Ryan's Micra Blog

[addamf16]

Impressive stuff Ryan!!!

 

[richardwbb]

According to what I read you are using attachments but the icon next to the paperclip I think that would help you out

 

[flyboypuoi]

I am still alive. You might be wondering why I haven't posted anything in around half a year. That's because I went to Finland, and got stuck.
This time, I'm driving my N13 back home, but the world has become a strange sub-apocalypse and driving through Europe is currently unwise, and really expensive (multiple private COVID tests are needed!).
But today, I got some K11 parts.
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Firstly, some seat heater switches. Some with plugs. These can be slotted into any normal-sized blank slot in Nissans of the K11 generation (these could go in an arm rest, for example).
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I also got these first facelift centre panels, with seat heater switches and headlight washer buttons all built in. These two have been on order for a couple of people since last summer, so they'll probably be posted as soon as I come home.
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And finally, some tail lights. They are all first-facelift. I got one for free because there is a crack on the brake/tail part of the lens. These are all LHD lights, so the fog and reverse lamps are switched over. Meaning that you could make your car have either dual rear fogs, or dual reverse lights.
All of the parts I've bought are unique to Scandinavia/Nordic countries (other than the tail lights, but they are not available in the UK), so that's why I've bought them.
On Saturday, I'll be meeting a friend and he'll have something extra special for my K11 way back at home. I'll keep what it is quiet until then, but I'll say one thing; it's something to flex (providing it fits).
I'm now aiming to come home at the end of this month, and I'll be meeting one last K11 owner who will sell me some parts.

Sent from my F8331 using Micra Sports Club mobile app

 

[Dr Phil]

WAIT!!! What model of Micra had heated seats?!

 

[flyboypuoi]

WAIT!!! What model of Micra had heated seats?!

Almost all of them in Norway, Sweden and Finland.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Okay. I didn't post for a while, I guess I've been busy with other stuff. I am now at home. Images don't seem to be showing on desktop browsers without clicking on them, but they show up fine on the MSC app.
Here is what my friend gave me. I can't tell you how excited I am to fit this, but it'll be a reasonable bit of effort.
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This is a sunroof. It's been removed from a K11, apparently. It seems to be a German dealer option. You can probably see something cool already, it's electrically actuated. No more flinging my arm around in the air looking weird from the car behind, just press a button and it opens.
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You can see here that instead of the black dots, it's tinted. Something I really really really wanted to mod on my existing glass, but now I don't have to! There's my friend holding it up. You can also see that there is a lot more visible glass, with less black borders. Which is awesome!
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There's the motor. This sunroof is the JDM style as far as I can tell. That means it pops out, then moves back over the roof instead of into it. The button looks like it might be back-lit too.
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So, when I got home, I saw my K11. Oh boy, it's looking rough. It's completely covered in moss, cobwebs, dirt and everything else.
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One of my Maxtreks is flat too. And the brakes were quite stuck and rusted.
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That's not all, the Super S seats, which I made heated and got retextured, were mouldy. Great.
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Even the arm rest had mould on it. The pictures don't really show it well. I really shouldn't have closed the vent, that was a mistake.
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Anyway, after killing the mould off, I got my hands on a JDM centre panel which is double-din. And hopefully the same colour as the preface lower panel. I have plans for this, but not a double-din radio.
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The problem is that the ashtray and 12v socket are on opposite sides. I also don't have the ashtray. So I was instead thinking of designing and printing a panel that covers the bottom, and maybe has some integrated stuff.
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I also have this equalizer/amp from the mid '80s. Which will be cool to add.
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I also have a set of late facelift JDM headlights! I didn't like these much in the past, but I have changed my mind. These are incredibly light!
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I cleaned one up with some compound, polish and wax. Compared to the euro second-facelift headlight, it looks amazing. Much bigger main reflector with thicker lines, much nicer shape indicator, which is clear with a separate lens, and an internal sidelight, which is the tradeoff, I guess.
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Another angle.
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And a comparison between how I bought them and after five minutes of work.
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At a later date, I modified the side indicator adaptors, which didn't quite fit. Then they did fit, great success!
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Now they just need some paint, and they'll look great.
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Look who it is!
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I started up my K11 and it instantly fired up. I fully expected the battery to be long gone, as it was already really weak before I left, but it had no problem at all. Also, I depressurised the fuel line, and without even priming it, the engine fired up. It was running a little rough at first, as if the MAF was bad. I guess it just needs to be driven and excersised.
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Now I have the whole gang in one place!
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I pumped up the Maxtrek but it kept going down. I really hope I can fix that hole because I've barely used these tyres.
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To go with the internal sidelights, I've got a new set of these COB bulbs. These are warm white this time, and should work well in a reflector despite being LED based.
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There's one in the headlight, I also got these because they're usually a lot longer than incandescent bulbs, and the stock ones were hardly poking into the reflector, so longer ones would be much better. Can't see them in action yet, but I put two in my other car and they work great so far.
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The colours of the cars are similar, but not the same. The K11 has more of a blue tone whereas the N13 is really desaturated. The N13 colour is "463" and the K11 is "KY5".
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That's all for now. I'm mainly focusing on the N13, but I have some cool mods lined up for the K11, they're just big projects, as well as the sunroof and the CGA3 engine. It's all being logistically and financially challenging. First I must clean the car properly on the outside and put some other tyres on, maybe I'll put my summer wheels on, but they need new tyres.


