Tdub

Unfortunately I didn't photograph my efforts. The biggest challenge I had was paint matching. I have a Gobi Beige exterior and a Sandalwood interior. The column had a funky unknown color darker than the rattlecan Sandalwood I was able to locate. I want to a local body man and we eyeball paint matched to a 2017 GM interior color. Unfortunately, it was new enough that I couldn't seem to locate that color in a rattlecan. It was only available in larger quantities and at an outrageous price. Ultimately I had a local autoparts guy hand mix the color by eyeball and squirt it into a rattlecan for me for around $35. It came out pretty close to the original. I went to my body guy (my neighbor) last night and he's finished the paint. He'll bolt on the hood, fenders and front bumper next week and body will be done. I'm waiting for a local Amish upholstery guy to finish custom making Sandalwood cloth bucket seat covers and covering my new seats. Then it's on to me putting the new interior in the car. I'm torn as to whether I'm going to tackle the headliner myself or hire it out. After owning this car for 28 years, it's finally going to look really presentable. My dad bought the car for me when I was 19 and just died in December of 2017. I'd really hoped to have it done before he died so he could see it. I at least was able to take him to the shop to see the progress before he died. I guess my next project will be tinkering on his '62 Pontiac Catalina.

In case anyone wants to make this modification, please allow this post to serve as an update to the original query. It turns out that the sleeve swap is possible and relatively easy to do. The smooth sleeve simply takes the place of the original shifter sleeve and shifter. As I'm sure most of you know, the gear indicator in the dash is not correct on a floor shift model. I believe a floor shift model has the gear indicator blacked out in the dash. However, the smooth sleeve has the hole to attach the cable operating the in-dash gear indicator so it can still be used. If you didn't know what you were looking at, you wouldn't know it didn't belong. Pretty happy with the outcome.

Scott, do I understand you to say that it is possible to convert the old "column shift column" to a "console column" by swapping in the sleeves, i.e. the rotating portion of the column from my donor "console column"? I already have removed the sleeve from the donor column but I haven't torn apart the original "column shift column" to know what's going on inside of it. If it isn't possible to swap, I don't want to mess with and possibly trash a serviceable column. I'm certainly mechanically proficient enough that I can perform the surgery but when I comb through the prior posts, I can't find any that indicate the swap is possible.

Mike, I'm in northwest PA (kinda near Erie) 5+ hours from you. Well if I tear into my working column and can't substitute the smooth collar, at least I know where I can find a console column. I think I have all of the other pieces I need to convert. I took all of the stuff from a donor car that was being scrapped probably over 20 years ago. In hindsight, I should have taken the entire car. In any event I'd love to hear from someone who has tried this or otherwise been into the innards of a column.

I'm in the process of a complete restoration on my automatic 70 that I've owned since the summer of 1990 (I was 19 when I bought it for $2500.) I'm doing the conversion to buckets and have parts from a donor MC including the original console (bare) steering column. It was pretty spanked and I decided that I would simply use the smooth sleeves from the donor column and swap them onto my original column shift column. I tore into the donor column and it took me a while to extract the smooth sleeves to paint and swap. I'm now a little hesitant to perform the surgery on my perfectly functional but soon-to-be incorrect column to swap in the smooth sleeve. Is this even possible? Am I stupid for not seeking out a factory column set up for the floor shifter? I'm fairly mechanically proficient but I've never been into a steering column before and I'm unaware of what's going on in that column shift mechanism.

Thanks for the info. I didn't know you couldn't get sandalwood buckets. I still think I'm going to try to have them made using NOS material by a local Amish upholstery guy who's done some stuff for me in the past.

By the way, Canuck, what color and brand of carpet did you ultimately end up with?

If you figure out the dash color, let me know. Where did you get the cloth front seat cover? I searched high and low for a cloth sandalwood seat cover with no success. I'm going to have them made if necessary $$$$$$$$. If I didn't like the sandalwood color so much, I probably would have just switched the whole interior to black.

I'm restoring my '70 that has an interior coded for sandalwood. The seats and door panels are clearly sandalwood but the dash, dash pad and steering column are a darker color. The color is sort of a tannish, greenish gray. I'm converting to buckets and console and thus need to convert the steering column. I have the pieces to replace the column shift I'm removing but I don't know what color paint to order to match what's original. Can' anyone tell me what color dash etc. would have come in a car coded for sandalwood?