These are Sparco 'Torino' seats with a custom colour combination. Not my custom colours, unfortunately. The seats were destined for a project car that belonged to a shop that I dealt with in the past. They never got around to using the seats, and wanted to unload them. Thus I got a killer deal AND exclusivity!
The seats are mounted on Sparco sliders. In turn, the sliders are bolted to Wedge Engineering supplied brackets.
Wedge Engineering are, as Brits would say, 'mega'. The order took three weeks to fill, and I waited patiently. To my horror, when they arrived, they had made the wrong brackets. A phone call later, they confirmed their mix up. A day or two after that, I had the right components in my hands. I'm sure they loss money on the deal, but they made good on their word and took responsibility for the mix up. I love dealing with businesses like these. Unfortunately, not everyone acts in the same manner! Whatever, I attribute Wedge's excellent service to their being totally old school California hot rodders. Top job.
You can reach Wedge at 562-633-1663. They're in Long Beach, and as far as I know, have no website. They are that old school! :)
I also purchased off eBay a pair of lumbar supports. Good stuff, definitely improve the seating feel.
The belts are also Sparco pieces. They have a 'Y' buckle in the back, so that you can quickly detach them and allow easy access to the backseat. Longish story to why I have a set of red belts and a set of black ones. The red ones are from when I had just a Sparco 'Sprint' seat in the car, driver's side only. They were a bit bright, too auspicious for my taste, so I took them out and got black ones. Never got around to selling the red ones, so they stayed. Then I bought the Torinos and had no more money for another set of belts, so in the red one went again!
I have a fair amount of customised stuff for my instrumentation. I made the white faced gauges myself. Hours and hours were spent on the computer getting them just so. They are printed on waterproof, never-tear paper. I actually got the idea from Justin Van Abrahams, who sold white faces a while back (the speed shot above is with his gauges in the car). I bought a set of his gauges, but I soon wanted to convert to a KMH speedo, so I had to make my own gauges. That and I hated the bloody clock, so I eliminated that.
I sold my white faces for a while, but now that a company has started producing 'indiglo' versions, I stopped. Kind of a pain too, anyway, as the paper was at times eaten up by the various printers I used.
In the upper DIN slot I have a custom made, CNC laser cut triple gauge panel that holds three Autometer 2 1/16" gauges. Vacuum/boost, air/fuel ratio and exhaust gas temperature. These are most critical for tuning, and thus are up top. The stereo has been moved to the lower DIN slot.
I was very fortunate to have found in the local wreckers a very rare triple gauge package that goes beneath the lower DIN slot. Unfortunately for me, along the install, I broke the thing slightly. It'll go back with some glue and patience, just haven't gotten around to it yet. In this package I have another three Autometers, oil pressure, oil temperature and water temperature. These three are wired into an Autometer Tri-Alert gauge warning system. From user programmable parameters, the Tri-Alert will trigger warning lights or buzzers or whatever. The oil pressure warning light goes off if there is no oil pressure (doh), but for the other two I took a page out of the current BMW M series cars. I have the oil and water temperature warning lights lit up until a set temperature, ~50 degrees Celcius. It's a nice reminder to not push the engine too hard when it's still cold.
The SDS programmer itself is also feature
three gauge display modes. Gauge 1 mode shows manifold pressure,
RPM, water temperature and air temperature. Gauge 2 mode shows the
mixture knob position, injector duty cycle, accelerator enrichment and
ignition timing. Finally, Gauge 3 mode shows batter voltage and throttle
position. These are used for tuning, of course, but I usually drive
in Gauge 1 mode just to monitor things. The only wish I have is that
ignition timing be on the same mode as RPM and manifold pressure, but you
can't have everything I guess.
I'm quite proud of my find on the shift knob. It is made by a British company called Richbrook. Simple, elegant. I was very pleasantly surprised when I ordered it that the Saab Griffin emblem was available for it, so I had to have it. Very nice indeed. I also have Sparco pedals in the car. While this may seem, at first, a riceboy mod, they are not. I've seen them in racecars, actually. And they help with heel-and-toeing quite a bit. Now, just go ask your average riceboy what heel-and-toeing really is....
The Jorgen Eriksson short shifter, unfortunately, cannot be seen at all if it is installed. So I modified the install a bit. I basically just dug out my old, slightly torn leather shift boot and cut it down a bit. Then I mounted it lower on the shifter's shaft. The reverse lock out mechanism was accomodated by just cutting the collar down so that only the essential part remained. Works just fine, looks great because I can show off the short shifter a bit!
The wheel in most of the pictures is a Sparco 'Ring' wheel. However, I have replaced this with a Nardi wheel, for more exclusivity and car snootiness. The Ring is a 330mm, and it slightly obscures the tops of the gauges. The Nardi is a 350mm diameter, so it should help in that department. Not to mention having mucho cachet - Enzo Nardi made wheels for Enzo Ferrari, way back in the day...
The carpets in the car were all completely dyed black. This took my like 3 evenings to do, and what a pain it was. I used an alcohol based stain that is used for home interiors, on wood. Talk about black hole in a bottle, this stuff works very very well! I also painted the centre console a silver. It contrasts quite nicely with the black carpets. The sills, including the one in the hatch, were also painted silver. These I had my bodyshop do, as opposed to the centre console, which I did at home.
There's not much in the way of stereo gear.
I'm not a connoisseur of car audio, and I don't like the negative aspect
of the weight gain stereo gear brings with it. I have a Panasonic
deck, and amp in the trunk, two Alpine 4" speakers up front and two JBL
3-way 6"x9" speakers in the parcel shelf. The stock 4"x10"s were
removed. I will, however, put two 5.5" speakers into the doors up
front, when I get around to it. They're just sitting around waiting for
me to find the time! Interesting story with the amp box. I
was getting all ready to put the amp into the car when I bought this parts
car, an '85 900 Sport. Turns out it had an amp box in the back!
A previous owner had built this box quite nicely, so I used it. The
only thing was, it was made for the right side of the trunk area, where
I already had my battery. With a bit of modification, it fitted nicely
into the left rear area of the hatch. All's good!