home made console

[stu]

im thinking of makeing an over head console to house electrical stuff like inverter, switches, radio cause these not enough room on the dash.

i have made a template out of plastic and will make the console out of ply, has any one made their own and can give ideas and advice

cheers

[Thor]

yeah. watch you don't make it so when you hop in you hit your head

[stu]

Well Dur

.........yep its a slim line sort of shape with the bulk thickness nearest to the roll cage (where i'll chuck the inverter) and it thins out and fixed to the factory windscreen through the factory torx head bolt holes

[-Richo-]

This is the centre console i made, not a roof console but its some ideas for you.

I made it out of 12mm MDF and then lined the outside with black vinyl. The upper panels are black perspex. Its got 4 clip in type 12v sockets and 3 regular cigarette lighter sockets all of which has a 20amp fuse. A 300w inverter is mounted inside it securely and you can see the white socket is a 240v outlet, this is fused at 30amp. It also has a large compartment for junk under the arm rest. The top panel still has the paper on so i can mark out locker and compressor switches plus some other switches on this panel later on. And of course a drink holder down the bottom

I basically got some cardboard from an old box at work, marked out and cut it to suit the contour of the floor of the cab then worked out what panels need to go where, arm rest height etc, and ended up with a template. Used this to cut out the 2 sides and them made up peices to hold the 2 sides together. The bottom and back are MDF where the top perspex panels dont have any MDF under them except for the drink holder. More MDF is under the armrest to section of the compartment from all the wires. All i have is a feed going into it from the 2nd battery. 3 bolts hold it all in place and its solid as a rock.

[stu]

GOOD WORK!

[Madmac]

my mate made one for his GQ, made it out of ply, then covered it with grey vinyl, looks really good, he has mounted cb, stereo, and moved his interior light and fitted it to the underside of it. the biggest drama is pulling the roof lining down to get all the wiring to it

[phippsy]

I made my roof console for the lux, 2 lengths of 15x15 square steel tube stuff or about that size, bench vice bend to follow the roof curve, welded a couple of pieces of plate at the front to mount to the rear view mirror mounts to the roof and piece of flat plate at the back to mount where the interior light used to be.

Ran a couple of pieces of flat plate accross in the middle to hang the cb & uhf and cut some timber for the back so I could rehang the interior light and mag light. Coated the whole thing in glue and covered it with black carpet.

I'll some pics tomorrow.

[familybus]

i made one for my gq and the best thing i ever did was rip it out and chuck it! kept hittin me scon and ended up with more shit in it than i needed, im going to make another one but this time it will be big enough for my radio and thats it!

[De-lux]

I made my roof console for the lux, 2 lengths of 15x15 square steel tube stuff or about that size, bench vice bend to follow the roof curve, welded a couple of pieces of plate at the front to mount to the rear view mirror mounts to the roof and piece of flat plate at the back to mount where the interior light used to be.

Ran a couple of pieces of flat plate accross in the middle to hang the cb & uhf and cut some timber for the back so I could rehang the interior light and mag light. Coated the whole thing in glue and covered it with black carpet.

I'll some pics tomorrow.

have you allways had on Jason? i can't remember seeing if you had one or not. i'm interested to see these pics though.

[flylux]

Just a tip:
When I made my centre console I wanted the paint to match the interior. I took a small panel (from near the dash) to the hardware store, where they matched the exact paint colour. They recommended a 500ml sample pot. Low quality but it only cost 5 bucks!

[adam.s]

im thinking of makeing an over head console to house electrical stuff like inverter, switches, radio cause these not enough room on the dash.

i have made a template out of plastic and will make the console out of ply, has any one made their own and can give ideas and advice

cheers

My old man made one for his 60 series, did the frame up in MDF and then had it professionally covered in vynal to match his interior.

Looks like its factory, and is very neat - the whole thing cost him a bottle of bourbon.

[tufferoza]

if you like to play with fibreglass (like me), you can shape some urethane foam to what ever shape you want and fibreglass over it, scrape the foam out once the fibreglass has gone off and you have a strong, very light weight console.

so far for the feroza i have made a small bonnet extraction scoop, but i have used this foam to make plenty of other fibreglass 'one off' things for automotive and home.
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/657917/3

[rockcrawler31]

i made mine for my troopy out of 2mm aluminium plate, rolled to 90 degees with a 30 mm radius at the bend. covered in colour matched vinyl and padded. edged with small profile pinch weld. Put a section of 10x10mm box section steel along the length of it just behind the fold to help stiffen it up. Looks a treat, works a treat and cost about 100 bucks all up. make sure your blank is a good fit first before cutting your sheet. and have the sheet folded before you cut your shape.

cheers
MILO

[V8Patrol]

here's a couple of pics of the one I made for my commodore bash car....

I used marine ply, wood glue and philips head countersunk screws


I'm happy with the end result ........ specially when you consider I perfer to work with steel and treat wood as heater fodder mainly !

[V8Patrol]

A final closeup pic of the finish......

[V8Patrol]

The Process I went through:

1/
remove the front seats

2/
make a template from cardboard so that the floor shape can be cut accurately

3/
transfer the cardboard template to some cheap as shyte 3 ply.
Add in the top shape to the design to allow for a box storage area handbrake gearshift etc etc

4/
us a staple gun and add some 2"X1" as crossmembers between the two ply templates.
This then gave me a visual appearance of how it would look.
I then refitted the front seats ( tempararily) for a final fit and clearance on the seats.

