Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 8:53 pm
I'd take more pictures but they wouldn't show anything more than the one there without taking off the whole rear panel. You're right, though, cutting the cubbies around the bars was a real PITA. I had the back panel in and out quite a number of times before I got it right, trimming a bit every time.
The way I approached it was to just slice off the inner wall of each cubbie, that is, the right wall of the passenger cubbie and the left wall of the driver cubbie (save the walls for later). That did a couple of things: it meant I only had to trim a semicircle at the right spot in the edge of the "floor" and "ceiling" of each cubbie and it made the whole assembly more flexible so I could get it around the bars as I was trimming. I trimmed the semicircles until they fit around the bars. I didn't do that great a job of getting the fit right but I used some of the scrap material to make a small patch that fit the bar better and glued that to the floor of the cubbie.
After I got the fit right around the bars I made a simple cut in the walls to fit the angle of the bars and glued them back onto the cubbie edges. I had a bit of trouble gluing - I thought the material was ABS and I thought acetone worked to soften ABS to "weld" the pieces back together. One of those two was wrong - acetone didn't touch it. I ended up using a combination of contact cement and Goop. Seems to be holding well. I used carpet tape to stick felt on the floor of the cubbies so things wouldn't rattle.
Lastly, the mounting holes for the rear speakers were easy to make. I drilled and tapped mine, self tapping screws would also work. My problem was that I couldn't figure out any way to get the rear panel back in the car with the speakers installed. Once the cubbies were cut to fit the bars there just isn't any room to maneuver the panel so the bottom fits the rear of the center console, the cubbies fit around the bars and the speakers fit in their place. I scratched my head a lot over that one and ended up just leaving them out. I'm not an audiophile, though, and don't miss the speakers even slightly.
The way I approached it was to just slice off the inner wall of each cubbie, that is, the right wall of the passenger cubbie and the left wall of the driver cubbie (save the walls for later). That did a couple of things: it meant I only had to trim a semicircle at the right spot in the edge of the "floor" and "ceiling" of each cubbie and it made the whole assembly more flexible so I could get it around the bars as I was trimming. I trimmed the semicircles until they fit around the bars. I didn't do that great a job of getting the fit right but I used some of the scrap material to make a small patch that fit the bar better and glued that to the floor of the cubbie.
After I got the fit right around the bars I made a simple cut in the walls to fit the angle of the bars and glued them back onto the cubbie edges. I had a bit of trouble gluing - I thought the material was ABS and I thought acetone worked to soften ABS to "weld" the pieces back together. One of those two was wrong - acetone didn't touch it. I ended up using a combination of contact cement and Goop. Seems to be holding well. I used carpet tape to stick felt on the floor of the cubbies so things wouldn't rattle.
Lastly, the mounting holes for the rear speakers were easy to make. I drilled and tapped mine, self tapping screws would also work. My problem was that I couldn't figure out any way to get the rear panel back in the car with the speakers installed. Once the cubbies were cut to fit the bars there just isn't any room to maneuver the panel so the bottom fits the rear of the center console, the cubbies fit around the bars and the speakers fit in their place. I scratched my head a lot over that one and ended up just leaving them out. I'm not an audiophile, though, and don't miss the speakers even slightly.