knight rider online

I took some new pics of my KITT replica today to share.




















Thank you for looking!

Andy

Wow, that's probably the most detailed and accurate looking KITT replica I've seen, very beautiful
Your replica has good details like the body side molding trims, they're often missing from KITT/KARR replicas and the towing hooks under the nose add even more to the accurate KITT look. Thanks for sharing these photos!

one of the best season 1 replicas!!!

Absolute Beauty

That is an awesome kitt replica.One question,are you going to be adding the privacy cover on the trunk with the hydraulic on the side??

Absolutely stunning!

AWESOME!!! It is Beautiful!!!

KITT looks great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 Good job.

So Sweet.

Car looks great my friend.Is that a Don Colie dash?

That's absolutely amazing!!! I'm speechless...

Thank you everyone for the great comments!

Knight Racer wrote:That is an awesome kitt replica.One question,are you going to be adding the privacy cover on the trunk with the hydraulic on the side??

I do have the cargo shade with plans to install it. The hatch already has the factory strong arm/struts. I believe the struts you posted in the screen grab on the film car were stronger to raise the hatch all by itself when released. No plans to get those.

KevinD wrote:Car looks great my friend.Is that a Don Colie dash?

No, sir. The dash and all the fiberglass was made by Billy Gunter of Knight Designs.

Andy

Looking at the first pic makes me wanna have my Trans Am painted. The paint on my car has faded and is scratchy. And those plastic interior trims, they look like new (I especially noticed the trunk trims, since mine are faded as well and are abit awfull fit)! The whole car looks like new ! Did you restore the old parts or just put on new trims?

That car must make quite a few heads turn. Amazing!

The replica looks magnifacent.I've seen many that make the mistake of getting the left side of the dash curved at the topand other that have the steering wheel a bit higher over the switchpod/modulator column.I see you went with a season 1 3 bar graph modulator and a knight of the phoenix RPM panel and steering wheel.I liked how the wheel said knight two thousand in the pilot.The switchpods are the only thing I'm not sure are exact.I think the molding is closer to the panel in this pic and flat not curved.
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You get the trunk shade on and it will look so great that people will think they were looking at a car from the actual tv show.Do you have a video showing the scanner light on?

Really really amazing!!!!

ShadowRider wrote:Looking at the first pic makes me wanna have my Trans Am painted. The paint on my car has faded and is scratchy. And those plastic interior trims, they look like new (I especially noticed the trunk trims, since mine are faded as well and are abit awfull fit)! The whole car looks like new ! Did you restore the old parts or just put on new trims?

That car must make quite a few heads turn. Amazing!

All the trim panels are original to the car. I didn't restore anything other than a light cleaning and some Armor-All. The car is an original black and gold T/A with the tan interior. I do plan on adding the correct carpeting to the panels in the future as well.

Knight Racer wrote:The replica looks magnifacent.I've seen many that make the mistake of getting the left side of the dash curved at the topand other that have the steering wheel a bit higher over the switchpod/modulator column.I see you went with a season 1 3 bar graph modulator and a knight of the phoenix RPM panel and steering wheel.I liked how the wheel said knight two thousand in the pilot.The switchpods are the only thing I'm not sure are exact.I think the molding is closer to the panel in this pic and flat not curved.
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You get the trunk shade on and it will look so great that people will think they were looking at a car from the actual tv show.Do you have a video showing the scanner light on?

I did do a little bit of a mix with the dash to the things I liked. I tried to build an accurate as possible season 1 replica of KITT. KITT replicas are kind of funny that way because if someone wants a true all accurate replica, they have to choose usually one scene, or one episode in which to copy.

While I love the original KITT from the Pilot episode that Michael Scheffe built for Glen Larson, there was a couple small features that I wanted to change to my liking. One being the Voicebox (solid square blinky) and the pod button set-up.

I prefered the 3 bargraph modulator (early S1 & on) and the pod buttons that had more labeled functions. Even the original speedo side overlay changed from what Mike Scheffe built on the original Pilot dash. I went with was is seen in the opening sequence and throughout the rest of S1, after the Pilot. I absoulutely loved Mike Scheffe's design for the original KITT dash with the screws in the overlays. It really gives the dash that "mechanical" feel and that of an aircraft.

About the pods: You are correct in that these paticular pods were designed and built to the original pods that Scheffe had built for the Hero car. The pic (screen grab) that you posted is a shot from one of the Stage dash's that Universal built (Not installed in a car)

Notice in these two screen grabs, These are actual dash's installed into Hero cars. Originaly built by Scheffe.




Notice how the pod ends are curved on the corners and these are actual 3 dimensional parts (complete, front and back) When Scheffe and team originaly built the Pilot car, they placed the original buttons up a little higher in the pod ends (more space on bottom than top) Also, they spaced the original buttons/switches apart from each other.

