Hey guys. Well, Christmas break was the first time since I sold my Audi that I got to spend any reasonable amount of time around a garage and tools, so I figured I may as well improve the Cobalt during this time. I'm really happy with how the exterior looks, but my interior was a mess. The shift boot was destroyed and i wanted to get rid of all that silver on the dashboard.
So I ordered some parts and got to work. Here's what the old interior looked like just for reference. Stock and boring.



First on the list was the shift boot. It looked like someone with raptor claws used to drive this thing. It was torn up pretty bad around the top and right side of the boot.



Unpleasant indeed.

I was about to order a new stock boot, but saw someone fabricate a Crown Royal bag as a shift boot and knew I had to do the same. Since I'm not a huge fan of whiskey I went on eBay and bought a Crow Royal Black bag for 6 doll-hairs.



Then it came time to take my old shift boot off. This should NOT be difficult. I got all the trim around it up no problem. When I tried to take the shift knob off, I ran into issues. To get the shifter off, you have to pry the number piece on top of the shifter off to reveal a screw that hold the knob on. I read that you need to be careful because the tabs on this piece are very brittle. Well they were right, because the previous owner broke all of them off and gorilla glued the damn thing back on.



Not ideal. This stuff was everywhere. It had seeped into every crevice possible, permanently cementing it in place. I tried for about an hour to slide the knob off with no success. After many exclamations of frustration, I gave up and just cut the old boot off and put a small amount of epoxy on the plastic number piece to keep it in place. The knob is for another person to deal with at another date.



Then I employed my mother's magical sewing powers that most mothers seem to posses. Because the frame of the shift boot is quite wide, we had to cut the Crown Royal bag pretty far up the sides to get it to fit over it. This left some pretty big holes on the side of the boot. No problem, because my mom used her sewing witchcraft to find an almost identical piece of material in her box, and sewed them in place to close the holes. She sewed the bag to the plastic frame and sewed the top of the bag to what was left of the old boot on below the shift knob. Then we tied the strings and sewed them in place to so they wouldn't go everywhere when you drive. Here's the final product:



Secks. Next was to do the head unit and trim pieces. As fun as making a new CD every week is, I really wanted to be able to play music from my phone. Went to Crutchfield and ordered what I wanted. Their shipping was insane. I ordered it Sunday night and on Tuesday it was on my porch.



I really like the speakers that come stock with the Pioneer system, so I'll keep them for now. Also, I don't need anything fancy as far as head units go. I just want a USB port. This is where I needed my best friend / roommate's help. I'm less than useless when it comes to wiring and stuff, and he absolutely loves it. Wiring the PAC unit up went flawlessly. But when we tried to put the head unit in the dash kit, we ran into a problem. The Scosche kit doesn't come with the little brackets to hold the head unit in place. We tried to figure out if there was another way to do it for about an hour. Gave up, bent some tabs in place and taped in a piece of wood under the head unit for support. It's extremely solid the way it is, but it's annoying that we need to use wood to install a head unit. And because we did this on Christmas day, we couldn't call customer support for help.



The heater controls were easy. I ordered a black one on eBay, took the face off and put it on the unit that was already in my car.





Finally, we painted my trim. We used Dupli-Color Perfect Match GM black metallic with Dupicolor Clear engine enamel. We ended up only using one can of each, but I bought two of each just to be sure



First we sanded the pieces.



Then primer.



After all the coats of paint.



With the center trim, we ran into a problem. Right around the heated seat delete, we knew that the paint wouldn't settle right.



So we just plastidipped that piece to make it flow better with the flat black head unit and heater controls as well as hide the imperfections.



Then we let everything dry for about 5 hours and clipped all the trim back in place. Here is the final result of Cobalt improvement month

 

 

Lol epic explanation

Looks good OP

 

That is exactly how I felt haha. So frustrating.

Thanks ECaulk

 

Lol nice RB.

So does your DIC still work with this setup? I'm looking at headunits now and most say it will stop working.

 

awesome job on the stereo and adapters to retain the steering controls

 

The only thing I lost were steering wheel controls. Annoying, but I read in a lot of places people lost them so I kind of anticipated it. We tried for awhile to figure out how to get them to work with no success

 

Really, I don't mind that, will swap to an aftermarket wheel anyways, but the DIC works for sure right? I'm guessing as long as I get the integration adapter I should be fine?

 

Yeah that works just fine. They warn that you'll loose that because in a lot of GM cars from that era had the DIC in the center console or something like that, but the Cobalt's is in the gauge cluster. Apart from the steering wheel controls, everything works perfectly. If you get the PAC unit you'll be golden. The wiring was pretty simple. We didn't use two wires. One was for Illumination (it will dim with the rest of your interior when you adjust it. I really didn't care) and the other was for a different way to hook up sub woofers

 

Sweet thanks a lot man. Your trim and install look great btw

 

No problem appreciate it

 

Riceburner

 

one question.. why did you use enamel clear?

 

I used to clear enamel to give it a glossier finish as well as protect the paint from any chips

 

Nice. I would have used a satin clear inside though to keep the glare from the sun down on bright days. Wet sand the orange peel our of those peices, you can make them look like the paint on the outside of the car. Water and 2000 grit.

 

Yeah I contemplated several different clear finishes. Satin was one of them. I ended up asking a friend who I knew had used this kind of stuff before on what his opinion was and he said he loved the clear enamel. I'm really happy with it. I drove all around yesterday and it was really sunny. The glare didn't bother me at all

 

did u just use the 750ml crown royal bag?? Im wanting to do this lol

 

Sorry for the late response, but yeah I used the 750 ml bag. Like I said, it's a little tricky because the base is so wide. As long as you can sew or knows someone who can and is willing to help it makes things easier.

 

I freaking hate the shifter knob. Looks great OP.

 

please replace your stock speakers, then thank me later.

 

This

 

I want to get new speakers this spring.

 

I am glad mine were upgraded.

 

Yeah i'll probably be putting new ones in sometime this summer. Just have to wait until I have access to a garage and tools to do it.

 

Love the look on the plastics on the inside, how long did it take to paint it all? and how did you get the plastics off??