One of the most famous movie car builders in the country is very fond of saying; "Custom cars are like a wheel, every few years the styles come back around." Well I guess the wheel has finally come back around for me… I'm out with a partner delivering a General Lee when I'm asked by a movie car collector to "take a look" at one of his original movie cars that's seen some hard times. Over the course of 15 years a lot of it's functionality has been lost and some damage has occurred to the front end while on public display.

Not the most fitting condition for the indestructible Supercar.

K.I.T.T.

Not only an original screen-used Knight 2000, but the only convertible vehicle ever created for the show's last season. A very rare car indeed.

Fortunately for him, he's asked the right people at the right time. The person who's with me has been in the replicar business for many years, this car is his specialty. And it's not like I've never seen one of these myself. My replica of this famous 4-wheeling superhero was one of my earliest experiences with fibreglass. And you might say I've made a few more of them since.

    

We decide to set up shop in Branson, Missouri for a few days.

Before we run down to the local Radio Shack, before we run to the fibreglass supply stores, there is something we must do…

The owner of the car has graciously offered to allow us to turn his 4-car garage into "Code One Custom Auto - MidWest", at least for a week. But the contents of our transport truck combined with his 42 piece automotive tool set, doesn't exactly meet the requirements of a custom shop.

We need a lot of help from Home Depot here!

So off we go, shopping for tools, workbenches, rolling carts, car ramps, power tools and everything automotive. I'm not sure who had more fun that day, the owner who added all of these new gadgets to his collection, or us, who, in record time, loaded up 3 shopping carts with some of the finest names in tools. By nightfall, this garage was as well equipped as an Indy paddock.

Personally, I think it was a draw, although I do have to say that I've been back there since, I thought the new hydraulic lifts were a nice touch and his associates were making repairs to AN AIRPLANE in that garage.

Now that we've got everything prepped for surgery, we prepared a game plan…

The owner's request was simple,

"Make the car better and more functional then when you found it. Keep everything original that can be saved and only replace what is missing or damaged beyond repair."

What he offered us was a spectacular incentive…

We were offered the opportunity to use the car as a model to replicate EXACT copies of it in the future. While several dozen versions of this famous car have been reproduced in the past, no one had attempted to build even a second convertible.

That was about to change.

The first thing we did was to shrink-wrap the car. We had no idea if the original design shop in Costa Mesa, California was still in possession of the original molds to replace panels. We had no desire to risk the car and have to find out.

While there are many great products out there that protect an automobile's finish against fibreglass damage, none of them are 100% Absolutely guaranteed. Gift-wrapping the car using the thickest sheet plastic we could find afforded us that guarantee. It also guaranteed us that we were about to make some of the most horrible molds of our careers. We were in for a lot of sanding when we got home.

Now that the car looked like it was ready for a Fed-Ex pickup, we gelcoated and fibreglassed the plastic coated Christmas present. Needless to say, the owner was present, biting his nails, from the first moment the fibreglass flowed from the containers. He tried to remain calm, but the nervousness showed through every once in a while.

  

"Would this liquid cocoon melt the paint right off his one-of-a-kind car? Would it even come back off after it dried?"

We did our best to keep him calm and spent hours assuring not only himself, but the now steady stream of visitors to his home, that these two crazy guys did indeed know what they were doing. Our everlasting thanks to the owner for his trust.

   

The next morning, my partner Eric and I awoke before anyone else like two children on Christmas morning and ran out to the garage. We peaked under the plastic and checked the car. We smiled and ran back and pretended to sleep. Being two long-time fans of the series ourselves, this was the ultimate thrill.

An hour or so later, a group had gathered for the unveiling and we raised the shell from the car with the confidence of two magicians who already knew how the "trick" was done. The car was completely untouched.

Now that the hatch mold was made, we were ready to tear into the car.