Sent from my F8331 using Micra Sports Club mobile app

 

[flyboypuoi]

Looks like I set a new record for how close I park my cars together. I probably can't improve on this so I shouldn't try.
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So, I took the Maxtrek off. Thank goodness it's only flat on the bottom. I couldn't see where the air was escaping from, so I'll check again some time. It's odd that it would develop a puncture while I was away, without moving. Very odd. Hopefully there isn't bad creep deformation.
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I decided that I'd put my SRi wheels on for now. I also decided to have another go at swapping the panhard/lateral rod on the rear suspension. I brought a bigger breaker bar from Finland (blew up my N13 alternator so I needed tools). One of the bolts was particularly stiff. My first attempts only seemed to bend my mudflap.
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Evetually I had more luck by removing the wheel first. I realised that this wasn't particularly safe, so after this I put a jackstand under.
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I was able to remove the body-side bolt after a bit of a struggle (it made an impressive sound when it cracked!), but couldn't get the axle-side off. I realised that there is no nut on the back, just a stud bolt going into the axle. It was tough but the nut eventually came off. Must've been full of dirt. I really went heavy on the WD40.
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But with the nut gone, the rod wouldn't come off. It was still really stuck on the stud.
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After a great deal of effort, the rod came away, but left the bushing in place still. Meaning that I effectively had to tear it off by force. The bushing would not move. I ended up removing the rubber by cutting at it with snips and a saw. All that was left was the metal sleeve, thoroughly fused to the stud.
I realised something that would save the day: The new rod didn't actually have the inner sleeve of the new bushing. So, I cleaned up the one on the car as much as I could, and with even more WD40 I slid the new bushings on. It took a long time, because the old rubber was still slightly on the sleeve, and the rod wasn't lining up quite right, but...
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There it was. Finally! I have a Nodspeed adjustable panhard rod. Well, it used to be adjustable. All attempts to un-seize it have resulted in nothing, but this one is a bit shorter than the stock one anyway, I think whoever used to own it adjusted it for lowering springs.
The nut kept turning on the axle side and was just squashing the bushing, so I locked it in place with the spare nut that came with the rod. I'll let that settle after a few drives and check it again.
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This rod will not only move the axle into a more correct position, but it will stiffen the rear suspension laterally. Meaning that in a corner, there is less flex to the left and right. This is just a geometrical attribute as it's tubular. The bushings will help this too as they're some kind of poly bush or something. I expect there is little tradeoff with this as there aren't really lateral bumps while driving.
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I should've measured a before and after, but regardless, the winter wheels won't be catching the right mudflap anymore, and the car should feel better in the corners.
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Sent from my F8331 using Micra Sports Club mobile app

 

[flyboypuoi]

Right then... I have a lot of updates to do. I've still been doing things, but I haven't posted on here.
From this point on, it was all quite a mad rush to get things done before Japfest, while working a new 40-hour job.
So, let's begin. I'll try to remember the details for these photos but these were a while back now.
Here's what appears to be the final version of my new heater controls face. The scale was the same, so that was good.
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I went to the GizFab meet with others. Unfortunately, my K11 wasn't in driving shape, nor was it legal on the roads. So I took my N13. This was the convoy I went with. It was a long but fun journey.
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Jack's preface spotted. AKA Nissan Boy.
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K11 BBW was there, not for the best of reasons, but it was cool to see this in person finally. As well as GizFabs new track car.
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I was told to line up my N13 at the end due to the close relationship with the K10. Next to a genuine March which was cool.
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There were quite a lot of cars there!
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We all lined up into a grid for photos, before rolling out onto the streets as one massive convoy.
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24 K11s. I was hiding in the back, but there was one at the front so it's still 6x4.
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Later in the day, when most had left.
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On the way home, stopped for a pizza. Just friends cars now.
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Sidelights around sunset, best photos.
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Another day. I had these late facelift March headlights. And I wanted to paint them, so, apart they came.
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The lenses for the indicators are actually built into this piece! So I had no choice but to mask them. Annoying.
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Either the plastics are fused, or the entire thing is clear with chrome coated everywhere except the lens.
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I tried using some modelling masking tape, but it was far too fiddly! So I used white labels. I couldn't find the masking tape, but noticed later that it was right next to me.
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Perhaps I replaced the labels with tape, then. I'm trying to remember as I add these photos!
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One last look at the shiny chrome on these before I ruin them.
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Some sanding made the surface rough so that the primer could cover more surface area and have some side-angle strength.
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Primed and ready for action.
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On went the satin black.
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Once dried, they looked good!
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Oh no, it didn't go entirely well though. I had to do some detail repair around the masked area. Also, the underside of the lenses were exposed to paint. So they got a light coating of black! This needed polishing off.
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Later, after some reassembly and final tidying, I had to do some comparison photos.
Here's one of each headlight.
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With the bonnet closed...
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Comparison of indicators:
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Closeup of the Euro headlight:
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With indicator (the camera picked up more light than my eyes did, and more spread. In reality it doesn't look this good):
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With separate sidelight:
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And I've run out of photo space. Part two coming right up!

