A post of small things that make a big difference

My whole week was more or less spent counting down to when I could work on Tegan again. Now before we go any further, I know some of you aren't crash hot on the name, but to be honest that's not my problem :) Although for some reason, the numberplate 'TCP' has been given the acronym 'The Custard Pod'... for some reason that's sticking pretty well! Anywhoo I was only really able to drive her on Tuesday to get the rego swapped out and also to tennis, but practicality meant I had to use the X-Trail for the rest of the week... until I got to Friday :) Thankfully I had a pretty quiet day on so I decided to chuck just a couple of things into the boot and see what she was like in some stop-start driving on my way to the office in Brisbane.

While the boot isn't massive there is still a boot. This photo doesn't really do it justice - there's room for 2 sets of golf clubs in there. There's also enough room for my backpack, some tools and some test equipment so I'll call that a win!

Content is how I'd sum up the above picture :) Yes selfies while driving is a heaps bad idea, I know that... but the moment was too good to not share. Driving to work on a sunny Friday morning with the roof off, hells yeah!! I will say the drive home was stressful though, it's stressful at the best of times because people seem to be in too much of a rush to drive sensibly - let alone when you're in a tiny car with pretty average visibility. But... worth it.

Saturday rolled around, and before I could do anything my first stop was supplies. Car mats and a clay bar kit was on the shopping list...

... $450 later I also had some plasti-dip, wheel paint, a replacement light for the boot and new speakers (front and rear)... freaking whoops! It was not my intention to get any of that, but there was a sale on and I saw lots of things that were going to be fun projects and... yeah, no excuses. Naughty me. Kind of screwed myself financially for the rest of the month. Calm down Clinton, you've got time... 

All stupid-ness aside, the speakers I knew were going to happen at some point. The old ones sounded absolutely rubbish, and after having a track car that couldn't be streeted, I wanted a street car that I could occasionally take to the track. The car so far has felt pretty damn good mechanically, so I wanted to improve my personal driving enjoyment in another way, by starting off with the audio. Autobarn had an awesome sale on some banging speakers, and back from my days of being young and dumb playing with car audio, I knew it was going to be a case of quality gear or nothing at all. With a price drop from $400 to $270 on the front speakers alone, I couldn't let that go unnoticed.

Even though the MR2 is only a 2 seater, they still manage to fit in front and rear speakers. Admittedly the rears are only little 4" drivers, but they do a decent enough job of giving you a bit more fill.

At least Toyota were kind enough to give me front splits - makes getting quality audio that little bit easier, and in a manner that doesn't require cutting holes in things to get everything to fit!

I thought the terrible sound quality just came from cardboard cones. While I was kind of right, the problem stemmed from something a little bit more dramatic... the rubber surround that attaches the cone to the body of the speaker was no longer - you can see what's left of it on the ground next to the it. She ain't gonna be making any noise ever again! You can see the difference in quality here though... just a little upgrade ;)

The tweeters required a little bit of tweaking - the old one on the left and the new one on the right. While there was a bracket there I could use, they of course had completely different mounting solutions. Nothing a pair of engineers couldn't fix though, after about 30 minutes of experimenting we had a solution that meant we didn't have to change a thing.

Here's the whole door wired up - woofer, tweeter and crossover all put into factory mounting holes without fouling on anything, yew!!! The woofer did require a little bit of screwing around as the speaker basket ran too close to the edge of the speaker, so we had to space it out so it would actually fit in the door. Turns out there was a bit of wood we could salvage from the old speaker that did the job nicely! We even managed to mount it using the factory mounting holes... Most factory audio speakers mount using 3 bolts, yet most aftermarket speakers use 4. Joys of using good quality gear, we could make it work with 3 which meant no drilling into the door. WIN!

Someone was a little bit bored while we were doing this though... not looking at anyone (Casey).

Best bit is you'd never even notice there's some decent speakers behind that door card. I unfortunately didn't grab any photos of the rear speakers but they were most certainly an upgrade from the factory solution and fit with only a few small modifications, nothing a drill and a screwdriver can't handle. Overall result? Massive improvement :) Certainly need to look at adding an amplifier to get the most out of them but I can definitely live with it for a while.

