I love 90's cars. I own to of them(Trying to sell one!). One thing I don't like about them, however, is that the cupholders seem to be designed for nothing larger than a soda can or a small coffee cup. I need something bigger to fit my XL 30oz iced teas from Whataburger. So, I set to work brainstorming how to make an additional cupholder for my Subaru.
Below are photos of the center console in the car. I don't have any use for an ashtray, so my idea was to somehow mount a cupholder into the rear ashtray of the center console.
After taking the console piece, I set to work cleaning it. It was pretty disgusting considering the previous owner smoked. I found a cigarette butt in here still. Gross.
Made sure to deep clean it.
After the cleaning, I removed the rear ashtray. Initially I was considering mounting a cupholder into the ashtray, but I wanted it to be more sturdy. To measure the gap, I placed a piece of cardboard behind it and traced this.
The space turned out to be trapezoildal in shape, which lead to many issues later on in development. I did a drawing in Fusion360, which was honestly a bit rough since my extrudes were all based on this non-rectangular shape. Initially I was going to have the cupholder hang out and down, as seen in the below drawing. I had a lot of setbacks with designing this, as I was using features I had not worked with before. Realizing that a number of edits were more easily done on Adobe was what got me un-stuck from making this perfect.
After exporting this to Illustrator, I added tabs for structural stability. At this point I was still considering making this thing solid, not accounting for how much material this would use.
I don't have any use for an ashtray, so my idea was to somehow mount a cupholder into the rear ashtray of the center console.
A few more trial cuts. The rounded corners and the problem of the hole in the console tapering in by 2/16" at the top would be solved by sanding.
First test print. At this point I realized how much wood it'd use to make this solid so I elected to make a frame. This stuff is sturdy enough. You can't see it well here, but at this point I ran into clearance issues. Having the cupholder extend downward below the console hole made it sit weirdly and overall just not sturdy. Being this late into the build, I figured there must be a way I can make do with the cuts I already have.
I experimented with basically flipping the design over so it extended upwards. At this point I noticed that this even was probably not necessary. For the final design, I made the cupholder just come straight out. It was a little difficult to get the panels to sit properly.
Below is the final product, I have yet to install it in my car.
Reflection
I struggled a lot with this project, and knew I was getting in a little over my head from the start, but was determined to make it work. There were a couple errors with alignment that I couldn't accurately predict with cardboard due to how malleable it was and this lead to some wasted plywood. Also, folding my back seats forward will conflict with the location of this cupholder, which is an issue I did not account for. Hopefully it'll be easy to remove, but I purposefully designed this to be rather snug.
Cost Estimation- Prototype
Time spent on Zing-- 1.5hrs *30 = $45
Design time-- 4hrs *10 = $40
Build time-- 1.5hr *10 = $15
2 12x24" plywood = $38
Total cost = $138!
Cost Estimation- 100 copies
Build time-- 1hr *10 = $10
Time Spent on Zing-- 30mins*30 = $15
.5 12x24 plywood = $9
Total cost = $34
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