Kidney Pads..... Why Are They Called That?

I decided to also make up my own kidney pads as my original ones have broken and I wanted them in matching material. I also decided to form fit them more to my car rather then make up a generic pair. My first set was a nice tight custom fit at both the top and bottom of the pads. The bottom really hugged the tranny tunnel while the top extended up high enough to block out all the stuff under the dash. Then the little light bulb went off in my head..............the TR6 heater distributes air to only two places: the defroster via hoses and the floor from a bottom vent that just dumps the hot air onto the tranny tunnel. From there it falls down the tunnel and lands on your feet. My tunnel hugging kidney pads would effectively block the hot air from reaching my feet. So I did a slight redesign to allow for warm feet in cold weather.

Here's the passenger side ready to have the speaker hole cut out

And here's my nifty hole cutting tool in my drill press. You can actually see the two panels here as I've only cut through one at this point. Now I'll flip the panel over and cut from the other side. This same technique, with different sized spade bits was used on all the panels.

Making the panels was the easy part but there's this metal bracket on the back of the panel that attaches to the Dash Center Support and holds it all in place. If I wanted to make up sets to sell I'd have to make up my own brackets. I went to the local steel company that has a "Bargain Bin" section and picked up a bunch of aluminum plate for $5 which will make a lifetime supply of brackets.

Here's the flat plate in my cheapo Harbor Freight metal brake. Unfortunately this brake will only make one of the bends I need so I had to get creative and modify it to do the other bend.

My modification of the metal brake consisted of taking my angle grinder to cut a slot in the base of the brake just wide enough to fit the bracket.

Here's the bracket after the first bend......

Slip it into the slot until.............

it's laying flush, then...........

you lay the bar over the top and clamp it down

And after you pull the brake up, it's bent to the perfect shape.

Pop riveted to the panel board.

Ready to slide on.

The process to actually doing the panel sewing and foam attachment is shown elsewhere but here's the finished product that went in my car.

These are the ones for my car done up in leather

A perfect fit

And this is about all anyone will ever see!

Installing the wheel arch covers isn't difficult if you take you time and follow these steps..........