Sunday we decided to finally get into the paint. It was faded, and although the previous owner looked after it very well we suspected he didn't use the best quality products to do it - something that can actually have a significant impact on the condition of the paint. Regardless, before starting anything, the car needed to be washed! I used dishwashing detergent, as most good quality car washes now add protection to the paint which we didn't want. I must say, not a bad car to wash! Nice and small :)

This is why I got wheel paint - in spite of putting a lot of elbow grease into the wheels some stains just wouldn't come out. I suppose 20 years of road dirt will do that.

We started off by claybar-ing the car. For those that don't know, this is a wonderful little invention that when rubbed against the paint (with some detailing spray for lubricant) it works at pulling all the surface dirt off the car. This was just off a quarter of one panel... yep we had a lot of work ahead of us. What's probably most amazing is that the car didn't look dirty at all, yet this still came out of the paint.

This is what we were dealing with - quite a significant colour difference between different panels. We knew the paint would be faded, but we also suspected that a fair bit of the discolouration was coming from hazing in the clear coat. We set about rectifying it as follows:

• Meguiar's Professional Grade Swirl Remover 2.0 (Cut)
• Meguiar's Professional Show Car Glaze (Polish)
• Meguiar's NXT Generation Tech Wax 

Needless to say we love Meguiar's products, although there are a few Turtle Wax products we use quite liberally, such as their tyre black and foam applicator pads. Anyways I digress!! 4 hours later we had ourselves one very nice feeling surface, which actually brought out a fair bit I must say! 

The photo doesn't really show it but you'll notice that the bonnet in this photo is nowhere near as dull as the photo above. Yes it's not the same yellow as the bumper, there's several other areas where the difference is just as obvious if not more, but overall the difference in colour is a lot less noticeable than it was before - more graduated if you will, so I'm going to call that a success :) I'd be inclined to say that that's something I can deal with for a couple of years at least.

The wheels got done in a Metallic Graphite colour, which actually has a really nice fleck to it in direct sunlight. I tried to mask off the rubber, but there was that much grime in the rubber that no amount of masking tape was going to stick. I ended up deciding to wing it and just attacked the hell out of it with paint thinners, which while it was a bit more involved I achieved the same result in the end.

The interior carpets are in awesome condition, and a very nice-feeling carpet at that being a cut plush pile. Unfortunately there's a hell of a lot of wear near the drivers feet, and this isn't something I can justify replacing all the carpet for, especially when the rest of it is almost like new. That and I also haven't had any luck finding any (just for curiosities sake).

Nothing some universal floor mats can't fix :) Not the best fit of course, but they'll do the job!

I also wanted to replace this pathetic excuse of a boot lamp. It sits up there in the left corner and would be lucky to throw out the same amount of light as a tealight candle.

LED strip to the rescue! FYI it is white, not blue like the photo shows. Due to the shape of the boot there weren't many places I'd be able to hide it, so I ended up going with at the back under a recess in the carpet. Sure you can see it in this photo but honestly how many times would you pull something out of the side of the boot? Certainly throws a lot more light, so I'm happy :)

I then turned my intention to the interior. I could tell the previous owner loved his Armourall products, simply by feeling how much grease was engrained into the various interior panels. I'm not going to say Armourall products are bad, I'm just saying that there is a hell of a lot better out there. Proof? This rag contains all of the product I was able to lift from the panels, which was then replaced with some quality stuff. Same look, but a much better finish. There was also twists in the seatbelts that had been bugging me ever since I got the car, so 30 minutes, some silicon spray and a hell of a lot of determination finally got the both of them sorted!

Yep. Much, much, much better. And to think all we've done is chuck some elbow grease into it both inside and out, and a fresh coat of paint onto the wheels - what a difference it has made :) I've still got to black out the front indicators to match the black stripe down the side of the car, but all things being equal this will be it for quite a while - spent too much money recently and now need to just recover and pay off some of that debt on the credit card!

Mind you, now we've actually had a chance to pull things properly apart we have a better idea of where everything stands. The next thing will most certainly be brakes. The pads don't have much meat on them, and the rotors are in dire need of being machined. But I did have the pleasant surprise of finding twin pot callipers up front and vented rotors front and rear, so that's a win :) Just needs a bit of work to stop the squeaking and squealing that goes on when it's cold.

Next update will probably be a while off, but stay tuned! I'm going to be busy enjoying :)