Today I made up time from yesterdays woes.
Starting early I prepared and trimmed the dash panels with new basket weave that I got from Southbound Trimmers the other week. Very carefully I covered the main steel panel either side the steering column and left spare material by the radio plate. Enough to be able to cut the material with a Stanley knife from the rear and trim the radio panel with the “off cut” so that the basket weave pattern was an exact match along the join.
Next the radio panel and glovebox panel were covered, replicating the fold over at the end of the radio plate where it meets the glovebox. The glovebox panel folds over on each end and a flap along the bottom glues around and onto the back of the door.
The new basket weave material was white on the reverse so at every cut on the edges you could see a white dotted line.
The only thing I could do was with a modellers brush, paint the edge of every cut, hole, opening and end of the material with matt black paint.
While all the glue & paint was drying I made a card template for the chrome Blaupunkt face plate. This took me a good while until I was happy with the fit.
This was then transferred to the material and painstakingly cut out so that the weave pattern was all in line, straight and true to the panel. Very carefully I masked up the chrome surrounds on the radio face plate and applied impact glue to it and the rear of the material.
Taking great care I fitted the basket weave into the face plate.
Now some of you may wonder what I’m doing here with the radio?
Well, most people who care, fit the radio like they would in an early 911, by just having the square tuner and the knobs poking through the basket weave. I’m sure some Porsche dealers did this, and fitted Blaupunkt radios.
However I wanted to be a little different.
In the Porsche 914 hand book on the page showing the dash with all the switches and gauges labelled there is a picture of the radio. It has a face plate on it!
After speaking to a few old radio Guru’s it looks like the radio in the Porsche handbook is a VW branded radio. I’m also told the face plate is black plastic with a silver painted rim to mimic chrome. I can see why they chose that; it matches the chrome surround on the heater/fan controls.
I wanted a quality radio, so opted for a Blaupunkt Frankfurt, but in wanting to create a look to match the handbook, I thought I’d do it in a much better quality way. I had offers of buying a black plastic silver rim painted face plate but opted for a metal chromed version to fit the Frankfurt that matched the plastic face plate exactly (including nice radiused corners) that was deep enough for a material insert.
I also managed to combine this with the large rubber knobs to fit the Blaupunkt, but look like the VW ones in the handbook.
It’s taken me a good few weeks to sort all the radio parts out, but the end result should hopefully be worth it.
So after a dry run to check and adjust the radio fit with the dash out of the car, I set about glove box assembly. Cleaning all parts so that it all looks like new, the hard to get at bits and bobs got fitted while the dash was out.
So, with dash built up I fitted it back into the car this evening.
It was a bit of a fiddle doing it single handed, but with the blower box and tank out it was far easier to get the 4 x M6 nuts on under the scuttle. Next I put back all the heater/blower hoses in each corner under the scuttle (removed to access the M6 nuts) and the wiring loom was all laid back into place and the securing tabs folded over.
The 3 light switches to the left of the column were put back in and the cigarette lighter wired up before I called it a day.
