oogoom

So, I thought it was about time to make my tC look like new again. It's 10 years old and looking like it. The exterior paint has lots of scratches, key marks, dings, and small dents. But that's for another thread. This is about the interior. The interior was in pretty good shape except the waterfall area had some serious scratches and the center vent area and stereo cover were stained from a leaky air freshener. Never get those oil based air fresheners! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of these stains as a "before" shot. I also wanted to update my tech without going crazy, so I looked into a new stereo system with bluetooth. The idea is to have something I can use with my phone as a pseudo in car nav system. I'll discuss the stereo after I install it. First, let's talk about the trim.

With the scratches and stains, I decided to repaint the interior. After awhile, I decided on flat black as my paint color with a clear coat finish. I used duplicolor paints and it took 2 cans of black and clear coat and one can of primer to get the job done.

While looking at what other people had done, I noticed that there was no one who had attempted to paint the buttons that control the AC/Heat, clock, outside temp, etc. I thought it looked strange when everything was painted a custom color and the buttons were still the same silver. I wanted to paint mine black to match and it took me awhile to figure out how to do it. I went back and forth between finding some stickers with the same font, stenciling the letters back on after painting, etc. Finally, I settled on some tedious and meticulous taping. Here's what I ended up with after a couple hours of work.



I was pretty happy with it and the next day, I went ahead and painted and removed the tape. The tape did not come off as perfectly as I had hoped, but I am pretty happy with what I ended up with. The two areas on the bottom that indicate the key is near and the passenger seatbelt, I opted to only leave the important parts visible.




I ended up doing the entire waterfall trim, the stereo cover, the shifter plate, the side air and defrost vents, the instrument cluster trim, and the door handle trims.

Here is the finished upper waterfall area and shifter plate. I just finished painting today so I don't have any pics of the finished product in the car. I will do that tomorrow after I install the stereo and lighting. Let me know what you think and if anybody knows of someone who also painted the buttons, please be so kind as to tell me how they did theirs. Thanks!

Prolific998

Looks good! Post a pic of it in the car!

oogoom

So, today I installed my new Pioneer stereo and LEDglow interior lights. I'll post pics of the interior lights later when it's darker out and I can take some pictures.

The stereo install was very easy. I used a Metra wiring harness, which made the install go very quickly. I was up and running in no time. Re-installed the trim and voila, it looks gorgeous! Sorry for some of the blurry pics. It was crazy hot today and I'm sure the lens got smudged with sweat.









You can see in the first three pictures, the LEDGlow interior lights I got. They were run but I still needed to attach and hide them. Let me tell you, this was a nightmare. There were not many convenient spots to attach the lights and I ended up doing some improvising to get it attached and hidden. Who knows, I may have to change it up once I go out later tonight to see if it all lights up the way I want.

Well, that's it. Interior light pics will come later. Please let me know what you think of the stereo/trim install! Thanks!

oogoom

as promised..

stereo at night:




LED lights at night:

Constellation

That's some serious effort into taping the letters off!