Category Archives: Accessories

Accessories

2014 Camaro CoverCraft Sunshade Review

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Honda S2000 CoverCraft sunshade

UV and heat will destroy an automobile’s interior very quickly especially if it is leather in direct Southern sunshine.  In the case of my Honda S2000, not only is there plenty of leather but the interior dash, trim, door panels and carpet are all red.  So to prevent it all from eventually becoming “pink”, I purchased a rather pricey custom-fit sunshade from Covercraft called the UVS-100.

I’ve been very pleased with the material, workmanship and overall the sunshade has a been a very worthy investment.  The way I see it, I rather sacrifice a sunshade for the sake of preserving the interior.

As you can see in today’s featured image the sunshade fits the windshield opening of the Honda S2000 perfectly and the only cut-out is on the top edge and that is to allow room for the rear-view mirror.  All edges are perfectly hemmed with a very soft material and the stitching is flawless.  So far so good.

Well, when I purchased RedRock (my 2014 Camaro SS), the first thing I ordered was a custom-fit CoverCraft UVS-100 sunshade.  The sunshade arrived and as expected, it fit perfectly.  However, I soon discovered a problem.  You see, the Camaro’s dash has one of these little doo-hickies:

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Camaro light sensor dome

That is the dome over the light sensor the BCM uses to turn on the automatic headlights when the sun sets.  Unfortunately the good folks at CoverCraft did not account for this little device being in the way when deploying the UVS100 sunshade.  I had to be very diligent not to accidentally hit the little dome over the sensor with the sunshade.  Needless to say, it would be my luck that the entire dash would need to be pulled out to replace the dome if it became damaged by the sunshade.  And I am very convinced, to boot, the good folks at GM would immediately dismiss any warranty work on this kind of claim.  Since this is not something I would be looking forward to experience…

I decided to do a little surgery on my $60 CoverCraft UVS-100 sunshade.  I made a few measurements and with the aid of a fresh (and surgically sharp) X-Acto blade, did a little “alteration” as so:

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Sunshade cutout to allow for the light sensor dome on the 14 Camaro

I removed the excess material after cutting it, however this left the edges exposed and they needed a little dressing.  Since I did not want to leave them exposed to wear-and-tear (I don’t have a sewing machine like the one CoverCraft uses), I looked around and found some leftover scraps of headliner material used when I restored the hard top on bowtie6.  After fiddling with this for a while (damn, took longer to cut this than to alter the sunshade!), this is what it looks like now (I know, it is not perfect but it is better than the alternative)…

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Headliner material secured with a little contact glue so the edges won’t fray…

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View from the inside, after the alteration…

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And finally a view from the outside.

In Summary

I really like the way this looks now.  I wish there were an option from CoverCraft to allow for this, especially since they do such a nice job at dressing all the edges on the sunshade.  I suppose this would not take much effort, especially since they accounted for the opening for the rear view mirror.

And so, a couple of advantages from the alteration I made:

  • The little dome will not become damaged in case I forgot to hold the edge up.
  • The automatic headlights won’t turn “on” during daylight hours due to the sunshade covering the sensor preventing wear and tear on the electrical system.

Overall, the CoverCraft sunshades are a good value.  I have not financial gain from this review, but I just wanted to post this in the hope it might be of interest to anyone using these shades.

The alteration I made, does solve the problem of a possible costly damage to the light sensor dome.

Camaro Strut Tower Brace

IMG_3316For RedRock‘s first modification, I ordered a OEM Camaro strut tower brace.  The strut tower brace comes standard on the 1LE and Z28 versions of the Camaro, installed at the factory.  Since this is an easy non intrusive bolt on, I thought why not.

The brace is all aluminum.  The two ends are rough cast and the brace is hallow aluminum stock bent in a curvature clearing the engine cover.  The kit comes with all necessary mounting hardware.  A quick trial fit revealed everything lined up perfectly.

IMG_3312aAs nice as the strut tower brace looks though, it needed some extra work.  The cast aluminum mount pads needed attention.  Each pad has three bolt holes (see picture on the left) and each bolt hole is machined on the back side so the pad fits flat against the strut tower on the body.

Around each bolt hole though, were many burrs and sharp shavings left from the machining process.  This would cut into the paint on the strut tower and lead to corrosion.  Easy fix:  I grabbed my Dremel tool and used one of the metal brush wheels to remove the burrs.  Problem solved.

Next, the curved brace showed some scratching from shipping and machining as well as light staining.  I’ve learned from my cousin Jim that ScotchBrite can be used to give aluminum a nice finish.  The trick is to slide the ScotchBrite pad in the same direction so the pad polishes the surface.  The result is a laid down “matte” finish that complements the silver finish on the engine cover.

After polishing, I masked a few inches on either side with tape.  Then cleaned the cast mounting pads free of any oils and used some semi-gloss black paint from a rattle can of High Temp Engine Enamel.  Quite a number of coats later, the cast surface looked much nicer.  In the meantime while paint dried, I punched some spacers out of a sheet of flat rubber I obtained from my cousin Jim’s machine shop.  I decided to do this to prevent damaging the paint on the strut towers on the car.

IMG_3314I used the tool on the right to punch the discs out of a sheet of rubber.  They are about 1/8 inch thick.  The punch to the left was used to take out the center hole.  The result is a rubber washer made to fit the spot on the mounts where they contact the struts on the car.

I realize the benefits of the strut tower brace might be questionable.  However, I like the way it looks and given it is OEM, why not?  When the weather turns a bit warmer, I’m thinking about getting a custom rattle can of paint in Red Rock Metallic and paint the black ends so they match body color.  But, for the time being this looks nice enough for me.  The mounted strut tower brace turned out very nice!  :mrgreen: