No more wood, lets go dry carbon look

I never really liked the wood trim that came in my M45 so I decided to go out and redo it. I found this really nice vinyl by 3M. Its from their Architectural series and is made to look like dry carbon fiber. Now I know you are thinking fake carbon fiber vinyl is so ricey, and I would agree with you if this stuff did not look so good.

It really has a real 3d weave effect to it and looks really authentic. I like how JJ put it, “even if you told me it was fake I would still think it was cool”. The other nice thing about this stuff is that once you heat it with a heat gun it becomes like liquid and you can get it to wrap around damn near anything.

I redid the inserts on my door panels, and my center console with it. The bonus for me was that when we used the ashtray face to mount my Air Runner Gauges in it left a little grey handle and showed a small gap around the gages. Covering it with the CF vinyl allowed me to pull the grey tab off and it removed the gap. Now it looks perfect.

We are still working on a frame to put behind it to mount it to since when we cut out the backing of the ashtray it removed all the original mounting positions. Thats why it is just floating there, it will be fixed soon though.

When I said you could wrap “almost anything” I mean almost. I tried to wrap my shift knob to remove the wood but it didn’t really work out. I can almost get it all covered but I would need a vacuum forming machine to do it right.

I am either going to try and find a decent knob to replace it or paint my old one black. Overall I am very happy with how it came out, its classy yet sportier than the wood.

It has been pointed out that I screwed up the direction of the weave on the center part around the shifter. I fixed it and you can see it in the picture below.

I also am in the process of wrapping my center arm rest. It is almost done but I still have some smoothing out to do on it. You cant really wrap it in one piece, you need to do the sides and then a center piece. Its like the factory one was stitched together.