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For the last 11 years I've made a living in the automotive upholstery and trim industry, I've had published work, nationally recognized and multiple SEMA vehicles. This has been a year in the making and still has a lot to go but there's so much detail go e into it at this point I feel like I should be documenting it somewhere... here we go.
I started with a stock '17 XL 2.7, 4wd, STX, SCAB. For things on the outside it's stayed fairly simple. OEM painted flares, Lariat sport grill, SE headlights, all LED lighting, painted new OEM mirror caps, painted new OEM door handles. Also has a 1.5" leveling kit, 17x8.5 SOTA SSD6's and a set of 315/70r17 BFG KO2's. Most of my attention has been focused on the inside, where I spend most of my time with the truck. For starters the stock cloth had to go. I'm one of the lead retailers for Katzkin in my region so I called in a favor and had them make a one off kit for me. Black on black, full perf body, raven Suedeskin accents and silver contrast stitch. That with a set of seat heaters made a huge difference on interior feel but the hard gray plastic they use in the XL's finally took its toll on me and I began sourcing parts. First up was a Raptor steering wheel and door sill plates. Also ordered up a set of all the Lariat dash vent bezels, center console, cluster trim, door handles and finally a set of vents from a Platinum truck. I was able to find a set of Lariat door panels on EBay and picked them up. I've had to order LOTS new from the dealer, glove box, lower dash below column, rear door panels, rear upper door panels, lower console trim, rear door panel handles, a pillars, front seatbelt adjusters and covers... Lots of small details. Currently I'm working on finishing out the headliner, going from a factory gray to black matching Suedeskin suede including the visors. Also in the process of installing the factory ambient lighting controlled through the sync3 system, enabled by Forscan... as well as upgrading the audio. So far that's where we are, I'll have to get some current pics since the PTM parts and some more of the interior progress. Thanks for the time guys!
Nice! If you really want to make that interior more comfortable, look into adding a 10 way power driver seat, its really easy to do. I did it on my XL and the seating position feels so much better now.
Nice! If you really want to make that interior more comfortable, look into adding a 10 way power driver seat, its really easy to do. I did it on my XL and the seating position feels so much better now.
If I could only find one locally! I've worked the stock seats over a good bit and the difference is night and day in mine vs the loaner they gave me for a week while they did some warranty work.
loving the interior! need me some katzkin leather.... I really keep thinking about it, but i need to track down a flow through console first to get rid of the jump seat.
Making some progress on the audio upgrade. The plan here is the stock Sync3, nodded with ForScan for flat low level output, run to a Rockford Fosgate DSR1 processor, then to a pair of Skar Audio amps, an 80x4 and a 750x1. The sub amp will run a pair of Rockford Fosgate P2D2-8"s in a box designed by Mark at CAF, tuned to 32Hz. The 4ch will deliver 120wrms to each Infiniti Kappa coaxial, 6x9"s in the front doors and 6.5"s in the rear. The doors will get a heavy coating of Killmat deadener and the regulator openings will have .25" ABS panels cut and bolted in place with 1/4" nutserts. I've made some slow progress, still waiting for some parts to finish another project while the doors are apart... more on that later. Last week I finished the box up and this weekend I had a little time to get my 1/0 power run through the firewall and to the rear, as well as my audio signal harness. For signal I'm using a FOR-11CK harness so the audio is plug and play. I've added a set of RCA's and a run of 9 conductor Stinger SpeedWire to transfer signal back to the amps and return to behind the head unit. That harness is all finished off and taped with factory cloth Tesa tape. Heres a few pictures of the progress.
Slow progress is still progress. The black seatbelt adjusters and caps arrived so I pulled the door panels off, laid some sound deadener, installed the new Infiniti Kappa speakers and reinstalled everything with the black upper panels and parts finally. Also got the black a pillars installed last week. The last of the black headliner parts and all the factory ambient lighting parts are due to arrive next Mon so hope to be able to make some progress there. Ordered some new wheels that I'll be getting swapped tomorrow, going with a bronze instead of the black this time... I'm just not in love with the black anymore and it's time for something different.
03-06-2018, 08:01 PM
Redalty '17 XLariat Build.
