With the holiday season quickly approaching, I figured I would share a few holiday gift ideas for the car enthusiast in your life — or, let's face it, probably for yourself. (Note that some links may be affiliate links, which means I will earn a commission if you purchase a product at no extra cost to you.)
The first thing on this list are LED garage lights. A set of two is only about $22 on Amazon. The 200-watt lights are super bright and easy to install; you just screw them into your normal light bulb socket, so there’s no rewiring required. You can even adjust the panels so you can better illuminate your garage or work area. We have two in our windowless garage, and it’s almost like daylight in there with them on.
Next up is something that any classic car owner would love to have, especially if they have multiple cars in their collection. Automotive drip pans tend to be expensive — about $25 to $30 each — and that cost can add up if you have a few chronically leaking four-wheeled children in the garage. This package of 12 sheet pans from Webstaurantstore is about $85, and including ground shipping, that works out to just about $10 each. They measure 18 inches by 26 inches and have a decent lip around the edge, so they hold plenty of fluids. We use these in the storage unit, and they keep the floor dry. And you can't beat the price.
Another thing that all car enthusiasts need is detailing products. We have several in our stash, but this 14-piece Chemical Guys set is about $82 on Amazon right now and includes everything you need to get the exterior of your car spotless. It includes a bucket with a grit guard to trip dirt and contaminants so that they don’t end up causing swirls and scratches on your car’s paint, as well as a microfiber wash mitt and a foam spray gun. It also comes with a snow foam wash fluid, wax, wheel cleaner and brush, window cleaner, a tire shine protectant spray and applicator, and towels.
Next up is something that we use for all the cars in our fleet, and its name almost sounds like some gimmicky As Seen On TV product (remember ShamWow?). The Windshield Wow Pro Kit is about $130 with free shipping, and I think it is worth every penny. It makes cleaning both the inside and outside of your windshield easy, especially down at the bottom of the windshield where it meets the dashboard. Simply attach a couple of microfiber cloths (which can be tossed into the washing machine after for reuse) to the strong magnets and place them on either side of the windshield glass. Then, you just slide the Windshield Wow back and forth, cleaning both sides of the windshield at the same time. This kit also includes a small can of Sprayway glass cleaner, which is an excellent foaming cleaner that does run and drip onto your dashboard or anything like that.
So, that’s it, my list of a few holiday gift ideas for the car enthusiast in your life or, let’s face it, probably yourself.
One of the little things that has always bugged me while driving Diamond has been the lack of a place to put things like my wallet or a travel mug. I’ve had to hold things in between my legs or let them either fall in between or slide across the seats — none of which is ideal. So, I decided to put an end to that and craft up a center console with a tray and a couple of cupholders.
I started by grabbing an old cardboard box and cutting it into a more manageable size. I was undecided on how big I wanted the center console to be, but once I started to place the cardboard down over the transmission tunnel, I realized I didn’t want to block the controls for the floor vents, which sit at the bottom of the dashboard. The one piece of cardboard proved to be enough for the general shape (though later, I did make the shape more square rather than angled so that it would be easier to cut out of wood). I cut out more cardboard pieces for the front and back of the console and taped everything together.
Once everything looked good enough, I took the template home and made a cleaner version to fix up some of the rough cuts. I took it back for a test fit and made a few more adjustments, and then I was ready to really start working.
I chose half-inch plywood for this project for its price and rigidity, and cut one of those 2-foot-by-4-foot “handi panels” with a jigsaw since there were curves in the design. I followed that up by using an orbital sander and tapered the corners some so that they weren’t square. Using wood glue and brad nails, I secured the pieces together. After the wood glue was dry, I cut out and sewed some faux leather fabric that would be the cover for the center console.
I designed a tray that would act as a place to put my phone and wallet on 3-D modeling software and had my husband print it out on the 3-D printer, which took probably longer than a day. Once it was printed, I painted the tray black with a gold rim (using some of the leftover black wheel paint from when I worked on Diamond’s new wheels), and I also painted some sticky-back cork black to place on the inside to create a more grippy surface. After spraying some adhesive on the wood and inside of the fabric, I placed the fabric on the console and then added the tray and cupholders (on which I had also painted the rims gold).
