CA&E: Would you say you had a specific theme, because I know you wanted to get that Bel-Air look?
DR: Everything was based on the Bel-Air look. When I gutted the car, the only thing left in the car was the dashboard, because the dashboard was part of the car. If the dashboard would have come out, I probably would have just built a dashboard from scratch. First, I was going to make a whole modern dashboard with electronic gauges and stuff, and I said, "That won't work with this car." I looked at the speedometer and the speaker grille and they've got the same exact shape. I said, "Wow, you know what, how about I build everything based on this shape and it will keep some of the originality of the car?"
CA&E: In the dash, how did you go about modifying that solid piece of metal?
DR: I knew I had to put a 10-inch screen in the car, so I cut the metal of the dashboard and did that new hump out of fiberglass and steel to follow the two humps that were already there. The toughest thing was following the line on top of the dashboard that goes around the Bel-Air logo and the speedometer. To follow the whole line with that lip to go around the TV piece-that took some serious work. I then realized that the bottom of the dashboard was flat and it wasn't long enough, so I extended the bottom another 2" so now it looks fatter. Toward the middle it dips down to house the DVD player and the voltage meter to pretty much follow the top of the dashboard. I was going to join the center console with the dashboard, but it didn't look right-it didn't go with the car.
CA&E: What about the motorization element?
DR: When I took the old speaker that used to be there it was just a big hole. The first thing that came to my mind was, "I got to motorize something out of here." Of course, what should I motorize? You know when you do motorization it's got to be something that makes sense. The car's going to have some kind of video game and an iPod. I happened to have the wireless remote control for the Xbox 360 and you see it's curved, not straight. So I look at that and within five minutes it just clicked with me. Boy, did I have to cut some serious metal to make this thing work. By an eighth of an inch it almost didn't fit. The iPod Nano was an afterthought. I used a Fishdrive from the install bay to motorize the two wireless remote controls. Well, the clock didn't work and I took it out and the guts of this thing are real big. I happened to have my Nano and I said, "Wow this thing could probably fit in here."
CA&E: Are there two drives in there to make it work?
DR: There are two motors. The bigger motor motorizes the main unit ... and there's a small little actuator that actually travels with the whole unit. And that's just a 3 1/2" little actuator.
CA&E: From there did you move onto the motorization in the trunk or did you move to the kick panels or the rear deck?
DR: After I did that, I looked at the floor of the car and sandblasted it and sprayed it with trunk bedliner. Then I said, "How 'bout I just fiberglass this whole entire floor?" And that floor almost cost me not finishing that car ... I'm probably not going to fiberglass another floor like that in a long time. It's about 18 gallons of fiberglass resin, about 10 yards of fiberglass mat and about 400 hours of labor. It's two floors split right in half and you have to take the back window off to be able to get the floor out of the car. I didn't want to have this big old carpet; I just wanted something really clean.