Interior Upgrades…

ianashton

The interior of our Hornet was pretty dated; call it late 1990’s tech? It had APC seats, a funky steering wheel, and a sort of checkerboard pseudo carbon fiber pattern sticker on much of the trim. And don’t forget the bright yellow 1 ball shifter knob! Before PowerTour in 2022 I ditched the goofy shift knob in favor of a standard black ball, and swapped out a Grant ‘Mopar Tuff’ style steering wheel. If you watch my youtube videos, you’ll also see that this winter I ditched the APC seats in favor of Pro-Car Rally 1,000 seats.

With all of the suspension and engine upgrades we’ve done, I felt the inside of the car needed some updating as well, so I’ve slowly been working on a plan to do exactly that.

Here are some ‘before’ pictures of the interior;

New steering wheel installed just before PowerTour. I also re-painted the tops of the doors
Painting the tops of the doors before PowerTour
First drive with the new steering wheel had some weird angle issue going on, I’ve fixed that.
This is the pattern that Jack had on all of the trim; it looked cool, but certainly is now pretty dated.
Super cool Hornet AMX gauge pack – we’ve never had these gauges working, so I’m going to try to make that happen too.
The pattern is everywhere…
Glove box with the same pattern
I can’t remember if Jack put the Pioneer headunit in, or if I did, but I’ve never been a fan; its silver color and modern look just don’t fit.
Door panels looking a little tired…
More of the checkerboard pattern.
Glove box bezel and door removed from the car
I was able to remove the old sticker in 1 piece, which made making the new template very easy.
Unfortunately under the sticker was pretty nasty – took a few hours of Goo-Gone, oven cleaner, and sanding to get it smooted out.
The chrome was looking pretty weathered, so I stripped that off as well. First coat of SEM Trim Black sprayed
The finished product, almost ready to go back in the car! I’ve got the AMX emblem for the glovebox door, and need to install the latch

Another annoyance I’ve had with this car for many years is that the windows rattle in the tracks as a result of dried out / missing window track foam. I’ve had the replacement foam for some time, but I’ve never taken the time to install it; this weekend I dove in head first and got the drivers door done. The instructions say that it can be replaced with the window still in the car, which is how I did it, but it was a major pain, and my arms are all cut up. I suspect the passenger side will go a little smoother, now that I know what I’m doing.