19-Dec-07 Finishing Behind the Seats Part 1 Hiding the junk in my trunk << Previous Article All Articles Next Article >> When I was in the super-rush before SEMA 2004, I made some quickie leather covered panels to go behind the seats to seal off the trunk from the interior. I didn't cover their construction because I knew they were temporary but basically the curved side pieces were created by laminating several layer of waterboard (thick cardboard similar to a shoe box – available at most hobby supply stores) in their curved state until they became thick enough to hold the shape. The center panel was 1/8-inch plywood. The seatbelt slots were never functional and had seatbelts protruding from them (tied to the cage) for looks only at the show. When the seatbelts were finally mounted, the slots were entirely in the wrong places and new panels needed to be made to fit. With this style panel, I would have to feed the seatbelts through from the backside when installing the panels and new slots would need to be added that were large enough to slip the pieces of the belts through. Because of the new seatbelt mount locations, I decided to make the rear area in four pieces instead of three. There would be a narrow top piece that wrapped from door to door, two curved side panels and a center panel just as before. I want my top filler piece that fills in above the seatbelt mounts to have the same curve as the sides of the roof on the outside of the car, so I made a template from poster board from the roofline. A duplicate template was cut from the one I just made and a filler piece was added beween them while taped in place inside the car. This gives a template that's the exact length from one door jamb to the other. << Previous Article All Articles Next Article >>