The first thing to be done was to remove a damaged urethane nose and one damaged headlight cover. The front of the car had suffered a minor collision and the internal bumper was bent which distorted the rubber bumper cover.

Once the bumper cover was off the car, we pulled a mold from it as well.

   

The headlight cover was scratched and needed to be sanded and repainted. We sent the cover to a trusted local body shop for the paint to be expertly matched for the damaged nose.

The first amusing discovery was in the design and construction of the original scanner device. (The red light in the nose that "sweeps" back and forth.) The scanner was constructed primarily for filming and was not powered by the vehicle's battery system. As a matter of fact neither the scanner nor the dash electronics were even DC powered! The AC power to these devices were supplied by twin AC power cords that hung from the right rear quarter panel and were plugged in to external power source.

   

WOW!!! At the vehicle's top speed of 300 MPH… You'd need a REALLY long extension cord!

Eric's first task was to build a device to scale the electronics to be run from DC power. While this was not too difficult a task for the dash, the scanner was a different matter.

Amusingly enough, the AC powered metal scanner housing had to be shielded from the metal body of the car, and the chosen method of insulation was no more ingenious than

"PAINT STIRRERS!!!"

Yep… some of them still had white paint on them (nothing on the car is painted white, by the way, these were USED wooden paint sticks.) when I pulled them out from under the scanner.

While the dash technology was upgradeable to be used while the car was in motion, the scanner was not. This giant brick of raw electronic mass (about the size of a shoebox) of Eighties technology, mounted on a wooden board (which was also used to shield them from the metal car body) was replaced with a DC powered circuit board no larger than a pack of gum.

Welcome to the future K.I.T.T.

Not only were most of the electronic components of the car's interior no longer functioning, some components were outright missing. While Eric composed his grocery list of needed replacement electronic parts, I sat with my PDA and began sketching and making notes of the missing parts. I tried to place myself back to the Eighties when all of these items were brand new and thought of which of these things were still around today. Once I had my list of 21st Century equivalents…

It was time to go shopping.

We hit the stores you'd expect, Radio Shack, Home Depot, Lowes, local electronic supply stores, and some you wouldn't…

Lecters Housewares and Toys R Us.

Don't ask me why I bought the big box of Legos… I'm not telling.

One bonus item I was fortunate to locate required the assistance from all of the employees of a local Radio Shack. Once they knew we were restoring their childhood hero, they were all very eager to help. Eric and I, along with the entire staff, began right there in the store, assembling the cars most well-known personality trait,

THE VOICE !!!

One of the "must haves" of any K.I.T.T. car is the single most remembered feature that made it…

"The talking car"

How could we leave this one speechless?

While I'm not going to give away the secret of how to make a car talk, I will tell you that just about any RS stocks all the items you'll need to make your car carry on hours of endless conversation. That night, for the first time, the owner of the convertible got to talk with his car.

He was speechless, fortunately, the car was not.

Around 3AM, after the car was finished talking to half of the neighborhood, we installed a VCR and connected it to the dash-mounted single TV. Without the luxury of a Knightrider tape on hand, the first images we saw on KITT's original TV screen were agents Muldur and Scully, doing what they do best. At least it was Sci Fi.

   

The electronics were repaired in the dash, the VOX, the familiar set of lights above the steering column that represented KITT's in-car voice, were once again made to function and the poorly made and damaged "gullwing" steering wheel was sanded down, polished, repainted and replaced. We even took the time to add the green lights in the steering wheel called for in the original concept, but never completed on any of the vehicles.

The nose returned from the body shop and was re-fitted to the car. Being an original urethane (rubber) nose, the front end retained the impression of where it had once been pushed in. This KITT would forever have a slightly crooked "Elvis" smile on the right side of the nose.

A few extra lights and some replaced buttons (long since missing) and the lower center console was completed. The "switchpods" or the custom steering column was devoid of its trademarked switches and its familiar "C" button, so that was also attended to.

