360 Scuderia Audio Trunk Glove Box Sneak Peek

The back wall of the front trunk holds a can of fix-a-flat that no one in their right mind would use.
I designed and constructed a glove box of sorts for my 360 to hold two Braille Lithium Ion racing batteries for my 3000 Watt sound system. I thought, "why not mass produce these"??
This glove box will be made of high impact HDPE (High Density Polyethylene), have a lockable door and will be super easy to install. Just remove the two leather belts that hold the bag in place (save them for when you sell the car) and bolt the glove box in place right through the existing four leather belt mounting holes.
The long piano hinge for the door will be mounted in a channel and will basically be unseen.
The glove box will be covered in black Alcantara and can be used to hold tools, cleaning supplies, a car stereo amplifier or small battery, or whatever.

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Forgive me, I don't understand this statement. Are you meaning without the cover?

 

It would look something like this.

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We are currently designing the molds. The attached images are for the large piece for the back wall. It's made from several layers of one inch thick MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) all glued together, then cut down on a large CNC mill. Several small diameter holes are drilled through the mold so that it can be placed in a large vacuum forming machine so that pieces of HDPE can be placed on the top, heated, then vacuum formed into the desired shape.
This is basically the same thing we had to do to create the Scuderia/Challenge Stradale speaker kick panels. The molds are extremely heavy and very expensive.

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I'm thinking $499 would be a good number. The parts would be around $300 for each unit and then there's the labor to assemble it.

 

The hard part was designing and machining the two molds. They were completed earlier this week.
The problem is, they're very heavy and somewhat fragile, and near Portland, Oregon (and I'm in San Jose, CA).
So I put together a fun plan for next week. I have a paid holiday next Thursday (Veteran's Day, I'm ex military) so I took a vacation day that Friday. My plan is to get up early, drive to an exotic auto wrecker in Sacramento that I do business with, take some pictures and take some measurements of the doors on a Lamborghini Aventador, Huracan and Gallardo (for new speaker kits), then leave there and keep going North for about an hour and a half until I get to Redding. Meanwhile, my CAD guy is driving South from Corvallis, Oregon to Redding. I'm going to get two rooms at a nice Motel in town. The plan is to arrive, freshen up, then walk across the street and have a nice steak dinner while we discuss the 9 current projects we are working on, go back and crash, get up the next morning, go have a nice breakfast and continue to talk shop, then load the two molds (and a bunch of speakers) into my car, then drive back home.
The following week I'll be hand carrying the molds to a shop in Hayward, CA (still in the Bay Area) that does vacuum forming. They are the same outfit that makes the kick panels for my Challenge Stradale/Scuderia speakers. I am guessing it will take a couple of weeks for them to produce the first set of pieces. Once I pick them up, it's just a matter of trimming them, bolting on the piano hinge, the latch and the lock, then give to the upholstery shop to have them covered in Alcantara.
Probably way more information than you wanted to hear (LOL) but I'm guessing 3-4 weeks.

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I picked up the molds on Thursday night and dropped them off at the vacuum forming outfit on Friday afternoon. They need to construct some "frames" around the molds (primarily to orient them at the correct angle), then vacuum form me a couple of prototypes.

 

We rough cut a couple of the vacuum formed pieces (tub, lid) and placed them into a 360 rear panel with the belts removed. The fit is absolutely perfect. The reason the lid is a little bit wider is because the entire tub is sunk into the back panel a bit, and I want the entire assembly to align on the same plane as the rest of the panel.
The bottom pieces (under the lid) will be cut tonight, but those are easy. I just wanted to see how the molded pieces fit first.

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This image is with the bottom piece in place. The reason there is a slim notch on each end is so that the Alcantara can wrap around the pieces as this is where the hinge ends.

The second image shows that when everything is in place, the surfaces will seamlessly transition into each other.

The hinges show up tomorrow and I have some custom alignment fixtures arriving the day after which will allow me to cut a precise shallow channel into each of the two front pieces so that the hinge lays flush.

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I know I haven't been sending many updates lately, but we have been hard at work on this.
First the bad news: I had to raise the price by $100.
But good news is that these things are going to be virtually bulletproof now. The 1/8" thick ABS front panel and lid were way too flimsy. And if these parts flex, then the hinge won't be able to bend. I tried gluing another 1/8" thick piece of ABS in the back of the front panel but still no joy. Then I thought to glue an 1/8" thick piece of aluminum to the back of the front panel to add rigidity. Then I thought, "Why not make the entire front panel out of aluminum?". This was a good idea, but, amazingly, still not quite rigid enough. So now the front bottom panel and the lid are being made out of 1/8" thick mild steel. Instead of gluing the hinge to the pieces of plastic, I have a thicker stainless hinge that will be tack welded to both steel pieces (which will be powder coated in black).
Additionally, the entire front assembly will be bolted to the ABS tub (which is extremely strong) by 7 small steel metric bolts. No glue anywhere. Instead of Alcantara, these will be wrapped in the same material as the OEM trunk panels. It will look totally OEM and be virtually indestructible. I'm hoping to receive the metal parts in a week. It will take a day to weld the hinges to the plates (I'm manufacturing 10 at a time). I have 10 tubs being vacuum formed, will hopefully be ready in a week. A couple of days to upholster them, and another day to mount the push button latch.
We're getting close.

 

Sorry for the delay.
There were some temporary setbacks. The quotes for 10 sets of metal parts were $1500.00 domestic and $300.00 overseas, so I tried the overseas option. The flat pieces were perfect but the bent pieces were not bent to my satisfaction. They were close (and I continually had people tell me that they were "close enough" and to just go with them) but I wasn't happy. I also discovered that aluminum pieces (at the correct thickness) would work fine, no need for steel. I tried 4 different thicknesses of aluminum and ended up with 105 mils (basically 11 gage). I also discovered that I had to move the latch toward the edge of the lid in order to get the catch to work correctly.
The channels that holds the hinge on the prototype (pictured) were not machined professionally, and some of the assembly bolts are missing, but I just wanted to show proof of concept before I put the order in for 10 sets of aluminum pieces (getting professionally machined as I write this). Assuming I get the pieces by the end of this week, I will have complete, upholstered sets ready for sale by the end of next week.

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I've actually completed this project and am already shipping production units. I started a new "product release" thread: https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/trunk-glovebox-from-scuderia-audio.654893/

 

I promised several 430 pilots that I would start developing the 430 version of this product after I had sold at least 10 of the 360 units. I'm two sales away from this.