 

[flyboypuoi]

Huh. Even when uploaded from my laptop, the photos don't show without clicking on them. That really sucks.
Part two.
With the headlight on:
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And now for the Asian headlight.
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With the indicator (this actually looked this good):
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With the internal, main reflector sidelight. These look a bit rubbis during the day (I will have a solution to that some day):
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And finally with the main headlight on. There is some more glare with this without the cap covering the tip of the bulb.
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Both compared with headlights on.
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And with indicators.
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After comparing them, I fitted the other headlamp. Now look at that! That looks really good!
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I really like that!
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Those indicators are substantially better, not just in shape and style, but the lenses actually make them light up much more visibly in any lighting condition.
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Looks odd when they're lit up without the little winglets on the top sides. But these have much larger reflectors and don't have the eyelid diffuser for the sidelight.
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That's neat.
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Anyway. That's enough photos I think.
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I primed the N15 indicator adaptors, ready for some paint.
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Unfortunately, I got a little impatient and tried to speed up the drying proccess with the hair dryer. This made them curl up. I managed to straighten them out a bit, but they were still not right. I painted them anyway, and looked into getting new ones printed.
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I got them on. They looked alright! Other than being curled. But it was nice to have the N15 indicators attached.
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The other side looked better. This was a good preview to what the second set would look like.
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If you don't see the curls, it looks great!
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Of course, I needed a night time shot with the new sidelights. They now had big T10 COBs in them. Supposedly warm white, but one was much less warm. Still, they were bright.
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Another shot, with the outside light off. I had to wait for a while withough moving to get this, or the light would detect me and turn on.
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Back to another project. The dial faces. I printed off version 2 of the K11 faces, as well as my N13 ones. These are very early copies of both, which weren't used in the end.
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The middle layer had to be paper, but for the hidden warning lights, I had to remove material. I thought I could just cut roughly around the shapes. This turned out to be a bad idea.
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I regret this, but it was essential experience.
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The three layers.
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With the bottom and middle layer glued together...
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All three layers glued. This looked alright.
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With a light behind the dial face, the details were lighting up, but not the black areas. Which is good. But the warning symbols looked quite bad.
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I think it was then time to cut out the actual shape.
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Another shot of the light going through the face. Not sure why I took this also.
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With it cut out, it was about time to test it out.
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End of this part!

 

[flyboypuoi]

Part three!
This was looking quite good now. At the time, at least.
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One of the things that sucked about this prototype was the warning lights. They were just so messy from how I'd cut them. The design looked good though. But it wasn't lighting up very brightly. It was more like the stock setup, but this was with SMD T10s.
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Revisited at night. The light looks more evenly distributed than during the day, where it was patchy. But not bad in the dark.
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The warning lights looked a bit rough still.
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A slightly darker shot of the backlighting. Nice to see the dials lighting up in white, finally, with no blue filter.
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The heater controls actually looked better than the original. This was two layers, with inkjet varnish on the top paper layer, but I later added another.
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I like my design here, but I may change the corner marker bit to be smaller.
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This was ready to go in.
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I did a test fit, with the existing lighting. It looked great.
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With the knobs fitted, this was going to be great!
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I bought something for the new lighting. This reel is "RGB", that is, individual R G and B 5050 SMDs. Which looked rubbish. And was broken. This image was actually for the seller, when I returned them.
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My next project was to try and fit the new sunroof. I only took these two photos to reference how I wired in the extra interior lighting, but it was cool to see the big heatsink on the main bulb.
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Without too much hassle, the headliner came off.
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There it is! Probably one of the largest parts of the car!
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I noticed a problem. The sunroof surround left a hole exposed. So I needed to get a non-sunroof headliner.
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There's the inside of the roof. I was surprised to see dimple die holes in the back!
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Something I've been meaning to do for a long time. Get rid of the aerial. I never ever listen to the radio, so it's wasted.
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The sunroof was removed! Again, not too difficult.
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There were a lot of screws and brackets. Especially as the rear passenger handles are mounted on extension brackets to clear the sunroof.
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The roof was now empty!
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It was all so fresh in there!
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Here's a comparison between the two sunroofs. The tilt/slide is much longer and heavier.
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Something looked very strange when mounting it, though...
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Hang on a second... the frame of the new sunroof is the same size as just the glass of the old one! This doesn't look good.
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Sure enough, I lined up the glass on the car on one side and... well. It's a lot smaller.
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I decided not to put the old one back on, but use my car cover that the N13 was under while it was stored.
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It then started to rain. The cover looked like it was holding the water... but I did go inside the car, and there were damp seats and a puddle inside the arm rest. So obviously the cover isn't entirely waterproof.
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New backlighting bit arrived. And they were considerably better. So it was time to get creative!
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On went the light strips. Tactical placement to maximise the light in areas that needed it. Annoyingly these strips have huge gaps between lights, and the minimum length is huge. Some cuts were required in the clear diffuser to stop clipping issues.
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And I'm out of photos, next post!

