Continuing on with the whole mentality of small things that make a big difference, I've been slowly chipping away at some very small things just to make Tegan both nicer to be in and nicer to look at. The list seems to constantly change as I spend more time driving her... due to the fact I haven't had her for long it's been growing faster than it's been shrinking. Nothing serious, just small things as you find out what kind of life it has lived.
The motorised antenna is one of those things that is ultra cool as a 90's item... well, it would have been if it actually worked. I got reception, but the motor seemed to be incapable of making it extend and retract. Instead of replacing it with another option, I decided to take the opportunity to tastefully modernise it instead - with a small, stubby carbon fibre item off of eBay. Unfortunately these are typically designed for newer cars, with ideal installation times being in the order of 5 minutes as opposed to 5 hours... what can I say, I like a challenge :) Let's begin interfacing!
The first step was to mate the antenna cable to my new solution. I didn't want to ruin the original cable just in case I felt the need to go back to the factory solution, so I bought 1m extension cable that I could bastardise instead.
The next step was to work out how to attach it to the body using the existing hardware I had from the previous aerial. I ended up being able to make something work with a selection of rubber grommets, washers and nuts.
I crimped on a ring terminal and attached that as well so I could actually use it as an aerial. The old aerial actually screws in and is nice and secure - I lost the ability to secure it when I made the switch, so I had to improvise with what hardware I could salvage from the old aerial in the hope of making something that would work... Kwik Grip to the rescue!! At least that's what I thought... turned out it didn't bond as strong as I would have liked... Sikaflex to the rescue!!!
Quite a nice little update I'm sure you'd agree :)
Next on the list was the shifter and shifter boot. Given that it's something that my left hand is pretty much on the entire time I'm driving, it's something that needs to be comfortable, functional, and aesthetically pleasing for me. The old items were wearing pretty bad, with the shifter boot getting dangerously thin in some spots with cigarette holes in others thanks to a previous owner.
If you've never heard of Redline Goods, I suggest you educate yourself very quickly. They do all sorts of fantastic accessories for cars in terms of replacing items with leather, alcantara, suede etc. in any number of colours, patterns and stitching variations. They custom make for pretty much any car too! This little bad boy above cost me a grand total of $50 inc. postage from the UK - genuine leather with white stitching. If you consider you'd get a generic faux leather boot from Super Cheap Auto for $30, this is really not bad at all :)
The glue holding the old boot to the bracket was that shot that it just peeled off - nice and easy, and no snapped plastic. I lined up the new boot, making sure the stitching matched the corners of the bracket, and waited for the glue to dry before pressing the two surfaces together. A heat gun made life a hell of a lot easier too, making the normally stiff leather become much more malleable.
Old vs. new... cannot argue with the results. The smaller shift knob works very well, as it gives you a lot more options when man-handling it. I did have to add the shift pattern sticker you can see down the bottom though... it's the law in QLD that you have to be able to see the shift pattern - so if you swap the knob to something that doesn't have one on it (like the old shifter on the left), this is the only option. Not the end of the world, but just something to keep in mind.
From here I moved onto the final step of the audio system - amping the speakers. If you spend good money on speakers you want to make sure they're being looked after - headunits can only give so much power, and aftermarket speakers generally need 2-4 times that amount of power to operate effectively. Unfortunately, amplifier mounting locations are pretty limited in the MR2... under the seat requires spending a lot of money on a slim-line amplifier. Behind the seats means you lose the ability to store the targa roof. You could put it in the boot, but it's a very long cable run as the battery is still in the front of the car, and all cables (including audio) have to run through the engine bay, not good at all. Next best option? In the frunk - it's sealed from weather, and has enough room to be useful for what I needed. It also means that I don't have to run any cables past components that would induce noise :)
I found a guide for mounting the amp in the frunk, and pretty much disregarded all of it with the knowledge that I could probably do it better... to be fair he was also going for a completely different setup, so I'm not being too arrogant here ;) Can't knock that it wasn't a good place to start though. I grabbed a piece of MDF from Bunnings and set to work sizing everything up. Measure, cut, test fit, trim, test fit again, trim again... etc etc.
The trickiest part was getting the MDF to sit flush with all of the different shapes and accessories in the frunk. I must have pulled the MDF out over a dozen times just to make sure I got everything sitting right.
Once I had it all figured out I set about painting it. You can get a bit of an idea of how much modification was required just by looking at all the different edges and what not along the front of that board. I also added 2 cut-outs to help with cable running.
In between coats of paint I set about starting the wiring. I've never pulled the plastics out before, and was absolutely amazed at all of the auxiliary systems that are housed up here! Yes it makes sense for a lot of them, but when you picture an engine in the back of the car you kind of picture everything else moving with it.
As is always good practise, measure twice cut once - same rule applies with cables, especially when they're going to be cable-tied to a bunch of different components just so they're tidy. I will state at this point, I wanted to leave myself with enough cable length so that I could pull the amp out and access the spare tyre/battery without needing to disconnect anything.
Next up came the cable pull - never ever a fun job, but has to be done so might as well get on with it. I used an old wire coat hanger as an initial pull wire, taped the remote cable to that and taped everything else to the remote cable. This was going to be my pull wire once I found it on the other side of the car... The theory here is that I didn't particularly want to pull the entire coat hanger through, especially given how tight space is on the other side - you certainly run the risk of damaging something.
