Ever find something that was, lets face it, not very well done? Well that is basically the story of my wonderful '94 accord. Well now that I have finally managed to replace all the various broken things under the hood that needed immediate attention I can focus on my stereo. It's not pretty. When I bought the car it had been given a pioneer deck (an older model, but 50x4 mosfet and still sounds pretty good.) and there were some MTX 6x9s in the back. Sounded good when I bought it. Now I fabricated an Ipod jack into my dash, (I'll post a pic of that when I get into the car.) cleaned up the wiring in the rear speakers and got some mounting brackets. (They had been installed with drywall anchors). The front speakers were factory, blown, and removed at various points while I was reparing power locks in my front doors. I left the rear ones in and was intending on getting a good set of fronts to match.

Well, unfortunately I don't have tinted windows. The sun in Phoenix managed to eat my speakers alive in the rear. Here is one of the ones I have pulled in preparation for the new infinitys I have shipping to me as I type.



So, I need something to keep the sun off of my new rear speakers or they will suffer the same fate as the old ones. I decided to reuse the old MTX covers. So this first installment is my covering the old grills in some cloth. I decided I wanted to give some flair to my otherwise dull gray interior and attempt to match the cloth with my exterior. Thanks to a wonderfully helpful lady I met in a fabric store I was able to do just that.

I will pass on the advice she gave me. Choose a lightweight knit fabric. It should be stretchy. If you stretch it you should be able to see partway through it. I found mine in the section for dance costume fabric.

Here we go:

I cut out a square in the fabric, actually a rectangle but the point is made. You could cut it to shape if you like. Just make sure you have enough excess for the sides and to tuck underneath the cover.



I used 3M spray adhesive to attach the fabric. make sure to spray from a distance. If you can see the dark spot that is where adhesive blocked the mesh portion of the grill. On one of them I have to remove the excess hole by hole to avoid blocking the tweeters. Not fun by any means so avoid it if you can.


Place the cloth cutout center over the peice. Try to avoid wrinkles if you can but if it does get wrinkled up there is plenty of time to fix them before the adhesive fully cures.



I chose to have the cloth fully follow the contour of the grille. As you can see make sure that it is taught without slack. If you picked the right material it should stretch without a problem.



Now for tucking the fabric in on the underside. As you can see there are now bolts. I forgot to put them in so I had to lift the material back up and put them in. Pay attention to detail. Its even worse that I did it twice. Fortunately the fabric still stayed down.You can cut it as you need to in order to keep wrinkles away from the outside. I trimmed the excess off before I took this picture. I chose not to spray the adhesive here, because I did not want to risk getting it all over the outside. I used Amazing goop contact cement to secure the excess underneath. Smelly and sllow but it works.


Finished. These turned out much better then I had ever hoped they would. I will post more later on in the week as I make more preparations. I am going to recloth the grills in my door panels as well so that will be up next.

 

Ok, supposed to have a date wednesday so I was saving all of this until thursday. Buuuut... got canceled on so I see no reason I can't have my car sit with the doors guts out for a day until I can slap my new speakers in tomorrow. So I recovered the door speaker grills.

Removed the door panels. I'm sure I don't need to post up pictures of that.

Here we go:
Two screws in the back of the panel hold the grills in, take em out and it slides out.



Removing the cloth on this was a pain. As near as I can tell it was melted into the plastic around the edges somehow. I had to cut the middle section off. Then pull it around the edges.




Cut out the pattern for the cloth.



More spray adhesive



While it may have been a pain in the ***, the channel created my melting in the old cloth is great when it comes to sealing up the edges. More contact cement. Spread in the trough.


After some dry time, put then back in the door panels and set them outside to cure.



I didn't stretch the cloth this time, so it didn't really come out as well as I would have liked. But I can always redo them later I suppose. but it still looks professionally done.

My speakers are scheduled to show up tomorrow. So I'll finish up with the front install tomorrow. Rears are gonna have to wait until I can drill out the bolt holes. in the brackets. But I'll toss them in there with screws until I can go to my dads house and borrow his drill. I'm hitting up the brackets with spray paint as well before I throw them in.

 

Why not do your door inserts as well since you already have it taken apart?

 

The gray carpeting stuff section appears to be one piece molded with the lower half of the panel. unless I'm missing a trick here you would care to enlighten me about?
Basically as near as I can tell the insert is not removeable, and I don't want to take the risk jacking up my panels.

 

I decided to paint the door pockets while I have it all taken apart. To add a little more color to my doors. They snap out after the screws are removed.

I do not have any masking tape, so I drew a line where I wanted the paint to end with some bearing grease I had laying around.



Put paper towels on the parts I didn't want painted. grease line attached it at one end and a couple globs held the rest down.



Painted



Will have pics of front speaker installs, and finished front doors later on tonight.