Near the end of the restoration of his ’73 SB, Dave installed a new center console (for your coffee cup, Big Mac, tapes and miscellaneous junk) before he put the seats in, simply because access is easier. Dave found that he had to position the console carefully so it would not interfere with the operation of the gear shift.
The console that Dave installed in his car is mostly FORWARD of the shifter (see the picture below). It has a square hole about three inches on a side that fits over the shifter, and there's a vinyl "boot" that extends up over the shaft of the shifter. There's no room for a unit of this kind between the seats.
Drilling through the carpet to make holes for the screws that attach such things as center consoles can be a real pain and can do serious damage to the carpet. Strands of carpet may become entangled around the drill bit and then pull a long strand out of the carpet. Dave learned a neat trick to keep this from happening: after marking the location of the hole with chalk, he took his big old-fashioned clunky soldering iron and melted a quarter-inch spot in the carpet (made of synthetic material). After the spot cools, there is a nice solid little "button" that you can drill through with ease without tangling the carpet around the drill bit.
Disclaimer stuff: Rob and Dave have prepared this information from their own experiences. We have not assumed any specialised mechanical knowledge, but we DO assume that anyone using these procedures has at least some basic mechanical ability.
We hope you find this information useful, but we don't take any responsibility for anything which happens to you, other people, your VW or any other property or goods resulting from your use of these procedures.
Feel free to print off any of this information for your own use. If you intend to link this material to another site, reprint it, or in any other way redistribute it, please leave the information complete, including this disclaimer section, and provide a link to this Web site.
Last revised 4 May 2004.