   

Sharp eyes will note the addition of a "CODE 1" button conveniently located next to the "ECS" button, which in this case does not stand for "Environmental Control System", but more appropriately "Eric Christopher Shave" my partner and resident electronic wizard.

The next morning the car was given a bath, a fresh coat of wax and was rolled out for some photos.

We stayed behind to do a little work on an original Back to the Future BMW "Griffmobile", a mini-Indy car used in "The Toy", a screen-used Robocop 2 Taurus, and a Herbie the Luv Bug.

      

But those are other stories yet to be written.

I caught up with the original Convertible KITT a few weeks later at the Kruse Collector Car auction in Auburn, Indiana. The last time I saw the car it was in a parking space right along side the Mach 5 from Speedracer, the Interceptor from Mad Max and the Shelby Series 1 from Rollerball. Quite a parting shot for my memory. I hope to catch up with the car again sometime in the future at its new home at the Cars of the Stars Museum in Keswick, England.

Now that you know where the molds came from, let me show you what we did with them…

Upon my return from Branson, I set about to locate a suitable donor vehicle. Let's face it, I was still excited from working on the original and decided that I would have to have one of these for myself. While I was quite satisfied with the replica I made for myself years ago, the prospect of a duplicate car without a roof was quite intriguing.

Fortunately for me, a quick search led to some excellent results. I had my perfect donor car in less than a week.

With the donor car patiently waiting outside the shop, I prepped our "Knightmare" mold of the original hatch for use. Within hours, I had a duplicate of the hatch with a somewhat wrinkled surface.

      

A few days of sanding yielded a prototype part worthy of mounting on a car.

I've had some experiences before with removing the tops from all sorts of different vehicles. My favorite story regarding quick convertible conversions is one, long ago, in which a friend was street racing his wife's new car and managed to flip the car over on its roof. He woke me in the middle of the night and asked to bring his car to the shop for repairs. Rather than face possible divorce court the next morning with a damaged car, his wife awoke to the phrase "Surprise Honey, I had your favorite car made into a convertible!"

One thing is for certain, this is a non-reversible process. Do it wrong and you've wrecked your car.

Sometimes, damage is done during this process and not realized for months. Everything here relates to the structure of the original vehicle. Most "unibody" cars are designed (for obvious reasons) to pass safety tests with the entire car intact. Removing part of the chassis seriously impacts that structural integrity.

The solution to this is to modify the chassis BEFORE removing any of the structural parts of the car. This is done through the means of what are known as "subframe connectors". Designed to keep the body of the car from twisting during race applications, these high-strength steel bars are welded in place to the chassis at key points of the car to strengthen the frame after the roof has been removed. Ours were bolted, THEN welded in place, by a professional racing shop. This is one area that requires specialty professional attention.

Without this chassis modification, it would only be a matter of time before the middle of the vehicle sagged, following which, the doors would cease to close, the drive shaft would rub the body and finally the center of car would collapse to the ground. Not to mention the fact that all of this might occur at once during a collision.

Now that we had this taken care of it was time to pull the roof from our donor vehicle.

First, the interior of the car had to be removed, then the glass hatch.

Next, we marked the areas of the roof along which we would separate the roof from the car, both inside and out.

An hour and three cutting blades later, we had a topless car!

   

After a little cleanup work on the edges, the fibreglass hatch section was test fit and trimmed to match the bodylines of the donor vehicle.

We then fabricated a support panel for the forward section of the hatch. The original vehicle had no such support and at speed, air trapped under the hatch acted like a parachute and slowed the vehicle down. As this car was designed to be a daily driver the hatch support also serves as a secure storage area and mounting area for the sound and video system.

   

Once the panel was trimmed to fit the interior of the vehicle, the surface of the prototype fibreglass part was sanded down to smooth. After which, a new fibreglass mold was taken of the prototype. We now had the means to create parts that were smooth and would not require the days of sanding before installation.

