[Current Project] Carbon Fiber Diamond Tucked Padding On Door Panel Blanks

Many of you may know of my Covercraft review and that I've had to redesign their crappy dash mat to suit our 2020 Ford Transit Connect. I've wanted to stay here at the forum a bit longer and add a few more details on upcoming projects for the van. Most vandwellers or vanlifers tend to create camping space inside the cargo area by including bed rails, cabinets even a sink. Well, My thought process is different. I wanted a show van but without all the shag carpeting.

There's a couple of areas in the van where there's thin board material or blanks and I wanted to do something to them because they stick out like a sore thumb. This image shows there's two on one side of our barn doors as there different designed blanks on the other side. Also included are larger blanks on the double siding doors.
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Also a couple of custom panels will need to be made to fill the gap above the current blanks. The thought here is that, while driving the steel panels of the van tend to vibrate or create a low tone hum in the van. I could have small vents installed which I may do at some point anyway.

So here's the next project I'll start working on after the dash cover has been completed. I've just order a yard of the foax carbon fiber diamond tucked material, then once delivered, I'll set out to remove each panel and attached the material to these panels.

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According to Fabric Empire, the 54'' wide x 1 yard should arrive by Mar 1st.

According to the UPS tracking the carbon fiber fabric should arrive later this evening. Then I'll remove one of the smaller panels and start in. it's a shame that these panels are too dense to use a staple gun to attached the fabric. I'll have to use a tack glue first then hot glue to adhere the fabric to the back side. Just need to make sure it's not bulky as not to allow the push pins to be remounted through the fabric back onto the van.

Last week I sent a message to the new site admin/host asking where is Mike. He later informed me that mike left the autogeek forum site and headed over to another company site. Now while mike was here, he and I spoke via PM's and if it wasn't for him I would have left a long time ago. He help me keep things in check. But now that I've learn he's gone, I've send several PMs to the site host requesting that my topics be removed and my account deleted because there's absolutely nothing here and no one here willing to support my efforts and topics. As said Mike was the only one who seem to have cared and gave a damn about me being here.

SO I'm asking again, Please delete my two topics and then delete my account because I will not participate in a forum where Mike himself isn't here himself.

@Nicholas@Autogeek @Meghan @Admin

Apparently the forum moderation team aren't willing to cooperate and I don't have an update for you on this topic simply because other matters have taken over the build. The van has bene running rough engine wise and suspension wise. We'll be able to correct the suspension issue in 1 week having new struts, sway links and a few more performance parts installed on the van. after months if not years of searching, Found a tuner shop willing to help us with this installation. I guess at some point I'll get motivated to get back into installing this padding. The goodm thing about this is the admins deleted the covercraft thread and after 1 year f driving around with this crappy dash cover, we located a seamstress shop willing to sew a custom dash cover for the van. I've seen there work and this dash will look 100x better then the cover craft version. this time around, going with a darker color with textures very similar to the diamond tucked carbon fiber.

So I've finally had a chance to do something with the carbon fiber diamond tuck material..
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Here I'm cutting and shaping the material to fit one of the smaller panels.. using nothing more than spray glue and a hot glue gun to adhere the material to the board.. this turned out better than expected.
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We ran into one small issue when trying to replace the factory pushpins through the fabric. Thee factory pushpin are not long enough to secure the fabric and board. So we ordered a set of pushpins off the net which have been designed to be used from another application.. But as you can see they worked just fine for our newly redesigned diamond tucked padding.
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I've just removed the lower panel and I've been working on getting this one covered and installed back in the van. As for some of the more solid areas of the van, like the top of the barn doors and large blank area of the cargo bay, we're going with a sound dapping material, black in color of course.

One can follow our official build/blog site as supported by a number of aftermarket parts manufactures. We'll update this list very soon.

That looks really sharp, huge improvement. I have a ton of respect for people who are able to create one off custom mods and make it seem as if it came from the factory that way. The craftsmanship you put into that door panel is high quality. Keep us posted on the TC, I'm a fan of the direction you're headed with it!

