Evening all,
Its been some time since I last updated this thread and I apologise for that. Other commitments has kept all 3 of us who are involved with this project (
Graham @audifan, Paul @depronman and myself) busy these last coupe of months but things a now moving forward.
To give you all some background to this whole venture, Graham has been working on this exact upgrade for some years utilising the A6 C5 Armrest. This was halted by the fabricator he chose went into administration early in Lockdown 1. Since then both Graham and I have been chatting about making this available as cheaply as possible using the information that Duncan had available from his A1 Armrest fitting. We of course asked Paul for assistance as neither of us were familiar with the CAD files (
used for LASER cutting and 3D printing) that Duncan generously provided as a starter for 10.
You will have seen the bracket images revealed by Paul back in June, I've now finally fitted one in OEM and it really does have a strong feeling to it, not beautiful to the eye but it'll be covered by trim items anyway. It's most certainly fit for purpose with only minor modification (
additional armrest mount hole to push the A6 armrest rearwards) which Paul has agreed to do for us all. The cost for this is currently £20 assembled and painted but due to the time it takes Paul to prepare, weld and paint these brackets up the cost might raise to somewhere in the region of £35 for the second run, quite an increase for something that started at £5.62 which will probably put a stop to a second run.
Heres the bracket fitted into OEM.
View from the open tailgate, who doesn't love a Twist Interior:
View from the back seats, certainly needs some Volico Twist attention in here:
View from the drivers door, a very welcoming addition less for the ingrained dirt (
looks to have a lean to the left but thats just the camera angle):
View from above with the handbrake lever down:
I think you'll agree that the bracket is brilliant and can give that little bit extra of accessibility to the handbrake lever with some minor modification.
Further progress has recently been seen by Paul showing the current iteration of the trim items. Quite a few positive comments which is good. Personally I was hoping for something a little more OEM looking with less contours/raised profiles that marries to the A6 armrest almost seamlessly, similar to what we've seen from Duncan's A1 trim items. I know Paul is constantly busy manufacturing all the other items that he has available from his offerings and as such is unable to offer any further time to tweaking the trim items.
A little dark but this is what was achieved by Duncan, notice how seamless it blends to the armrest:
Heres the current version of whats on offer, whilst functional, giving access to remove the whole armrest to access the VIN plate and handbrake cable adjuster, it's not quite as elegant as I had in mind:
After seeing this image above I immediately thought of simply wrapping the trim item in sheet plastic which would provide that seamless appearance/finish I was hoping for. Graham stepped in said why wrap it when we could simply use sheet plastic for the production of the trim itself. This is the option I'm now swaying towards and already have some 2mm sheet plastic on order, Graham is well ahead of me here and has already started playing with just 1x A4 sheet of ABS plastic (
which is all thats required) from eBay @ £4.99 per sheet delivered. Paul has suggested that the cost to produce the trim item will be around £40 which is another reason why I've swayed to working with sheet plastic.
Remember my intension was to have this finalised as cheap as possible just like the Number Plate surround (£10.24 delivered) and the footrest (£10 all in with infills delivered) project. I know this venture was never going to be on par in monetary terms as my previous projects but feel the costs have gone beyond what I'd consider reasonable and need to consider a different approach.
Please hold out a while longer as Graham is making great progress with the sheet plastic, details to follow.
Kind regards,
Tom