scauffiel

I'm finally trying to get off of my *** and get these done. Or should I say "this" one done. The passenger side should be a lot easier knowing what I know now.



Yeah, right.







Whaddya think?

S.

hot86z-28

those look sweet. good luck on getting the passenger side done. i dont know if it's possible but could u/are u going to paint the flames to bring them out? anyway good looking job, how did u do it?

scauffiel

Thanks, it's just a matter of taking the time to do it when it's not a billion degrees outside. I'm not bringing the flames out by painting or dying or anything, they are just raised and look better in person. The pix were taken as night was approaching and it's overcast to boot so the flash made it look kind of goofy. I've got a writeup on my website; it's under "Interior"->"Flamed Doorpanels".

S.

MetalliCamaroRS

iTrader: (15)

Those look awesome. Very nice and subtle, not over done. Good luck with the second

TZFBird

Well scauffiel, I am going to have to jump on the "flame panel" bandwagon here. I just got done spending about 10 hours on a custom headliner for a friends Cavalier Z24. Anyway, I don't know if you have seen mine. It's the one with the Firebird embossed in the headliner.
But, I am going to have to say that we did a pretty darn good job on this for a days work. Let me know what you think. Maybe I should go apply at an interior shop and do this on the side.
I really like the panel though. Keep up the good work.

uk89camaro

Great looking panels gents. How do you do that? Is it some kind out moulding you cut out, then put the fabric over?

Aviator857

Hey how would you emboss the firebird into the door panel, I have been trying to come up with a design I like. I want to redo the panels when I put Leather Seats in my car. I was thining doing the edge about 4 in in Leather and the middle in cloth with some leather covering the door handle and the area behind it so to keep had oil off the cloth. I am also going to use the pocket and cupholder off an 92 instead of the one in my car now, the fold out one. I couldn't come up with anything to take up the space, but I think a embossed emblem would look great. I may do a photoshop example later to show what I mean. Let me know if there is any tech art. on embossing.

igotslicksNchix

i'm thinking of trying it, so far from what i've read, it takes an exacto knife, a pizza box and a whole hell of alot of patience. a few of these guys have websites in their signatures, explains the processes in detail.

TZFBird

I guess a pizza box would work, but I usually just swing by a grocery store and snag a few boxes before they crush them. That way they are a little cleaner and you can get more cardboard from them.

Anyway, I also thought of trying a door panel, but don't know what material to use. I think it is all in the mix and match of material. I have found that 2 layers of cardboard are what is needed in order to get a good visual of what is embossed.
The flames on the headliner are 2 pieces, and the bowtie is 4 because it is stepped.
Just be sure that the material you are going to use is plyable enough to go around the curves of the figure you want embossed. If not, it will probably not form right and you will have wasted a lot of time for nothing.
In my sig. is the procedure I use for doing my headliners. Hopefully I wrote it up right.

Aviator857

I was thinking of something Like this.

I would match the colors up a little better in real life, The handle and lock is from a picture of my door panel, its grey, but it looks blue in this one. What do you Think?

The top is just the regular top of the panel, use leather (dark med Grey) with a stiff foam backer to raise it up. The Cloth Material (med grey) on just a little bit of foam, the emboss out of cardoard and a little foam to make it softer. The map poket out of a 92 GTA, I know I did a bad job on the map pocket. And the embossing would probably be a little less stand out in a real one. I would also duplicate the FONT for the Formula Firebird to Copy the Formula on the door sticker.

I would probably buy new door handels that are black, since most of my dash is black with dark med grey. Or should I dye it dk med grey to match? I'm going to put in a set of dark Med Grey leather seats out of a 4'th gen when I find a set in good shape. A friend is spose to be checking with a friend that just wrecked one, they just bought another one with the money.

igotslicksNchix

writing may be have bit too complex set of sharp curves and lines to make it look right. dunno if it would work

Aviator857

True, I don't know I may just try it with some scrap cloth and a peice of cardboard and see how it turns out.

igotslicksNchix

not a bad idea

scauffiel

Well, give it a shot, but you're probably going to lose a lot of detail in a bird that small. The problem is that you need to be able to get the fabric (be it vinyl, leather, pleather, fabric, etc) to stick in between all of the raised spaces. Without a decent amount of "area" to stick to, the fabric will just pull off of the doorpanel, leaving you with no details. I think this would be especially bad using cardboard. Since I used foam, I could press down as hard as I had to to get it to stick. Slowly but surely the foam would return to form pushing the fabric up, giving you shape; even then I lost some of the details in the smaller "swirls". Cardboard or wood would work good on large objects, but I don't think it'd do to good with detail.

I think you'd be better off going with something "stylyized" - for instance YOUR version of the firebird logo; something different (and do-able in this medium) yet still recognizable as the firebird.

If you know what I mean.

S.

EDIT: TZFBird: Yeah, you posted your headliner (which looked kick@ss) when I was just starting this project. I've got a bunch of hours in this doorpanel, mostly because the whole thing is new, it's not based off of the original cardboard panel. Cheers,
S.

Mathius

Hey Steve. When you talk about foam, you're talking about the stuff you buy by the yard at Jo Ann fabrics, right? Not styrofoam? What're you using to hold the stuff in place, some type of spray adhesive?

