Pinchweld and Seatbelts Finished

On Saturday morning I finished off the pinchweld at the front and finished the rear seat (fitted lower fabric covers to hide the frame). It took me the rest of Saturday afternoon to fit the rear seat and the front and rear seatbelts. This was a job I thought was going to be easy - and the rear seatbelts were pretty straightforward. A big thank you to "woody" from the AEVA forums who generously donated these seatbelts - they really set the Vogue interior off well.

The drivers side of the base of the rear seat showing the interface with vinyl and carpet.

The front seatbelts turned out to be a bit more difficult. I only had the shoulder bolts that came out of the car and these belts only had one rotating point - the other two were fixed and intended to be fixed securely in position (smaller hole) - not using shoulder bolts! My better judgement said not to use the wrong type of bolt - especially in a safety system, so a quick trip was made to Supercheap to buy some 7/16" high tensile bolts.

The front seatbelts in the Vogue get anchored at the rear two positions in the rear passenger footwell and are fairly obvious.

The decision then was whether to cut a slit in the carpet or punch a 22mm hole in the carpet (I just happen to have a 22mm punch) and mount the buckle above the carpet - we choose the latter (as you can see above). I figured that I'll have extra replacable carpet mats on top anyway. Complications started when the carpet would not sit correctly at the sides. I had to cut down two shoulder spacers to make regular spacers to get enough space for the whole thing to sit correctly. Somehow it took several hours.

LED interior light above seatbelt mount.

Lower section of pillar trim show interface with pinchweld, vinyl trim and sill guard.

Handbrake and cowl.

View of centre pillar trim showing colour change halfway down.

I was really hoping to drive  it on Sunday but we haven't finished the leather cover on the steering wheel and I spent most of Sunday fiddling with the dashpad vinyl in order to be able to fit the dash. I did manage to get the glovebox metal molding into position - held with 1/8" countersunk bolts instead of those cursed pop rivets that I had to drill out.

Other jobs done were to torque up the steering arm and hammer over the tab lock-washer, install the fuel filler and cover, install the internal lights and attempt to install my new rear vision mirror - no go. The new mirror has to sit a minimum of about 100mm off the windscreen. That's too far in an older car with a more vertical windscreen so I'll have to use my old mirror - so I have started to restore it.

Now for the door linings...