When I first got the car I was sooooo happy I finally had a car with a CD Player but 1 year after I bought the car the radio started acting up so i decided to upgrade to a InDash DVD player from Panasonic.
As you all know our cars come with that darn big radio setup and when you swap in an aftermarket unit you normally end up with a big gap unless you get an install kit.
Well, if you would like to know on how you could make your own litle Fiberglass filler this is the post you might want to read
PS: If you havent done any fiberglass work before you might want to read my article "Fiberglass made easy".
I started off with just the regular trim piece:
-PICTURE-
So the first thing I had to do was to get the exact measurements of how big the gap under the radio really is. So i took a measuring tape into the car and got the exact size.
After that I had to find something that will hold the fleece for me so i can "mold" it into place. In this case I just cut out a piece of cardboard and made sure its the right size:
-PICTURE-
I then took my fleece and cut out a piece just a litle bigger than the cardboard:
-PICTURE-
I then took my adhesive and glued the edges of the fleece to the back of the cardboard and stretched it nice and smooth over the whole thing and trimmed off the excess on the back:
-PICTURE-
-PICTURE 2-
After that I glued the Cardboard-Fleece piece to the back of the trim and filled it with some bondo bodyfiller (the regular or also called fine body filler, not the fiberglass enforced one). Since I had just recently painted the trim blue i wanted to try to keep it off the other sections of the trim as much as possible..... as you can see that didnt work well so i decided oh well screw it i'll just paint it again anyways:
-PICTURE-
-PICTURE 2-
-PICTURE 3-
-PICTURE 4-
So I just filled the whole inner trim with bodyfiller. On the edges i didnt just want a steep corner as that would really look wierd since our interior is sorda "curvy design". So I took a spreader and filled the edges, put on some latex gloves and ran my finger of the edges, making it a nice round curb kinda edge.
I let it dry and once it was dry i sanded it down with 220 grid sandpaper. Note, this fine bodyfiller will sand very easy so you hardly need to use any pressure. It might take a bit longer for bigger bumps and flaws to come out but the sanding quality will be much better as you don't get too many deep scratches, plus it makes it alot easier sanding the curbed inner edges
This is what it looked like when i got done with the first sanding session in the middle of the night:
-PICTURE-
-PICTURE 2-
The left looks really good besides some really tiny scratches. The right side had some rather deeper flaws in it so i had to put a new layer of body filler on it to get that taken care of.
HINT: Again I found it very easy to just take a second and put one very think coat of white primer on it. That way i was able to see some of the small scratches and flaws that would later be visible in the paint. This way I just needed to put a small amount of bodyfiller here and there instead of putting a whole new layer over the whole thing and sand for another 2 hours
As you all know our cars come with that darn big radio setup and when you swap in an aftermarket unit you normally end up with a big gap unless you get an install kit.
Well, if you would like to know on how you could make your own litle Fiberglass filler this is the post you might want to read
PS: If you havent done any fiberglass work before you might want to read my article "Fiberglass made easy".
I started off with just the regular trim piece:
-PICTURE-
So the first thing I had to do was to get the exact measurements of how big the gap under the radio really is. So i took a measuring tape into the car and got the exact size.
After that I had to find something that will hold the fleece for me so i can "mold" it into place. In this case I just cut out a piece of cardboard and made sure its the right size:
-PICTURE-
I then took my fleece and cut out a piece just a litle bigger than the cardboard:
-PICTURE-
I then took my adhesive and glued the edges of the fleece to the back of the cardboard and stretched it nice and smooth over the whole thing and trimmed off the excess on the back:
-PICTURE-
-PICTURE 2-
After that I glued the Cardboard-Fleece piece to the back of the trim and filled it with some bondo bodyfiller (the regular or also called fine body filler, not the fiberglass enforced one). Since I had just recently painted the trim blue i wanted to try to keep it off the other sections of the trim as much as possible..... as you can see that didnt work well so i decided oh well screw it i'll just paint it again anyways:
-PICTURE-
-PICTURE 2-
-PICTURE 3-
-PICTURE 4-
So I just filled the whole inner trim with bodyfiller. On the edges i didnt just want a steep corner as that would really look wierd since our interior is sorda "curvy design". So I took a spreader and filled the edges, put on some latex gloves and ran my finger of the edges, making it a nice round curb kinda edge.
I let it dry and once it was dry i sanded it down with 220 grid sandpaper. Note, this fine bodyfiller will sand very easy so you hardly need to use any pressure. It might take a bit longer for bigger bumps and flaws to come out but the sanding quality will be much better as you don't get too many deep scratches, plus it makes it alot easier sanding the curbed inner edges
This is what it looked like when i got done with the first sanding session in the middle of the night:
-PICTURE-
-PICTURE 2-
The left looks really good besides some really tiny scratches. The right side had some rather deeper flaws in it so i had to put a new layer of body filler on it to get that taken care of.
HINT: Again I found it very easy to just take a second and put one very think coat of white primer on it. That way i was able to see some of the small scratches and flaws that would later be visible in the paint. This way I just needed to put a small amount of bodyfiller here and there instead of putting a whole new layer over the whole thing and sand for another 2 hours
