Making of a 308 interior

That's the same experience I had with the VW project I mentioned earlier; the "gates" just would not work consistently. Even with all new bushings and a completely rebuilt shift selector mechanism.

Your solution looks good, I'd stay with that. For this: "to cover the gap under the gate somehow", perhaps a shallow boot of some sort (similar to a regular shifter boot) under the plate?
 
That looks pretty decent. Are you going to number / notch / label the gear positions into the plate in lieu of the gate?
 
lookforjoe said:
That looks pretty decent. Are you going to number / notch / label the gear positions into the plate in lieu of the gate?
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Not sure... on Monday I'll get a chance to play with it a bit more and get a better feeling how it's going to work.
 
Consider two fixed aluminum plates spaced .125” apart with an identical opening in each that matches the extremes of the pattern.

Then sandwiched inbetween those plates is a .100 ascetel/delrin sheet with a hole the diameter of the shift rod.

You will have a closed opening that recedes visually but doesn’t allow crud to drop through to the mechanism below and allows you to shift unimpeded.
 
Eastep said:
Great progress! I too attempted a gated shifter, and ran into very similar issues. Unfortunately our X1/9 transmissions are not as bolt action as some of our up scale relatives.
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While I do love the shifting of my 348, I’ve never driven the X thinking “man I wish this shifter was gated.” That and not all Ferraris have gated shifters, and when driving you sort of forget about it anyway. Looks cool though I guess. One of my Ferraris has a gated shifter and the other one does not. Both gearboxes are great and you forget about the gated part while driving.
 
Little by little I'm making progress.... Still playing with the shift gate and center console that required the application of extra foam today so there's nothing much to report so I started work on the the side armrests. Nothing overly complicated here other than the choice of the angle that it slopes away from the front. I like to rest my arm while holding the steering wheel so that was the main criteria for the angle. You can notice in the final image a comparison of the 308 and the X that clearly shows the lost inches in width that the ferrari has over the fiat. It makes for a bit of a challenge to get the lines looking similar - but it still works .
armrest.jpg


overhead.jpg


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Clark - would be willing to share the overall and gauge placement dimensions of your Instrument plate? A pic with the on-center measurements for the gauges? I'm thinking I may have to go with your style IP - the later one is such a mis-mash, the way the glovebox & everything else DON'T flow like the earlier one, I thinking I'd do better to follow in your footsteps. If you can, it would save me a bunch of time :)


EDIT - with the width you have alloted for the armrest, it doesn't intrude into the seating area too much?
 
lookforjoe said:
Clark - would be willing to share the overall and gauge placement dimensions of your Instrument plate? A pic with the on-center measurements for the gauges? I'm thinking I may have to go with your style IP - the later one is such a mis-mash, the way the glovebox & everything else DON'T flow like the earlier one, I thinking I'd do better to follow in your footsteps. If you can, it would save me a bunch of time :)
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No Problem Hussein. I'll see what I have here at home. My buddy still has the cluster at the moment. The armrest starts off at 3.5" at the dash but quickly curves into 2.5" and then gradually goes down to 2.25" at the bottom. I don't think it differs much from stock as far as it intrudes into the cabin.
 
My god, man... Your combination of skills and time are enviable! Keep at it, and please keep posting!
 
So I do realize on the 308 they have the piece on the door which mates up to the dash, but you might want to consider removing it. Here is my thoughts on why. First, you are right the interior room is limited vs the 308 and the side piece you want is going to intrude on your space to site and drive. You are also going to wack your elbow on it multiple times. I had a role cage in an X once which had a similar piece and it took forever to not hit it with my arm.

Maybe instead of having the full piece on the door, do an illusion instead. Have the dash meet the door then have the fabric in the door match the dash and run back on the door card as if it was built out but not. Does this make sense? Hard to explain.

Anyways, I am really enjoying your work, very excited to see how it turns out.
 
