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REAR CARGO PANELS
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Well after seeing the seats and door panels, I'm sure you are curious about the rest of the car!

Well as I have stated before I wanted to do away with all the grey in the interior. Well along with the door panels I had to get my hands on a complete black interior less seats & carpet.

Believe it or not the rear cargo panels were a pretty easy find. I happened upon them at pull-a-part one day...I got 2 whole interiors, a hood, frt., and rear bumpers...all for $300.00. A steal! Now to get the exact black pieces I wanted I did some swapping with Joe. I needed rear cargo sides that had provisions for rear shoulder over seat belts. See my bright red rear seat belts only came in Camaro year cars that had the over the shoulder safety upgrade. So he got my older style side panels, since he is not going to have a back seat in his project car at all.

Ok with the red and black, I have now done away with all the silver and gray panels. I swapped them with the full set of black cargo panels I got at pull-a-part.

Now before they could go in I had to, of course, soundproof them on the backsides as well as revinyl the exterior.

They got red Hampton vinyl inserts in the recessed areas where some cars got carpeted inserts from the factory. To attach the vinyl I had to thoroughly clean the panel with degreaser to strip off any old trim shine protectant. Then I had to lay out the vinyl on top of the area I wanted to insert it. With a sharp pair of scissors I cut out the basic shape. I then got the heavy duty 3M spray glue and I had to coat both the panel and the back of the vinyl. Once the glue tacked up, I carefully held the vinyl over the panel, to orient it, to see how it should lay to cover everything. I then started at one end and very carefully laid the material down. I rubbed the vinyl down as I slowly worked my way across the panel. I had to be sure the 2 glue surfaces made good strong contact. At the same time, I had to be sure there were no air pockets and that the vinyl laid even and taunt across the surface. Some area required some stretching to get things to lay perfect. I also used a roller tool. It�s a wooden wheel on a handle. It allows you to exert greater force, in a rolling motion, on an area without causing the material to dent up from you finger tips. It gives a smooth tight finish in corners where your fingers can't get.

From there I had to let things dry a bit. Then I got out my SHARP exacto type cutting tool. I used the ones with the breakable renewable ends. Worked great. See the key is to have the blade sharp so it cuts the vinyl with very little effort. This SHARP edge will cut the material instead of grabbing it and pulling it. If it grabs and pulls it can pull the material away from the fresh glued surface. This will mess up your ends. It can also cause the edges left behind to be wavy & jagged.

The next step is to cover up the cut line. Even the most perfect cuts will not be perfectly even & perfect. My solution for this is black satin cord. I use it as a piping for the seam b/w the red vinyl & the black plastic. It gives you a professional clean edge. It also works as a transition b/w the different heights b/w the surfaces. See the area where I inserted the vinyl were the large recessed areas in the plastic panels. I felt this piping offered a step to bring the two surfaces together as if the red was meant to be there.

The finished product is very bold and flashy.

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Here are some close ups of some of the detailed work

Here is the cargo area that goes forward into the backseat.

Notice how everything is so well matched...even the 91-92 Bright red Camaro rear arm rest. I debated about these pieces for a while. In the end, I felt if it was black, with the black sail panel speaker covers, it would simply be too much black!

These pics show the decklid�s black plastic piece that was my 2nd hardest find of the black interior set. This actual piece I traded for with Joe. He had a TA that originally came with a spoiler with a 3rd brake light in the spoiler from the factory. These cars all had a special cut out and plastic trim ring that went around the device that made electrical contact and powered the 3rd brake light. See my car was equipped with a 3rd brake light that I kept in my spoiler swap. I also had to swap the lower center cargo panel from his car as well, since his piece had the special contact plate that mates up to the decklid�s connector. For him its a good thing since he was not sure what to do to cover those holes when he deleted the 3rd brake light.

In this picture you can see how I got the hook the pull down motor attaches to chromed.

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HOME PAGE

Follow this link to additional information on the car not found on this site!
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DIRECTORY FOR RAIF'S INTERIOR SITE
01 Site Overview
02 Power Windows and Door locks
03 Miscellaneous Trim Pieces
04 Smoked Plexiglas Covers, Flush Mounted KITT Light Box
05 Carbon Fiber
06 Carpet Swap
07 Overhead Console
08 Red & Black Seats
09 Seat Cover installation
10 Red & Black Door Panels
11 Red & Black Rear Cargo Panels <<<
12 Kick Panels &Lower Dash Panels
13 Car Motor Sports Mats and T-Top bag
14 Neon
15 Center Console Repair
16 Painted Center Console
17 Dash Repaint
18 Repainted Gauge Cluster
19 Autometer Pillar Pod
20 Seatbelts

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