Friday, February 10, 2012

Spent some time on the car today!

First time this year i've managed to have a free day where it wasnt raining or wasnt something else on. I couldnt really be bothered but i figured i should just get out there and do some stuff.

I've slowly been collecting bits to fit a subwoofer into the Shed. When i first got the car and wired in the Pioneer headunit, i amped the front speakers and removed the rear shelf speakers/amp with the intention of installing a sub in the boot (subs in the boot and rear shelf speakers arent a good combo). Unfortunately time and money meant the sub has never happened until now (6 months later), after i finally got annoyed with the two hopeless 10cm door speakers' attempt at bass production.

A bit of ebay trawling had me a Pioneer GM-x962 Amplifier and a Kicker Comp 12 subwoofer for £70 all in. I had planned to make a fibreglass enclosure like i have in the Avant, but for the mean time i dug out the DIY MDF box i made about 5 years ago for an old astra.

The amp that was driving the door speakers was uncerimoniously chucked in the car when i put it together, and was velcrod to the boot carpet with wires dangling everywhere, so that and the new amp were both mounted to the under side of the rear shelf, and the sub was slotted in.

Amazingly it JUST fits in under the amps, however its ended up sitting at a stupid angle due to a random bit of trim that sticks out. I could have put it over the other side, but i didnt want to block the wider folding seat. Excuse the wires, i need to cable tie them up!


With that done i had the obligatory drive to Macdonalds for sound system testing. Will take a bit of tweaking to get the levels right but it sounds much better.

After that i was tempted to give up, but i thaught i best not, so i set about some small jobs that have been annoying me for ages. The drivers wiper was sitting in the wrong place on the spline and as such hit the a pillar at the end of its sweep. Slackened both wipers off and moved them down a bit to fix that. The washer jets have been half blocked since i had the car, so i figured i'd attempt to fix that and spent some time poking at them with a safety pin. Got them better, but they're still not right, so i think i'll take the ones off the car i'm braking and see if they're any better.

I then washed the car, which will be its second wash since i've put it on the road lol!

I baught a pair of LED sidelights a few months back as the 501's looked manky next to the HID's. However when i went to fit them thinking it would be a 5 minute job, i discovered that with PFL S4 HID's and a 1.8T airbox you cant actually open the bloody headlight with the TIP/airbox still fitted. As a result i've been driving around for 2 months with one LED and one standard sidelight bulb. I stripped the air box out and swapped the bulb in and ticked another job off my list!

I also got a pair of pressed metal number plates from my brother for Xmas, so decided i'd nail them on while i was on a roll. Removing the bolted on rear plate uncovered some enormous number plate sized sticky pad under there which more or less disintegrated when i touched it, i must have spend over half an hour with reams of blue roll, a plastic scraper and some brake cleaner slowly removing the sticky remains. Got the rear plate on, then moved to the front. One of the screws was rusted away, but i managed to manoever the plate off and get the screw out. No sticky mess this time so i wiped it down with brake cleaner and stuck the front plate on. I'm not convinced the front plate is stuck on well enough to stay there though, the bumper was mangled behind the plate so the surface was sort of curved rather than flat.

Some pics of the results:





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