Dr.Jeff said:
Your foam shaping skills are getting great, looks nice. :)
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Chad C. said:
My god, man... Your combination of skills and time are enviable! Keep at it, and please keep posting!
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Thanks for the encouragement guys but I think Chad's second comment is more to the point. It's not so much that I have much in the way of foam shaping skills per se as I have time and persistence. :) I can't count the number of times I have cut too deep or figured something completely wrong and just went back over it and did it again... and again :p

So in the course of shaping the tunnel I picked up 8 switches and aluminum stock. To get the Ferrari-esque look of the center console required lifting the hand brake up again another inch or so at the front so when in the down position it won't foul with this hardware. I think it will probably work now. I will need to shape the aluminum strips with a file a fair bit to get the proper contours but heck - that's half the fun. If one really wanted to get hard core they could purchase real ferrari replacements from unobtainium supply but the cost is just too far out there ($200).

I'm not going to attempt to retrofit a set of 124 sliders to work with the fan or heaters to make it more realistic. I'll just use the new switches for what makes sense in some other manner. There remains a few potentiometers left to acquire closer to the stick for it to fully resemble the 308. I can pick up something for those some time in the future... I just wanted to test fit these to make sure there was enough space for it all to fit. Which it appears to have accomplished. Oh yeah... and also sculpted the little "storage space" in front of the stick. I like to carry a coffee with me when I drive (true Canadian I guess) so I'll fabricate some sort of holder that fits in there snug at a latter time too. That's why it appears to be deeper than the 308 ... because it is.

switches1.jpg


switches2.jpg
 
Interesting how Ferrari placed the toggle switches so that your knuckles didn't trip a switch when releasing the handbrake. I like the style of switches you sourced too.
 
One step closer to glassing...

This afternoon saw the center console mostly complete. I think I have found a way to free up a bit more storage space too, provide extra power outlets (12v, 5v USB, and volt meter) and still put that under the dash stiffener back in the cabin (albeit a bit further forward). The idea is to leave a bit of space between the outsides of the forward center console and the inner "box" portion used for storage. That way I can weld up the stiffeners and slide the front of the console over the bracing such that it is concealed behind the lower dash. This has been the one thing that I have been racking my brain about over and over again since the project started. The Ferrari 308 does not have anything beneath the dash so adding something takes away from this being an "exact" replica of the interior but that was never really going to happen anyway given the effort that would have been required to move the shifter etc. I am content with this little divergence and I guess that's all that really matters anyway.

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dooropen.jpg



All that remains now is to create the passenger side arm rest and prep the pieces for fiberglass. (Which will require some figuring out of mounting points etc, smoothing over some areas with drywall compound, and probably the removing of the binnacle from the dash - which will require a bit more thought on my part.) Anyway, the project continues.....
 
Eastep said:
This fits the design of the X, so much better IMO. It doesn't look so "cheap".
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As a young man I was drawn to cars like most of us I guess but it wasn't until a couple of years ago after the kids had moved out that I finally decided to get a sporty car of my own. I had been eyeing the Ferrari 308 for what seemed like forever but with the prices rising as they have been for the past number of years I just couldn't justify spending that kind of money for something that wasn't a necessity. At first I looked into buying a Fiero and tweeking that into something more "exotic" but as hard as I tried I just couldn't come to the point of getting one. The style and pedigree just didn't fit the bill. Then one day while looking through the local buy and sell I saw a rusty old X for sale for next to nothing and somehow it got my attention. As a kid there wasn't much about the Fiat that caught my eye but 40 years later things were suddenly different. Perhaps it was the look of the clean lines that did it for me, or maybe the Italian history of being a close cousin to the 308, but whatever it was I started looking for a rust free example to bring home. I bring all this up just to say what a let down it was to peer into the cockpit for the first time and see all that plastic on a cracked dash with run of the mill padding all about. I completely agree with you Eastep... the stock dash looks cheap to me and doesn't do the design of the X justice. I just hope I can pull off something better ;)
 
Love the way this is coming together - great inspiration indeed! Given how far the Vintage Air box sits into the center cavity, I'm going to have to have vertical panel to cover it - I would have liked to have left that area unconnected like the original inspiration.

I am curious how you are going to deal with the fact that layering fiberglass is going to increase the outside and decrease the inside dimensions of everything - are you cutting back the surfaces to allow for that, or have you been making everything slightly undersize to allow for the change in dimension?

I'm going to have to try & wrap up my bodywork so I don't lose all momentum & have this fall aside - I have much work on my Mum's house to do this Spring that wil likely interfere with my plans....
 
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