Yep - this position is always great for your back... Once I had the remote cable in hand I set about pulling everything else through. A few hiccups along the way but nothing a bit of wriggling can't sort out!
I was actually amazed at the space once I got the wiring through the firewall - was even able to get my full hand through the centre console to grab all the cables - nice! Not something you see every day... surprise!
From here it was a case of wiring everything into the headunit - splicing and soldering cables, none of this twist and tape business going on here... I am a professional after all! I had to do the headunit side of things first though, as I needed to make sure I had enough cable length to still be able to remove the amp without disconnecting...
... turns out I didn't. I had to cut 4 more sections of speaker wire and extend them. In the long run I'll look at re-running all the cables with single sections, just for the sake of quality and peace of mind. Light was running out though, and given how close I was to finishing it, this would have to do for the time being.
I also took the liberty of looming all the cables together - like I said, professional ;)
With the mounting board now dry I secured the amp to it, and set about wiring everything up. Man how I don't miss working under fluoro lights... Given that every single speaker wire was the one colour I had to mark all the cables with what they were connected to via a series of stripes marked with a Nikko. That little piece of paper you can see there was a life saver... e.g. 'II -> Grey -> Front Right'
While it was sitting up here I made sure I had enough cable length... evidenced by the fact that everything is connected up while the amp sits outside the car. Amp done!! Now to put everything back together...
Heck yes :) :) cannot argue with that! Cabling all out of sight, and it doesn't move thanks to the weight of the amp and the fact that it's held down by the radiator hose. Win!
Next comes the actual fun part... testing. First things first is to make sure everything is connected up correctly, i.e. that the front right speaker is actually the front right speaker. With that test done it was onto tuning and auditioning - and I really cannot argue with the results. I now have the capabilities to hear what's being played when I'm at full pelt on the freeway with the roof off and the windows down, woot!!!
Another thing that's been bothering me is a lack of functioning windscreen washers... try as I might I just couldn't get any water out of them. After checking that the water reservoir had water in it, I decided the pump must be at fault.
I've got to say I'm learning very quickly that parts for these cars are a hell of a lot harder to find than they were for the Silvia... when I went to Global Auto Spares (read: absolutely awesome spare parts supplier), they didn't even have this part in their computer. Autobarn (read: hit and miss for spare parts) ended up coming to the rescue, although I still had to wait a couple of days to get one in.
To get to the washer bottle and motor, I would have to come at it from underneath the car. Holy plastic!!! It seems that there is a bash plate for absolutely everything under here =\
Given I'd only recently filled everything up, there was a fair bit to drain before I could pull it out... turns out this sucker took 2.5L!
The photo doesn't really show it too well, but there was a lot of crap that dropped out with the water. I took the opportunity to give it a good flush before swapping the motor out and putting it all back together. Tested it again and - nothing. What the hell??? I had a closer look at the washer stalk and found another button that I'd never seen before... pressed it and voila! *facepalm* turns out the old motor could have been working all along, I just wasn't using it right. With most washer stalks, you pull the stalk towards you to engage the washer motor. Turns out in this car it just activates the windscreen wipers once - e.g. for a mist or that situation where you don't need them on fully. Ah well, at least I know I have a clean washer bottle and a fresh motor. At only $30, not a great loss at all.
The next thing I wanted to sort out was the Toyota badge on the backside of the car. Toyota colour coded them back in the day - while this was all good and well, the colour didn't fade as quickly on plastic as it did the rest of the car. Consequently, the paint fade was a lot more obvious (even though the photo doesn't show it) and as a result a bit of a sore thumb. We'd recently obtained some plasti-dip for the first time, and decided to give it a whirl as it would be perfect for what I was trying to achieve.
Take 1 - ignore this, I only put it in because I thought it was pretty rad =P I kind of rushed it the first time and stuffed it up completely, so I ended up having some fun with it for the sake of shits and giggles.
Take 2: not at night time and it was actually warm. I began by masking off the surrounding area, and went nuts with the plasti-dip. 30 minutes between coats, requiring 3-4 coats and a setting time of 4 hours... not the quickest of products to work with, but for those of you who don't know what it is, it's kind of worth it. Why did I paint the body as well as the badge?
Here's why: it just peels off - leaving no damage to the paint whatsoever. It also separates really easily from variations in surfaces, in this case leaving the TOYOTA black and everything else goes back to yellow :)
If at any point if I want to take it back to yellow I just peel it off, no harm done. That, ladies and gentlemen, is plasti-dip. People do whole cars in the stuff without requiring any prep, and just peel it off if they get sick of it. Not a bad product at all. At the very least it's made a massive difference to the ass end of the car, now matching the 'Toyota' logo with the 'MR2' logo colour wise. Yeah? Yeah.
While there are a few more things in the works, I'll save them for another time, as this post is already a tad lengthy. I've spent a fair bit of time focusing on little jobs that haven't cost a lot of money, all with the intention of slowly sorting things out one at a time... and while I don't necessarily care what other people think, I do believe that my car is most certainly a reflection of me, so yes aesthetics do come into it a lot. Coming up next is a few more bigger things to help the driveability and reliability of the car - stay tuned :)
