mechfeeney
Member
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In my last post, I had finished the trunk dynamat. I took a couple vacations, but finally had time to bring the interior to completion. As always, here is a link to all of the pictures I took a long the way: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JRq-IBtD6vJlrq8mrjZILgJmF5mS7Se9
I began by stripping out all of the rotted black interior carpeting and went to work cleaning up all of the body surfaces in preparation to lay dynamat. Once cleaned, the dynamat went on fairly easily. It was critical that the sheetmetal was as clean as possible such that the dynamat adhesive would stick well to the surfaces. This meant using a scotchbrite wheel to sand away all of the old dried-up adhesive and grime. I did my best to use the dynamat as efficiently as possible by laying down large pieces. I still ended up needing to buy another package ....$$$.
After all of the dynamat was laid, I followed the instructions for the Delta carpet kit. I decided I wanted brown interior, especially because I had a set of original brown seats from a junker my dad and I stripped. The seats were one of the few components that were nearly immaculate. I started with the trunk first and that worked out well. I modified the removable panels (for accessing the rear lights). Since I had put in dynaliner (0.5" thick), the stock panels were a bit long, but I was easily able cut them to size. I used 3M 90 Carpet Adhesive which works extremely well.
After the trunk was done, I moved on to the cabin. The instructions from Delta were straightforward. I found that the floor mats were very flimsy, so I ended up reinforcing them with a ruberized ~1/8" thick floor mat material (I should give credit to my dad who thought of this). The 3M 90 adhesive worked very well to create a sandwich with the Delta floor mat. I had to peel off the insulation material that came stock with the Delta floor mats because the adhesive they used was terrible. I reapplied the insulation with the 3M 90 adhesive before the final layer of rubber reinforcement. Now the mats are rigged enough and don't have a tendency to wrinkle or slide around. The rubberized floor mat material was $20 from Home Depot and has a large enough area to do 3X floor mats (just in case you mess up).
After the carpet was installed, I put the interior components back into the car (like the new seats). Fortunately, the previous owner who had installed RX-7 seats used the same bolt pattern for the seat sliders. I had to do a bit of finagling, but got the original seats and original sliders back into the car. They are rock solid and make the car look as it should. I removed the 5 point harnesses previously in the car and put in Delta seat belts. I like these a lot, but I do need to figure out a solution to make the belts easier to grab. I have to reach far back to grab the belts right now.
Aside from the interior, I had to do a lot of electrical work (cable management, re-terminating corroded or missing connectors, and overall electrical debugging), but that's another saga in itself. I'm really happy with the end result, although I know that I have a 2-tone look going on right now. I'm debating whether or not to do the vinyl paneling in brown, but I don't think the black on brown is all that objectionable. There are a couple of missing patches, where the soft top anchors to the car, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do about his yet (I don't really want to put the soft-top back in).
Comments and questions are welcomed. I hope the pictures help in the discussion.
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