vents.
Then I needed to paint around the outside of the vent pods and the chrome around the gauge bezel as these areas would be difficult to wrap and wouldn't look very good even if it could be pulled off. The masking took quite a while!
Vent pods are done at this point:
This is the material I'm working with. Basically a knock off of the 3M di-noc vinyl. It was good quality for $20.
Once I started wrapping the pieces with vent pods, I quickly found out that I just wasn't good enough with the vinyl and heat gun to get it right. It requires a lot of stretching and I kept distorting the pattern. Obviously keeping the pattern straight is pretty important. Instead, I made templates out of cardboard and trimmed the vinyl the rest of the way around the vent pods. Took about 6 hours!
And here the pieces are ready to be installed
I'll have pics of the pieces installed later on today.
Before the hate, I am a fan of carbon fiber IN LIMITED USE (in this case, just on the dash panels).
First step is removal of the dash pieces. All are quite simple except for the airbag panel, which is just a bit nerve racking. I can explain how to remove each if necessary.
Before I could begin the wrap, I wanted to paint the vents and surrounding parts flat black. This required disassembly of the vents.
Then I needed to paint around the outside of the vent pods and the chrome around the gauge bezel as these areas would be difficult to wrap and wouldn't look very good even if it could be pulled off. The masking took quite a while!
Vent pods are done at this point:
This is the material I'm working with. Basically a knock off of the 3M di-noc vinyl. It was good quality for $20.
Once I started wrapping the pieces with vent pods, I quickly found out that I just wasn't good enough with the vinyl and heat gun to get it right. It requires a lot of stretching and I kept distorting the pattern. Obviously keeping the pattern straight is pretty important. Instead, I made templates out of cardboard and trimmed the vinyl the rest of the way around the vent pods. Took about 6 hours!
And here the pieces are ready to be installed
I'll have pics of the pieces installed later on today.