 

[flyboypuoi]

Part... four?
I specifically positioned some of the lights to shine on things like the needle bases. I also added foil tape to places to really increase the reflectivity.
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It was rainy and stormy with big gusts of strong wind. So the cover blew off and the open-top car got rained on. I even had the popouts open to help air out the interior after it got a bit moist.
This sucked.
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On the next dry day, I cleaned out the swampy gap where the roof panel curves around the sunroof hole. This was really green.
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I started to think about how I would cover up the aerial holes. Then I had an idea. This is an inner door piece from Cassie.
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I chopped off a piece of it.
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Then, using copious amounts of Miliput, I stuck it in place.
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Because the Miliput is a putty until it hardens, it filled out the holes in the roof too. A bit like a Playdough hair salon kit.
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I went ahead and added the sunroof glass, because it was just starting to rain a little again. I managed to bolt it in loosely when the rain started for real. Luckily I had it popped out for easier installation, and most of the rain doesn't get through the gap. And a lot of it that does, goes into the drain.
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After it dried a bit, I brushed on some paint. And hoped it didn't rain again.
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I had to drill some holes for the LEDs to sit inside with the diffuser for the dials. This plastic was very brittle!
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I got a good look at the board that controls the dials.
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This is the front side. The two motors on the right are the same as the rev counter in my N13. Very primative. The other two are steppers. The LCD just sits against those contacts at the bottom.
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And the back. A couple of huge resistors, and a large capacitor.
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I put some high density foam over the buzzer and taped it down hard, to make it quieter. It seems that it did absolutely nothing, as it's still loud as ever!
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This is the main chip controlling the board. Most of the pins are outputs to the LCD. It would be nice to find out more about it to understand if I could change the mileage or do something unique. Notice that I changed the battery warning bulb to a red one here as the new face doesn't have colour filters.
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Initially I was going to make the LCD backlit by a normal T5 LED in white, and let the rest of it do the RGB thing. But I decided to add a strip behind it instead. I angled the extra diodes towards the rev counter in an attempt to give it some more light.
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After a few versions of the dial face, I was reaching a proper final copy. This middle layer has some thicker lines on the sides to help align the layers, and the entire warning light box areas are cut out.
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Next is a lower mask layer, with thicker lines and details for aligning and giving a partial glow.
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Then the holes in the paper layer are replaced with clear sections.
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A red Sharpie is used to enhance the red features.
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This is looking better than before.
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Here's some strange trivia. The LCD hole in the dash is almost the exact size and shape of the sunroof, just 24 times smaller. I placed the cut out piece on the back of the model K11 G# here.
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Now the top layer was added. This was version 4B.
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That's everything glued.
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That's looking really great now.
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There it is, pretty much a finished product.
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Back outside. I brushed the seal around the sunroof glass with some vinegar. It had gone very green. This cleaned that off quite easily.
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I did, for a moment, consider the possibility of having the electric sunroof in the back. But it clashes with the other one, and there's a big gap between the headliner and the roof panel, which wouldn't really work with the surrounding plastics.
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Time to have a look at my old heater controls backlighting. This is like a little bomb waiting to short out and blow up.
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Wow, look at that. I'm simultaneously proud that I got this complex thing working, but also, what a mess. The card has also browned a bit from heat.
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Out of photo space. This is taking a long time to get through! And I've resorted to ciders now so typing quality may suffer.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Part something
While I had the boot panel off, I decided to add rivnuts. Those plastic screws have been annoying for long enough.
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I did this a bit clumsily, but there we go.
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Some new tyres arrived! These are meaty!
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They were made at the beginning of March, 2021, so they're new. They haven't been on a shelf for 2 years, going hard.
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The boot handle needed repainting. First of all, it needed cleaning and evacuating of spider inhabitants. Get out of here!
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I bought this paint stripper. It wasn't really that good.
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Back to the heater backlight. I got fresh card and traced the old design.
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This gave me a nice base to start with.
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There we are, that's looking good.
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Just needed some holes.
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A bit of test fitting showed me where some trimming was needed for a snug fit.
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Now, I covered the card with foil tape.
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This made it incredibly reflective.
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Now, using toilet roll card, I made some guides and glued them in place.
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Onto these parts I added the light strips. Because of the huge gaps between lights, I had to kind of pleat them. Notice that there are two loops in the middle one. Thats because the outer lights are permanent red/blue colours, but the inner (knob backlight and text) bits are coloured.
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It was at times a bit fiddly.
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Because of the winter wheels, I needed to clean up the bit where they rub at full steering lock. A bit of sandpaper took away the small amount of surface rust...
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Then the old underseal covered up the exposed metal.

It was time to remove the NS-2 tyres.

I was lazy so I put steelies on the back and left the front on jacks.

Obligatory "tyres in the boot" photo. One last look at the tiny little 155/55/14 fellas.
View attachment DSC_0671.JPG
More parts for other projects arrived. This is a Floating Ground Adaptor for my equaliser, which is from the mid-80's so I had to do some adapting. This came all the way from the rootin' tootin' US, so shipping was brutal. I opened it up to discover that it was basically just some capacitors and maybe some linking of ground wires.
View attachment DSC_0672.JPG
The tyres took some time, so the car stayed like this for a bit. Notice the mirrors and deflectors are also missing.
View attachment DSC_0673.JPG
The paint stripper worked better on the mirrors. I bought a scraper to help get the paint off faster.
View attachment DSC_0674.JPG
Eventually the paint was coming off. With copious scraping.
View attachment DSC_0675.JPG
I had to chop the mirror wires, so I taped them inside the door so that they wouldn't recede into the door.
View attachment DSC_0676.JPG
To keep the holes in the doors from getting rain in, I put these cloths over them (and later taped them down).
View attachment DSC_0677.JPG
Finally, the NS-2Rs were on.
View attachment DSC_0678.JPG
On they go! These are also directional like the previous ones.
View attachment DSC_0680.JPG
Oh yeah. Those are meaty. The car does sit higher now of course. But it's worth it.
View attachment DSC_0681.JPG
and I'm out of photos, next post coming up now!