So I guess we're all aware that I'm never happy with the names of blog sites once I create them, But I need to just go forth and create something. I've acquired about 10 supporters of our blog site, I say supporters because some have not actually given or donated items for the build. However just this morning I get a message from an Amazon vendor whos sending us a set of their Super-Pro 300mm-340mm end links as these are going to be used in conjunction with the performance Focus sway bar mounted on the Connect.. yes you heard me..

we've concluded that the 2018 Focus RS/ST performance sway bar is identical in length to the 2020 Connect sway bar.. But not identical is diameter. A youtuber proved this while working on his Focus. He measured his sway bar while we measured our Connect sway bar.. I realize this is off track form my intended posted topics.. but couldn't help myself with the discovery of these newly found performance parts. The van isn't going to be "slammed".. but it will get 40mm rear lowering coil springs supplied by Cobra Suspicions Netherlands..

So if it wasn't for people like @snp209 or @coatingsarecrack I prob should have left a long time ago. as for the blog site.. Yes I changed the name again.. just not pleased with other names, but I think I'm zeroing in on the prefect name. iPulse Tuning Plus substack support is allowing me to test a few demo/beta programs as I continue the posting.

I guess what's going on is that first, I'm about the only one willing to test these parts on our van, plus with the Ford discontinuing the Connect, Most Connect owners are either selling their vans for the larger Transit or their keeping the vans and camper converting them.

In other words our build isn't your mommas camper van conversion.. We've created a "sleeper" and it's not what you think though we both can and will sleep in the back while traveling, this is our sports car in sheep's clothing.

We're happy to report that our custom suede dash cover was completed last week and we've just installed it. But due to time constraints I wasn't able to snap a pic. But will shortly. This dash cover was designed by an independent seamstress who did this one off just for us. We didn't have much to go on except the two covercrap covers we ordered. spending $70.00 bucks a pop and nothing fit or even looked good. Color of each cover was off one was dark blue while the other was a blighter blue. In other words who even made the covercrap covers wasn't consistent.

But all is well now that the new suede dash cover is in place, smooth soft and conforms to the dash like it was made for it. That's because it was made for it, by tried and true hands. So Thanks to Margery out of Northern PA for setting aside time to do this for us. Cost of this dash Cover? $130.00 then add in the already spent $140.00 on that covercrap stuff.. Total: $270.00 was it worth it? well we should have just purchased the single covercrap and sent it to Marge in the beginning.

Oh and btw.. seeing how I'm not allowed to edit above post or that my Covercrap post was removed, I've had to change the above web site URL. So only those who have shown and interest in our dash cover story can PM for the link.

we've taken a break from creating any more diamond tucked panels for the van as new wheels are going to be installed shortly. With that in mind, over the weekend the shop and I added a spare tire bracket to the inside of the van. This was a major achievement for the wife and I as this was just one of our ideas that actually worked and paid off with big rewards. I'm reporting this now, because I'm currently in the process of designing a spare tire cover using the same diamond tuck carbon fiber material. Once this has bene completed, we're back onto the 5 other panel blanks left to add the diamond tuck padding.

You can now follow along on our Performance thread located on Reddit: Performance Connection Where we and other members discus several new products being introduced for the extinct Transit Connect. Our Show van heads to Discount Tire this weekend to add.. 19'' wheels.. and they said it couldn't be done.. Discount Tire and myself proved it can be done and with plenty of clearance and zero scrub.

1 week with the 245/40/R19 tires and the van has stopped having transmission shuddering issues, Plus while driving around on 215/50/R17's for 2 years our fuel economy was like 19.4. With the 245/40/R19's installed, for the first time since owning the van our fuel economy is above 25mpg and it keeps getting better. win win.. But that's beside the point, you want to know how the diamond tuck carbon fiber interior is going..

Using a Razorback offroad spare tire mount inside the van, it's time to order more diamond tuck carbon fiber, then get to sewing a diamond tucked carbon fiber spare tire cover for the van.
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Still need to get the 2005 Thunderbird wheel repowder coated the correct color.