Making a miata race car interior "nice"

In reply to Dusterbd13 :

Wouldn't foam encourage rust???

You would cast it on top of a sheet of plastic, so that it could be removable, but formed to look nice on the outside surface.

Ah! Ok. Makes perfect sense now

I used the same approach Gimp did but I didn't document it as well and I skipped the Lizard Skin and paint.

I welded some tabs in place in some spots so that I had something to screw to.  I did the bending with some steel stock clamped to the bench to hold the material and a hammer to make the bends.  I used a Harbor Freight bead roller to add the profiles and I used cardboard for the templates.

Dusterbd13 said:

In reply to Gimp :

Looked through the build thread. Can you give me a lot more details about what stuff is attached to, how you made templates, etc? You have what i want, i think. 

Sure thing!  I obviously have a slightly different setup, but it was all pretty easy.

The outside perimeter panels are permanently riveted in place the to tube structure.  Where the panels met the body there was a small gap, so I used aluminum tape underneath and seam sealed the edges.

The middle four panels, because they needed to be removable, are held in with dzus fasteners. around their outside perimeter.  The tabs for those are welded to the floor or frame structure, depending on where you are looking.  The panels do overlap each other with a step rolled into one (for strength and looks).

The templates were all made out of poster (or "art") board.  After I got them fitting like I wanted, I transfered them to 16 gauge aluminum.  You can cut it with snips (and we did for the weight contours), but it also cuts nicely on a break.  We put a bead roll in them to make them stiffer so it wouldn't sound like a drum.

The Lizard Skin product was for heat control, but you really don't need that.  Some rattle can bedliner would give the same effect.  I top coated the Lizard Skin with paint just so it would match the rest of the interior of the car.