 

[flyboypuoi]

Part 5? 6? I dunno now.
These tyres fill in the arches a lot more than the others, while leaving room for the suspension to travel fully. Look at the tread going onto the shoulder!
View attachment DSC_0682.JPG
Oh man. These are meaty. I think my motorcycle has more tread than these do.
View attachment DSC_0683.JPG
Looks good at the back too. I guess the NodSpeed rod has helped align the wheels a bit better.
View attachment DSC_0684.JPG
I scraped off the glue from the wind deflectors, because they were looking terrible and one of them was sagging.
View attachment DSC_0685.JPG
Some foam-based double sided tape held it in place better than before.
View attachment DSC_0686.JPG
That's better. I did go over some imperfections with a pen. Now they look great again!
View attachment DSC_0687.JPG
With a lot of scraping, most of the paint came off of the mirrors.
View attachment DSC_0688.JPG
Finally, my RGB wiring arrived. I accidentally didn't pay for the item so that delayed things.
View attachment DSC_0689.JPG
This was single-core wire. Meaning that it would stay in the shape it was left in. So I could do some precision work!
View attachment DSC_0690.JPG
I decided to turn the RGB wall adaptor into a garage 12V tester, like I have in the car. I gave the contacts a test after adding the wires. Looks like we have colour!
View attachment DSC_0691.JPG
Red Green and Blue all on together.
View attachment DSC_0694.JPG
Some adjustments were made, but things looked like they were going very well so far.
View attachment DSC_0695.JPG
A quick test of the colour strips on the heater controls too.
View attachment DSC_0696.JPG
Looks bright against the original face!
View attachment DSC_0697.JPG
Actually, with the new one, it looks great too.
View attachment DSC_0698.JPG
Why not test the main dial face too? This looks great!
View attachment DSC_0699.JPG
Wires were added next. Including diodes to control the red and blue lights with the coloured ones.
View attachment DSC_0702.JPG
There we go! We have red and blue. And these will share brightness etc with the coloured ones. And flash with them, and stuff.
View attachment DSC_0703.JPG
A K10 next to my N13 at work.
View attachment DSC_0706.JPG
I had to cut out the LCD hole, because the acetate in the top layer was slightly opaque, which was making the LCD blur. I tried to cut neat, failed, then tried to cut a rectangle instead. This didn't go amazingly, so I will 3D print a bezel to cover that up.
View attachment DSC_0707.JPG
The heater controls backlight was installed.
View attachment DSC_0708.JPG
Some modification and repair was required. But now it's in!
View attachment DSC_0711.JPG
There we go! Totally custom, one-off dial faces. They look fantastic!
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That looks fantastic!
View attachment DSC_0713.JPG
I'm extremely pleased with how this went.
View attachment DSC_0714.JPG
Event the warning lights look great! I did notice however at night, some of them have a shape glowing from the light box around them.
View attachment DSC_0715.JPG
Notice how the red and blue stay that colour, but the knob and the text "heat" are whatever colour I want.
View attachment DSC_0716.JPG
I also fixed the backlight in the corner marker button. Now it's nice and bright.
View attachment DSC_0717.JPG
It's looking fantastic!
View attachment DSC_0719.JPG
It's looking great. And I can choose pretty much any colour I want. Or have it flash or blend between colours.
View attachment DSC_0720.JPG
out of photo space

 

[flyboypuoi]

This is the last post for tonight, but I have more.
Here's the controller for the colours. There's a lot that can be done with this!
View attachment DSC_0722.JPG
After finishing this, my phone (which is actually Eddie's phone) finally broke termainally. So photos are a little more scarse. There are more to come tomorrow! Or some time.

 

[slj_2003]

That dash and heater controls are seriously impressive!!! To think I was onto something when swapping the bulbs out with LEDs ?
Very very nice work ?

 

[flyboypuoi]

That dash and heater controls are seriously impressive!!! To think I was onto something when swapping the bulbs out with LEDs ?
Very very nice work ?

Thanks slj_2003. I thought the same when I chucked in some Chinese LEDs back in 2014. I guess I keep making it look better each time. Maybe one day I'll look back at the current setup and think it was terrible.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Did I say tomorrow I would add more? On Monday?
Whoops!
Well, here's some more. This is now all taken on a donor iPhone, which is really new so the image quality is pretty nice.
Here are the mirrors, with most of the paint scraped off. It turns out that bleach reacts with chrome. The main ingredient in bleach is sodium hypochlorite, leave chrome bathed in it for a while and you get... well, I only have an AS level in chemistry (half an A-Level).

It was now time to clean the car. Finally. I had to put the mirror bases back on the doors to plug the holes. You probably can't tell in the photos, but these mirror bases aren't plastic. They are heavy metal. Like cast iron or something.

I soaked the mirrors first with a couple of bottles of bleach, the rest was water. Then I did four bottles. In the end I put 8 bottles of bleach and almost no water. These of course had to be disposed of correctly.

So after all of this time, I cleaned the car exterior. With soap! Because I was about to polish and wax from the bottom up.

I even cleaned the engine bay a bit, even though this was not due to be on display at JapFest because it was a mess.

That's much better. That's how my car is supposed to look.

I also dried it off to avoid water spots, I used hose tap water after all.

