Cross hatch alloy gearbox gaitor surround uncovered

[rswaffie]

I made a surprise discovery today when starting on the interior restoration. Whilst removing the vinyl from the gearbox tunnel and the rotted leather gear shift gaitor, it looks like they covered up a cross hatch alloy part with leather. Is this a common occurrence? I’ll be doing the same to the radio console tomorrow- wonder if that will be the same?

[abowie]

I guess it was what they had to hand.

I have 889457 and it had leather but there is cross hatch on the radio console, with leather over the top, same as yours.

[Heuer]

Yes, fairly common when they moved to the leather covered centre console prompted by complaints of reflection in sun light and the alloy getting hot. Some cars retained the alloy centre dash and radio console until about September 1963 when they moved over to black Lamiplate.

[Davet495]

The console I got with my 62 [860236] had cross hatch under the leather but I don't think it was the original console. It seams that glue would stick better to that cross hatch pattern, give it some bite (if you know what I mean) so maybe they went back to the cross hatch for that reason?
Dave - Riverside, CA.

[rswaffie]

Hi
Given the age of your car, it was probably not the original console or a p/o had covered it themselves at a later date. I’ve been looking at all the cars from Oct 63 onwards in xkedata and there are many that have the alloy dash/console - about 35% of the cars I’ve looked at so far. So either it is a popular retro-fit or they were still being ordered and distributed in this format past the supposed ‘cut-off’ date.

[MarkRado]

My car was manufactured October 27 (1963), and it has the a.m. alloy under both radio console and shift gaitor, which surprised me at first, but since this was the time of transition, the factory obviously uesd up stock.