5/
Went nuts with the jigsaw and cut the shape from the 3 ply template to the 6 ply marine wood.

6/
cut the main flats out to suit and screwed em into place

7/
made up the storage box section minus lid.

8/
cut holes for gearshift and handbrake and did a "test fit"
more trimming......
even more trimming .....
finally happy with the fit
also drilled holes for additional ciggy lighters and switches ( did a test fit of them too.)

9/
pulled it apart and added PVA wood glue to all joints and rescrewed it. After the glue had dried I removed each screw individually and countersunk each screwhole and then ground the heads of the screws slightly to "ruff em up" a bit.

10/
used bog to fill the screw heads up

11/
ran the sander polisher over the edges to round em off

12/
re bogged any small imperfections and then sprayed it with a pressurepak of "Spray putty" ..... about 3 coats.

13/
used a sanding block with 180 grit paper and blocked the whole thing back so it was smoooooooooooth as.

14/
sprayed the "finished" product with "stoneguard"

The stoneguard finish is durable and has an unusual appearance and it blends in well.

Oh and it took me a Saturday and a Sunday to this and that was from start to fitted !

Kingy

[V8Patrol]

I forgot to add .....

This is the same process we used for the console we built for the General Lee ( last years bash car ) and it survived well .

The extra ciggy lighters are for mobile phone socket and GPS socket power points. The extra switches ( 5 in total ) are for other gear in the car such as revolving lights, exhaust flame controler, pedestrain squirter, driving lights, siren amplifier ( 100watt).

There are also a dozen other switches mounted up on the dash but all are controled by 3 main switches which are seperately located, this way ALL power can be cut off to unessecary things instantly.
Switch 1 controls all lighting IE: revolving, driving, roof mounted side light, additional interior and boot lights.
Switch 2 controls all sound units IE: UHF, stereo, siren module, siren module amplifier, & gimick switches ( exhaust smoker ets etc )
Switch 3 controls all other extra componets such as the fridge and ciggy lighter sockets.

The entire console is held in place by ONE bolt
This bolt is fitted at the very rear of the console and is part of the floor bar of the main rollcage hoop.
the front of theconsole is "wedged" in place between locators welded to the actual floorpan.

Kingy

[toughnut]

Here are some pics of the roof console I'm building at the moment to house my CD player and speakers, new remote face UHF, CDMA mobile car kit and some switchs and relays.

[Big Red Toy]

i've made one, i was bored & its a piece of shit & crap combined u don't want the pics

[BigMav]

this is the one i made for my mav. might give you some ideas.

http://www.patrol4x4.com/forum/t135-hom ... nsole.html

[customhilux]

dude i like this pic, look over to the right, no tinnies for u, (upper class )

[customhilux]

Here are some pics of the roof console I'm building at the moment to house my CD player and speakers, new remote face UHF, CDMA mobile car kit and some switchs and relays.

dude u got any info about it, i like it, wanna make one for a dual cablux

[toughnut]

I'm just on my way out to the shed to do a bit more to it so I'll take some more pics. Basically its 3mm MDF with some alloy angle and flat to make a bit of a frame and brace it up. It's very light without any of the gear in it. I'm sealing off the speaker part of it to get better sound. The UHF is a remote face so the main unit and the mobile kit will just sit inside under a cover that will have some switches. The CD player sits in the middle facing backwards on about a 45 degree angle to get access. It's really quite strong for the weight as well. Anyway enough talking about it I'll go and do some work.

[customhilux]

I'm just on my way out to the shed to do a bit more to it so I'll take some more pics. Basically its 3mm MDF with some alloy angle and flat to make a bit of a frame and brace it up. It's very light without any of the gear in it. I'm sealing off the speaker part of it to get better sound. The UHF is a remote face so the main unit and the mobile kit will just sit inside under a cover that will have some switches. The CD player sits in the middle facing backwards on about a 45 degree angle to get access. It's really quite strong for the weight as well. Anyway enough talking about it I'll go and do some work.

kewl, i'll have it painted grey when ya done thanx

[BigMav]

dude i like this pic, look over to the right, no tinnies for u, (upper class )

yeah i like my home brew in kegs.

[ditch]

Hey does anyone else have any more pics of roof consoles? Im very interested in making one for myself now. I'm interested how you get the power/aerial cables up to the roof without it looking dodge......thanks.

I noticed there was another guy on that forum aside BigMav who had some pics, but they must be offline now. Does anyone have them? Thanks.

[toughnut]

If you have mouldings on your "A" pillars or "B" pillars you can run it up behind them and on top of the roof lining. I've nearly finished mine but I can't upload any pics onto my host site at the moment.

[N*A*M]

work of art kingy

[ditch]

hey sorry to revive this shit again, but i was just thinking, if you've made yourself a console right, so you've got it all ready to screw into the roof (just say where the light and mirror fixtures are) .... how do u get to the holes when the holes your going to use are now covered by the console?! do u get what i mean??

ill draw a dodgey pic:

[toughnut]

Your right it is a dodgy drawing Nah, you can do it a couple of ways. First way is to just screw a panel on over where the holes are or just leave them exposed. You can sometimes cover the screws if they are small and you're using carpet. Cut a small "X" just big enough for the screw to fit through and then smooth the fabric over the top of the screw. You need someting like carpet though. Second is to use plugs like on car door skins to hold the panel on. You can get them from upolstery places. There are many more ways I'm sure.