Now, even though the wash and dry took a little time, the real work began. I went over the entire car with compound polish. In case you don't know, compound polish is more rough than regular. So, in sandpaper terms, the grit rating is lower.

Being thicker stuff, it was a bit of a workout. But that should have tidied up the paint, as well as the lights.

Now it was time to do it all again, with regular polish! This time, I used T-Cut Metallic. You might notice that I didn't apply any below the bumper/door strips. This is just to keep the cloth cleaner and avoid scraping in bits. It also saves a little time.

It took a while to get off, so in the last few areas it was quite dry by the time I buffed it. Which was satisfying.

As you can see, I started to get tired of buffing. I'm gonna have thick arms after this.

But it was worth it. I hadn't even applied a wax layer yet, and look at how shiny it became!

I think at this point I had put some wax onto the car and buffed that off too. Or at least on the next photo. Now, the car is looking like it belongs in a show.

Later on, I investigated the situation with those expensive COB bulbs. They are supposed to be warm white. One is kind-of, but more yellow-y tinted. The other is more like cool white. Regardless, they weren't the same.

I (as you can probably guess) have a small drawer literally overflowing with T10s. So I compared one with one of the COB T10s. The brightness difference was surprisingly small! I put another incandescent one in on the other side and... it was a kind of "regular" brightness. It seems that a couple of my incandescent T10s are actually substantially brighter than the rest. I need to find more of those, then!
I put them in the headlights, now they're even, and still relatively bright.

Again, I waited for the driveway light to turn off.

And one with the lights inside the garage off. Look at those happy eyes.

The bleach bath seemed to actually degrade the tape holding the extra covers for the mirrors on. So I was able to pull them apart. Including the lights. These got cleaned up, and dried off.

They still worked! Much later, when everything was back on the car, I noticed that one of the individual LEDs was dead on the left mirror. That sucks so much.

I strengthened up the bolts in the boot handle with some Miliput backing. I made sure to remove the bolts while it was drying, since they need to be able to move sideways a little to align it up when fitting.

I had an idea about my gauge needles. They are hard to spot because they have no opaque surface on the backs. So looking at them, you mostly see the black gauge face behind them. So I applied some foil tape.

Here's a comparison, with and without the foil behind it. It's much easier to see them with the foil.

So, I applied the foil to all four of them. This wasn't so neat, I might do this again.

I think they are much easier to see now, during daylight at least. I guess at night the needle will cover up the markers it goes over, which should make it a little more obvious.
For some reason the gauge face is crinkling a little. It didn't look this severe IRL, but it was showing a little. Maybe the heat makes it bend like this.

I eventually grew impatient enough (and low on time) to remove the mirrors and start prepping them. The black material is the reacted chemical between the chrome and part of the bleach.

I've run out of photos. Hopefully this time they show on PC browsers.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Hey, looks like they're showing now, instead of just a link saying "view attachement #".
Continuing.
I sanded off most of the reacted surface. Some of it just sanded off to reveal a fresh layer of chrome underneath though. Well, this is what I had to work with now.

Look at how much thicker the mirrors are with these external covers on them! You can really see it with the indicators removed.

From another angle...

Now. How was I to paint these without having a painted surface on the painting station itself? This was a problem last time. Well, these jackstands weren't particularly shiny. They were about to get a fresh coat of paint.

On went the plastic primer. I had to do a lot of coats of this to minimise the bumpyness from the remaining chrome. And the poor job of the boot handle, which was scratched and had bits of old paint in the corners still.

It looked alright though!

The car needed some run-time, because the battery was really struggling. Also, the left fog lamp is trapping moisture.

I had a go at fixing something that has really been bothering me. The fresh air slider wouldn't go all the way to the right, ever since someone (not me) came over and prodded somewhere around the interior fan. It turns out, the cable had bent somehow, where the screwdriver is pointed. I did my best to bend it back. This was also causing the slider to go stiff on the left side, as the cable was colliding with part of the box and damaging it. It still slid back into the wrong position after moving it to the left, so I just left it on the right (fresh air). Maybe if it's left like that for a while, it'll creep back into shape. It's not very often I close the air anyway.

Now, I suspected a tiny hole in my exhaust where the resonator was removed. I bought this exhaust bandage. It wasn't cheap.

Somewhere in those welds is where I was somewhat sure a tiny hole was hiding.

On went the bandage but... it was only long enough to cover one side!

Well, hopefully that did it.
(I don't think it did. I think the leak is in the joint there.)

I tidied up some wires as that was a problem last time. I got creative here and used three cable ties in what I called "Cable Tie Oregami".

Eventually it was time for some colours. I had a think, and decided to change up the colour scheme a bit from last time.
Last time, the mirrors were entirely body colour, but the inner parts around the mirror glass were black (using tape to mask). This time I dedided to paint the main mirror piece black. So when assembled, the inner part, and an area around the base, would be black.

On went the black paint, thick. This is not normal paint, which I later discovered made things difficult.

The base coat was looking good on these too.

I also decided to put the new indicator adaptors there, despite already painting them with the touch-up paint.

Now it was time to finish putting the interior back together. The front interior light, made from a boot light, was glued back in place. This time, a little more central!

I also finally got around to putting the new rear bracket in for the arm rest.