Next, we permanently bonded the prototype hatch to the donor vehicle and blended it to match.

We then added a fibreglass front "nose" made from the mold that was pulled from the original screen used convertible.

We completely removed the interior and prepped the entire car for a color change.

The car was primed.

  

And the door jams and hood sections were painted black.

   

The car was then transported to the paint shop where it was entirely sprayed gloss black and buffed.

After painting, we started assembling the car from the rear to the front. The wing was mounted to the custom hatch, followed by the factory taillights, custom taillight "blackouts" and the ever important chrome trimmed California license plate bearing the letters "K… N… I… G… H… T".

Additionally fitting for this car as, while we were bolting this particular accessory to the vehicle, I received a call at the shop from a long time California client who had heard that we were producing the first-ever authentic replica of the convertible version of the show car. Needless to say that by the end of the phone conversation, this project changed from "spare time amusement" to "client project". I would have my convertible KITT, but only for a week.

Then we exchanged the "shop" wheels for the familiar "turbine" wheels with the authentic hubcaps wired in place. GM originally designed these caps to simply "snap on" and stay in place. While that was fine when the vehicle was less than a year old, over time these caps get weak and tend to fly off the car at highway speeds. This has earned them the nickname "bowling ball" caps as they have five finger-sized holes in them and roll along side the car for a few hundred feet before their unique design causes them to take flight, thereby also earning them the "frisbee" nickname as well. I myself have been responsible for loosing a cap on the highway, shaken loose by some road work, and causing an entire road crew to "hit the deck" as this metal "frisbee" came flying at their faces. Usually, due to the increasingly rare nature of these caps, I stop to retrieve them if possible, I was not pulling over in this case to face an angry mob of highway workers, WITH SHOVELS…

These days, we wire them on for safety and to prevent loss.

Next we installed the carpeting and interior pieces and fitted up the 4 point racing seatbelts. Then we finished the hatch support panel in padded black vinyl and added the accessories and the secure storage panel.

Once the support panel was complete, we installed it in the car and installed the famous "PMD" seats familiar to the fans of the show.

   

From there we created a custom fibreglass cap to cover the section of the roof that had been cut at the top of the windshield. This was also covered in black vinyl.

Up next was the custom lower console fitted with high-tech looking buttons and switches and digital displays. This is our one area of creativity as no two lower consoles were alike during the 3 year run of the series vehicles. In keeping with this tradition, no two of our consoles are exactly alike and this allows us to identify one car from another in photos, which may be taken over the years.

Now we moved to the accessory installation for the front "KITT" bumper cover including the famous "scanner" light and 3 sets of driving lights. The outer most set fitted with yellow bulbs to act as replacement turn signals for the custom nose.

With all of these items securely in place, only one thing remained…

The computerized dash!

Creating and installing this particular item is worthy of its own story. To keep things brief, I'll just say that this particular car was fitted with fully functional authentic digital displays with custom templates, custom "switch pods" (I ran out of "C-mode" buttons at the time, but will be seeing this car in less than a month, as of the time of this writing, and I plan to install this option as soon as I come into contact with this car again..), a 5inch black and white rear camera monitor and a 5 inch color LCD TV connected to a hatch mounted VCR unit. While the difference in the two different types of TV's are of little notice when they are both displaying pictures, I have come to notice that when they are deactivated, they do give the dash the appearance of having a "black eye" as it were. Quite an amusing thing to see.

   

And of course, we installed the now legendary "gullwing" steering wheel.

With the dash securely in place, we were ready for a test drive and a photo opportunity.

   

Then another test drive,

At it's new home in a great little town just outside of San Diego California. I did however, get to enjoy a couple of wonderful days enjoying the car while watching some spectacular sunsets on the beaches of Malibu, California. What a great place to enjoy a convertible super car!

So now I'm back out there, hunting for a potential donor vehicle to yield another

"C-mode KITT".

Maybe I'll get to keep this one for myself…