Day two of the mission. I forgot to say yesterday, I added some of this sheath (can't remember what it's called) to the wires in the door, so none are exposed.
Stupid me went and bought the wrong kind of solder (I had no idea there was such a thing as plumbing solder until today).
It wasn't great to drive the car so disassembled and with bare wires, so when I went to get the correct solder I walked. I got electrical tape too, a very thin one that kind-of shrinks if you put it on freshly hot soldered joints.
While it was raining too much, I went into the garage and started working on the doorcards.
I wanted the top pieces from Cassie, but I remembered that the inner seal strips were not perfect, so I swapped them over. I bent one of them because I didn't see the two rivets holding it on, but I got it more or less straight again.
Quick preview of the door. Looking quite nice.
It's interesting how the newer car has silver screws, and the older has black. Also the plastic clips that hold the doorcard in, the older one has blue clips and the new one has a combination of red and yellow. Similar stuff inside the doors too.
I messed up with the mirror switch by not giving it enough wire, so it couldn't reach where it's supposed to be. So I extended all of the wires coming in from the sides. 10 wires. 20 solder joins. Tedious.
But eventually, the mirrors were in, and fully functional.
Something I've been meaning to add for ages, a connector from an Ikea lamp, soldered in on the car side, but the extra dash backlighting just clips in or out easily. Nice that there's two holes for positive and negative too as there's two pairs of wires from the cluster.
The reinforcing bar added for the passenger airbag. It sucks that the airbag weighs so much as it is, then I had to add this heavy metal beam. It's required though, if that thing detonates I want it to stay where it is.
I noticed the dark dash had a better gauge bracket, so I took it.
I figured I could use the face tabs from the dark switches as I had scratched them on the old set. But I scratched one of them trying to get it off so I only took one.
Dash in! Inside that is. The temperature controls box was being a pain in the ass. I have, however, repaired the broken cables (two now). I tried using sealant to hold it down but it still came off. Turns out, drilling some holes and tying the cables down with a cable tie worked very well!
Doubly stupid me realised that the fusebox was now limiting the length of the wires to the mirror switch. So. Five more extended wires.
Ah, I've missed these custom backlit switches. These are beautifully bright!
It's complicated to fit them in, but I got it done. Except... then I realised. I hadn't fed them through the panel they fit into. So I had to undo this whole thing and redo after feeding the wires in... I'd soldered them in so well, it was hard getting them apart again.
On to the doors, I added the speakers and the high density foam. An extra layer is in the middle where the door goes inwards a little.
And some more foam filled in the mirror hole, to reduce wind noise. Although I think that happened previously because I didn't have the outer seals attached. This time I do, and I picked the best two.
As for the mirror panel, my mirrors didn't come with a blank one, but I prefer the flat black design so once again I've taped in some black foam over the hole.
And then, everything else on! And tada! That looks pretty good! I think the colour combination looks nice. I kindof wanted a dark lower theme, and the upper plastics on the doors were starting to go a dirty-looking colour. The black also shows scratches and scuffs much more. I put the light doorhandles in as the dark ones had gone a funny colour too, but kept the dark surround.
Quite pleased with how it turned out! The horozontal middle part of the dash is actually darker in this theme than the other one.
I started adding the finishing bits. Had to figure out what panels I wanted dark and what ones I wanted light. I changed out that flickering LCD backlight for a yellow one but it just looked orange, I had one spare blue one lying around though so for now that's alright. It's looking so much lighter inside the car now, with this colour change!
The dark glovebox looked crap, but I felt like the light one could be a little better... So I took the handle from the dark one.
Some more dark features...
The storage tray under the wheel is dark. I changed the fusebox cover for the light one.
Lower center panel dark to match the gearstick surround and armrest tray.
And after two solid days, it's done. Everything works and the wiring is
so neat compared to before. I'm really really happy with this. I just need to clean all of the interior panels thoroughly and tidy up the mess I've made over these past two days.
I did try wiring in the rear pocket lights, but for some reason the left one doesn't light up (I didn't bother with the right). So I'll have to figure that out some other day.
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