That looks much better! It's still a bit bendy, so the arm rest still moves a bit. But it's much more secure. And it's good to have a little flex in case it gets hit when getting in/out of the rear, or sliding across the front seats (necessary when parked 1mm from a wall, just how I like it).

I wasn't going to add my equaliser before Japfest, but I figured I'd give it a go anyway. This is how I wanted it to mount.

To install the equaliser, I had to remove the radio and do some wiring. I also had to cut out the bar under the radio, so now it's a big double-din hole.

Here's how I wanted it to mount in the car. I wanted the lights to be visible, so a little gap under the radio was needed. Otherwise the bezel would cover it up.

This is how I attached them. With copious amounts of Gorilla tape.

You know what? It worked. These were stuck together solid. For the time being, at least.

Here's what I wanted to do with the rest of the gap. I bought this plastic and trimmed it down. It still needed trimming at this point. I also wanted to add a couple of switches in the empty space on the right. One being for my existing brake light lock, the other for a future project.

When I wired everything in, it worked! After fiddling with a connection issue on the parcel shelf. I was surprised! And everything lit up nice!

It actually looked really good and sounded great too!

There was a painting problem, though! The "hard" paint reacted badly with the lacquer! I had to sand this all off, which left the surface lumpy!

Luckily, the other parts were responding normally to the lacquer.

I've run out of photo room.

 

[flyboypuoi]

So I repainted the black parts. This time, with thick coats to try and hide the new lumpyness.

I tried to drill the holes for the plastic panel, where the switches would go. But suddenly, critical mission failure!

For some reason the text is locked to bold now. I can't turn it off.
With the mirror paint basically done, I glued in the lights. This went alright, but some of the glue went onto the fresh paint and ate into it! Luckily nothing too bad.

The covers were then glued on too.
Why can I only type in bold now!?

Soon enough, they were wired in and bolted on. Look at that!
From a distance.

Some touch-up paint was required where the glue had damaged the paint. But overall, these aren't too bad! Considering the time limit.

This is what I meant by the inner bit being black around the glass.

While I had the touch-up paint handy, I tidied up the big scratches in the bumper. Yes, I painted after waxing. Real stupid hours.

I wanted to tidy up some of the black bits too. So I took the paint from my model K11. First, the black bit of the mirrors. I hadn't quite covered the area where the cover starts, becuase I didn't think it'd reach that far. This paint covered it up really well.

I also painted the three bolt things on the popouts, as they were all missing paint. Once these dried, it looked much better. Some other areas were painted too, inside and out.

Some last minute modifications were made before the MOT the next day after work... It needed to pass because JapFest was the following morning!

While jacked up, the rears looked quite tightly fitted...

It was MOT time the next day, after work...

One of the rear fogs blew while it was there! I watched it go out.

The result of the MOT was... not great.
The rear right wheel was sticking. The handbrake cable on that side was stuck.

Just before going to sleep, I got creative with the black paint. These metal rear speaker grilles needed repainting, and I thought that a light coat of paint by hand would be just what they needed.
The end result was so bad that there are no photos of it.

Next up... JapFest. And my car was getting there somehow.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Japfest, 2021.
My car was not road legal. But it needed to get there.
We had a plan.

This is an A-Frame. Which attaches to the body/suspension of my car, and to a separate K11 via the tow bar.
This means that my car is, in these photos, a trailer.
Coincidentally, this trailer is also my K11.

We had to figure out a wiring issue with the trailer lights, but it was pulling along well.

This made me nervous.

I met some new friends on this adventure. The trailer had made it so far, about 1/5th of the journey.

Sadly Eddie didn't come. But there's a space for him there at the front.

Anyway. The trailer was fine for the whole journey! We got there and unhitched it. Once the A-Frame was removed, it was no longer a trailer, and was once again my K11.

To be honest, the amount of K11s that turned up was a bit disappointing. It was about the same as JAE, maybe less.

But still, there were K11s there. I hadn't seen most of these in person before.

This one is nice. Other than that plate. And look, there's famous YouTuber AdamC filming his next good yet cringey video.

I have some more photos which I'll add after this, using a different camera.
It was time to head home! My car transformed back into a trailer.

Someone was particularly aroused by the beauty of my car/trailer!

I did get a little nervous of the journey again.

A quick stop to check that things were okay. I found out that the preface had an electrical problem leading to tail light failure and half-brightness brake lights. Which we fixed.

The trailer was fine for the rest of the journey. Sometimes it pushed against the car in roundabouts and while braking, but otherwise it was a good trailer.

One final check to see that things were alright, and to say goodbye to the preface. We were nearly at home!

For some reason my sidelights look blue here.

And that was it. JapFest was great, I saw so many cool cars there. It was a lot of fun getting my car there in the end, and I met some cool people.
The next post will be some more photos I took with a separate camera.

 

[flyboypuoi]

These photos were taken with my 1998 Sony Mavica digital camera. This is a period-correct camera that records to 3.5" diskette.

You might notice that I fitted the new side indicator adaptors while I was there. They look so much better. You can't even see them with this camera, ideal.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Now I'm keeping on top of things!
Today I investigated the rear fog failure. I spent ages trying to take the lens off, it turns out with how I've mounted it, it's basically impossible. But then I decided to try switching to backup rear indicators (so the fogs are used) and it lit up. So the bulb is fine. I followed the wires, and found where in the wire the failure has happened. I just need to figure it out some time, maybe tomorrow. Might be a diode failure, they are tiny after all.
Anyway, I also wanted to make the rear speaker grilles better. So I took them off.