Mathius

scauffiel

Well, I'm getting the foam I'm using from work. We buy the stuff in 200' rolls and it's 1/8" thick (I can get clear up to 1 1/2" thick stuff if I need it). I'm not sure of the type of the stuff you can buy at JoAnn's Fabrics - just find yourself some closed-cell kind of stuff (like the stuff you see those roll up exercise mats made of). Styrofoam won't do 'cause it'll snap and break up and just in general be a pain in the @ss to deal with. I'm using 3M's spray foam adhesive to stick the foam to the doorpanel, the foam flames to the foam on the door and the fabric to the foam. All in all it's working pretty good.

Do I need to put up more detailed instructions on my website? Would that help at all?

S.

Mathius

Well, to be honest, until you said something, I hadn't seen your updated instructions, but they look pretty good. I think I've got the concept down, it's the materials that concern me. My biggest concern, is it's really hard without seeing it in person to see just what type of foam you're using. It looks almost like some sort of foam rubber? Which is a lot stiffer than the stuff I picked up. I'm really concerned about the edges of the flames not getting bunched when I overlay the fabric and end up looking like crap. Any tips on this?

I'm going to give it a dry run on my Ranger first, before trying it on any third gens, but that's a slightly bigger project. The door panels on my ranger are entirely plastic, so I'm first going to have to fabricate new window moldings, arm rests and speaker covers, and then make sure they mount up ok, so I can get a gm style door panel in place i.e. cardboard and fabric.

Do you plan on doing anything special with the edges? I've given some thought to adding some type of leather or vinyl trim, similiar to the stock panels, but you'd have to buy mass amounts of material to get the proper length to go all the way around the door, and you'd have a ton left over. Plus you'd have to sew the entire edge by hand, unless you've got some industrial strength sewing machine. Hell, I honestly don't have the first clue how to use one anyways.

Mathius

rich88gta

Is it just me or am I the only one that noticed this???

BTW scauffiel the flames look sweet

MrsLottaBallsCamaro

Those door panels are kick-a$$! You'll have to come hang out with us some time so I can see them in person. You haven't posted on hr3rdgen.org in a while.

scauffiel

What. You act like that's difficult to understand or something.



Thanks everyone. After yesterday's 115 degree heat the things are still holding up pretty well. I got the door trim and arm rest back on... everything's looking good... looking good...

* SNAP *

F-me. Broke my headlight adjuster thingie. Now it just flops around. I'll probably just pull it out and adjust it by hand after I find some way to tighten up the mechanism. Totally pisses me off. I'm working at 9:00 at night just so it's ONLY 92 degrees outside. Soaked through my clothes, break my stuff and before I could start swearing a blue streak, I just packed up my toys and called it a night.

I swear I frickin hate Virginia in the summer - talk about miserable.

Thanks, I'm trying to get her to the point where I can take her down to the Giants Square car show one of these weekends. I've really kind of lessened my exposure to all of the boards that I frequent not just HR3rdGen so don't take that the wrong way! I just need more hours in my frickin day. When's the next time you's guys are getting together?

I'll get some more pix with the door trim on this afternoon.

S.

TomP

Well, damn, and I was happy that I scored perfect-condition door panels from a junkyard, and they have the exciting map pocket on them.

Hm. I'm not as excited as I was.

Hey, want to trade?

Seriously though, those panels look completely bitchin'! Very nice! Are you doing anything funky with the arm rest and other door pieces?

TZFBird, I love that headliner. My headliner has gone to complete ***, I might try a trick or two with it. Hell, it can't get any worse than it is now!

scauffiel

Yeah, it figures it was too good to be true. After another scorching 110 degree day I come home to find this. *SIGH * Looks like it's gonna be a re-do on this one. I'm also going to add a couple more flames for the large open areas.

S.

scauffiel

It's really not as bad as it looks (and I'm not just trying to convince myself ); with the sun in that position it had just the teensiest bit of shadow which makes it stand out. Close the door or move it so it's not hitting it that way and it's a lot harder to tell.

Course, that still means I'll be doing it over, but in the meantime, it's not that bad.

S.

TZFBird

So, you just used a regular fabric for the panels then? They look nice. Ya just have to figure out how to get rid of the wrinkles though. That sucks that you got it all done and that happened.

Also, how is the dual Throttle Body project going? Looks like you will be running some crazy power with that. Especially if you are running 4 350 injectors with the fuel pressure bumped up on them.

scauffiel

Yeah, I got the fabric from a local fabric store - it's kind of like sweatshirt material, but different. It's weird, it's not wrinkles per se, but it appears as if the glue "thickened" in those spots creating areas that are a bit higher than surrounding areas. Maybe when it cools down the glue will settle; I dunno.

As for the twin TBI project - it's on hiatus. I'd need to run four 90# hour injectors in order to do it, the 350 injectors wouldn't cut it without raising the pressure a bit.

Max HP = [90 (# hr injector) x 4 (# of injectors) x .85 (duty cycle)] / .55 (BSFC)

556 HP from 90 pounders, 401 from 65 pounders. Of course these numbers are theoretical but that's the best guesstimate I've seen yet. Air flow shouldn't be a problems with two 670 cfm bodies.

S.

stuart69427

The flames look good, but i still think 3rd Gen door panels are TOO flat when there all the same fabric. Mine are OK for know, but i still want either GTA ones or 4th Gen...

SLOW5.0

who ever said the t-top headliner is hard to do AINT JOKING!!!!! just got mine put back in ...man oh man that thing was snappping like an old womens bones. had to glass about 40% of it. Putting the cloth in the corners of the t-top cut out was the biaaaach. But its done and looks a hella bunch better. Thanks for them who posted on it. With out your support this would not have been possible.


Thanks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Slow