The Hero car pod buttons were quite a bit different than the stage dash buttons. I won't go into great detail, but if you go back and watch you'll see what I mean. At any rate, the reason why the pod ends are so squared off is because those pods were built by Universal for the stage dash. Scheffe never builds anything with straight lines. Here is another shot of a stage dash with the same pod set-up.



You'll notice how squared off the ends are and not like the Hero cars.

So, going back to why the pod buttons are the way they are in my KITT, simply, I liked the S1 style set-up better and just centered the buttons in the pod ends instead of moving them up. (I just thought it looked better) They are also the same brand/style switch that was used for the original. Very hard to come by if not impossible. The border your refering to is trim that goes around the buttons and not actualy part of the buttons themselfs. I am working on making the trim piece that goes around them though.

I really want to thank you for taking the time to notice such detail about the car. I spent a lot of time and research to find all the correct parts to assemble everything. I have to be honest that most don't notice such details or really even care enough to bring it up. It just tickles me that others out there are as much about the details as I am.

Thanks so much again for all the kind words!

Andy

P.S. Oh yeah, I don't have a recent video of the car, but I do have an old update vid I did a while back you can check out if you'd like. I did do a little of the scanner. Not great quality video, and my movie taking skills are non exsistant, so go easy on me. Thanks again!

andyg wrote:
I really want to thank you for taking the time to notice such detail about the car. I spent a lot of time and research to find all the correct parts to assemble everything. I have to be honest that most don't notice such details or really even care enough to bring it up. It just tickles me that others out there are as much about the details as I am.

Thanks so much again for all the kind words!

Andy

Of coarse I'm a stickler for detail too.I have my own art that I spend time on and don't much appreciate a person giving a quick 2 second view of something and calling it nice or great.I love it when you spend hours on something you're trying to make perfect and someone comes along and reviews your style,what you chose to put on the canvas,what looks different then what others have done before.I mean you must have spent months or even years putting this machine together and it deserves to be reviewed from head to toe or in this case from buttons to fiberglass.There was never one true kitt on the show.They threw together dash parts and consoles and footage from different cars over the years so doing that yourself and coming up with something that looks pleasing to your eye is exactly what should be done.That being said great job.

andyg your replica is amazing if id seen a photo of the dash without knowing it was a replica id have sworn it was the real deal the attention to detail is awsome and you should be very proud as knight racer said its only fair to disect and review and to appriciate the work involved in producing a replica as accurate as yours is
now i can only dream of owning a kitt of my own(when the lottery numbers come up im guessing )but if i was to ask about the switch pods in every replica ive had the pleasure of seeing the one thing people overlook is the fact that in the hero car (whither the 1-2dash or3-4dash) the left hand side switch pod is higher than the right side my only conclusion is that with david being so tall his knee would have hit the pod evry time he sat in kitt so they must have designed the left pod higher to prevent that but in the stage dash the pods are the same height is this something you noticed as your photos dont show the angle below is the famous season 1 dash startup you can see clearly the dfferent heights of the pods

i hope ive not been too critical and as ive said one fantastic replica

You're right.Its an entire button higher than the right side.I can't believe I never noticed that.

Here's a shot of whats behind the wheel.



Here's a lignup of the dash itself.

its funny what people see and dont see i noticed the this difference when i first watched the show way back ive been trying to capture a scene from whiteline warriors where kitt is following mickeal and mace in the truck but my dvd is cracked there is a shot from within kitt im sure if someone can confirm the switchpods are of different heights too
below are c couple of stills from season 4 (10 points for anyone who knows what episodes )the pods appear to be the same height but are higher up than the season 1 dash so possibly no need for the height difference the other is the stage dash the pods are the same as well (again subtle differences in dashes especilly the pod colours)

Knight of the Rising Sun.Its very rare that Michael's wearing all black just 3-4 episodes.Plus you said season 4 so that narrows it down to 21 episodes.Kittler Kitt he didn't have him for part of the episode as well as Kittnap.and Knight of the Juggernaught RC3 wasn't in the Semi or on the team yet.

Thanks again guys for the really kind words!

About the pods: It's just the perspective of the screen grab giving the illusion that the pod ends are not even with each other. The dash board curves, so it looks like the one on the left appears higher than the one on the right. But they are both even with each other.

Here's another shot of my dash from a similar angle as the screen grab posted above.



Andy

great shot andyg amazing dash
below is stills from the scene i was talking about in white-line warriors(its taken using my phone camera looking at my tv using a very old vhs tape so sorry for the quality )i hope you can see ok
as you can see the camera angle is fairly straight on to the dash to me its clear the left pod is higher than the right up till now i guessed it was higher so davids knee wouldnt hit it but im now thinking the right one is set lower so you can see the led readouts better hence no need to have the 3rd season dash right pod lower because there are now readouts there(hope your keeping up! )
here it is (sorry again for the quality)


i used a ruler here as a guide

This should help illustrate your point.

thanks knight racer i know i am harking on about this but it has always niggled at me for years i hope theres not a posse of replica owners after my blood now im very aware how accurate some owners are about their treasured KITTs!!!