The end result may not be the most perfect thing, as some of the imperfections in the wood show through the fabric. (I originally thought of using some quilt batting to make it a bit of a “soft touch” surface but apparently didn’t think of that while cutting out the fabric and had no extra allowance for it, but that would’ve helped conceal the imperfections.) But overall, I’m really pleased with how everything turned out. The colors work well with the rest of Diamond’s interior, and the gold paint ties in nicely with the VIP emblems and accents. And now that I have some leftover plywood to play with, I’ll work on putting another console together for Olivia to replace the cheap plastic one that’s currently in her.
(Some links may be affiliate links, which means I will earn a commission if you purchase a product at no extra cost to you.)
One of the things I’ve long debated on for Diamond was what wheels to get, and I spent countless hours browsing websites and looking at pictures of C-bodies on forums. I knew I wanted to get larger wheels so that someday I can do a disc brake conversion (you can’t properly do a conversion with the stock 14-inch wheels), but I didn’t know how big I wanted to go.
At some point late last year, I decided on grabbing five 15-inch Chrysler cop wheels that my father had stashed away. And so while I was home for Thanksgiving, I picked them up and brought them home.
Before with the stock 14-inch wheels.
Three of the wheels were in decent shape, though they all had a bit of surface rust and some imperfections around the surface that I could just attribute to age and being used. One was bent badly in one spot of the rim — which I tried to repair, but it proved to be difficult because of the size and complexity of the bend — and another wheel somehow had bad curb rash all around the rim. That’s the one I ended up fixing with a grinding wheel and a flap disc on the angle grinder.
I tried all sorts of things to strip the wheels, and in hindsight, it would’ve been easier to just take them to a shop for blasting or using caustic aircraft-grade paint stripper. I tried blasting with two different blast medias, but both took so long to get any good progress. I threw a wire cup brush on the angle grinder and used that at one point, but I got tired of getting stabbed a million times by the little wires and then finding them in my clothes and around the house for a week later. I also tried letting the wheels soak with some EasyOff for a day; this worked a tiny bit after using the 0% nozzle on the pressure washer to wash it off, but not enough.
Finally, I found some paint/rust stripping grinder wheels, which worked the best out of all of the methods, but they couldn’t reach the nooks and crannies of the wheels and wore through really fast. After I got as much off as I could, I went back to the wire cup brush to get the rest of the bits off. The stripping process took months to do, off and on. That’s also partially due to rainy weather, hot and humid weather, life, and my full-time job getting in the way of things. But oh well.
Next up, I hit the wheels with some self-etching primer, then filler primer. With the filler primer, I flooded some of the spots that had deeper imperfections, knowing that I was going to sand the wheels anyway. After everything looked good enough for paint, I got the air hose to blow out most of the primer dust and ran a tack cloth over them to clean off the rest.
I then hit them with black wheel paint, which actually created a more textured surface than I’d like. So, I sanded the faces down with fine-grit sandpaper (400 for the “bad” stuff, then 600, 800, and finally 1,500 grit) to smooth them out and fix some runs in the paint before using the tack cloth on them again and spraying on a couple of coats of gloss clear.
Pro tip: Harbor Freight’s tack cloths are better than the Bondo brand ones. When you cut the Bondo brand tack cloths into pieces (I cut each cloth into four pieces — one for each wheel), the edges of the cloth fray and leave bits and pieces everywhere. Harbor Freight’s tack cloths don’t do that. And they’re cheaper.
When all was dry a couple of days later, I made the trek over to the tire shop to get the wheels and new tires installed. I went with Cooper Cobra Radial GTs, P235/70-R15. These were the tires that were on her when we got her, and I prefer the white lettering on the sidewalls. After getting back home, I put on the NOS Chrysler center caps that I bought at the Chrysler swap meet in Indianapolis in February, and all was finally completed.
I'm really happy with how these wheels turned out, especially after all the time I spent refurbishing them. I love this look on Diamond, and I think it adds to her sort of hot rod appeal.
(Some links may be affiliate links, which means I will earn a commission if you purchase a product at no extra cost to you.)