I tried to understand how the piece is fitted together, to remove the black fabric in the grille. This, I guess, is to prevent moisture or even water drops from going on the cone. Sadly there was a casualty and the fabric was destroyed. Well, on the plus side, the usual plastic ones don't have this fabric. And now I can see the speaker better. There are some ugly lines, but I think I can make them less visible.

Onto the painting station they go.

Did I prep them? Take off the attempted paint job? Clean them at least? Nah, send it and spray it. These look good! The one on the left has some bits where the holes are filled up, I think from my stupid paint attempt from before. I poked out some of them with a tiny screwdriver, but I'm going to see how they look when it dries.

I noticed that the holes weren't getting filled in, so I put more paint on, quite thick. I had to make sure to spray from every angle, so the inner bits of the holes got even coverage. I guess I'll see how these look tomorrow!

 

[flyboypuoi]

You know what? They turned out great! Well, the one on the right did, but the other wasn't terrible. Maybe I can clean it up some time. For now though, they look better than they did, with scratches on the existing paint. These are preface metal grilles don't forget, most people seem not to know they exist!

You can really see the speakers now, it looks cool.

Now I really need to find a double-folding rear bench, with no headrests and ideally not split-seat (but not quite as fussed as the preface ones are straight patterned anyway) and get it retextured like my front seats.

I got some help replacing the seized handbrake cable, which is great because I'd have no idea how to do it.

The old one was so stiff that it remained in the shape it was in while attached!

Suddenly there were a few of us!

Yesterday, a well-known K11 graced me with its presence in person for the first time. What a cool car!

I do dig the styling of this.

Today, I tried again to make the panel in my radio area, with some new plastic that I hopefully won't destory this time around. I made a template so I could cut it out and do minimal trimming.

I'll leave extra space for trimming anyway though, so I can fit it well. I think I'll move the equaliser a little to the left too, so it's lined up with the radio on the left. I'll also cut the material more smartly so if I do break it again, I will have enough extra material to try again, possibly twice.

I moved on to replacing the horrible parcel shelf plug. This time I have a much more simple spade plug. I had to go and do something so when I came back it was dark. I decided to extend some of the wires also as they were a bit short and it meant that the plug didn't stay tucked neatly.

Luckily I have a very elaborate torch behind my K11.

That's better! I did notice that the connection to the left speaker was a little inconsistent, probably in the plug. I'll investigate that another time, maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, that's much neater. 6 pin plug of course because I added the light into the bottom of the parcel shelf, and wanted it to be easy to disconnect.

I noticed something really annoying. The adventure to Silverstone left more scratches than I knew. The inside of the rear window is totally covered in what appears to be quite deep scratches.

As well as scuffs on both sides of the boot near the glass, which I already saw.

 

[Craig]

These photos were taken with my 1998 Sony Mavica digital camera. This is a period-correct camera that records to 3.5" diskette.
View attachment 76219View attachment 76220View attachment 76221View attachment 76222View attachment 76223View attachment 76224View attachment 76225View attachment 76226View attachment 76227View attachment 76228View attachment 76229View attachment 76230View attachment 76231
You might notice that I fitted the new side indicator adaptors while I was there. They look so much better. You can't even see them with this camera, ideal.

Haha, I dig this, takes me back to early MSC days when all the photos were tiny and grainy

 

[flyboypuoi]

Not a whole lot has happened to my K11 for a while. Other than the battery going flat. I just haven't had the motivation. And the engine replacement seems to be getting pushed back further.
However, recently, something happened that absolutely is worth adding to the ol' blog.

I bought another one.

Now. This one is meant to be temporary. It was a cheap one at £350 (well, somewhat, given the condition), I bought it understanding that it could get through an MOT relatively easily. I didn't get any photos for a while since I was always rushing around doing something else, so I'll summarise what the car is and what I & my friend have done so far.

It's a first facelift, I think from 2000, an Inspiration model. Which I have learnt means "an inspiration to assemble the remaining 40% of the car since it's practically below bottom spec". Something like 61k miles (on small wheels so that's a huge overestimation really). It's AJ4 gloss red, it has two doors, and it had been un-driven for two years. Because of this, the exterior was (and still is a bit) covered in moss and thick dirt. The interior was (and again, still is a little) covered in mold. Every part that moves is stiff and it clearly has some little problems, as well as damage at the rear. Two dents in the boot hatch (one fairly big), deep bumper scrapes and the wrong tail light on the left side (from a second face). There are a lot of other imperfections like dents and scratches, but nothing massive.

It drives okay, but the rear shock absorbers are so bad that it wobbles dangerously when cornering at speed.

I replaced the 3 wipers as they had all just about returned to nature. They were for my N13 so they are a little bit huge, but I made them fit, just about. The tyres are looking very cracked too, so I'd replace them, but this is supposed to be the cheap nasty daily for a little while. I had to replace the front right wheel as the tyre went flat.
My friend replaced the rear wheel bearings because they were both bad, not with new ones, but with some used, but acceptable ones.
The boot wiring loom was completely severed, but luckily a spare was hanging about. Other than a brake light bulb, this gave the car electronics in the boot again. The rear defogger was still not operational because the fuse was blown. Someone clearly had tried to replace it because a strange one was in there (which got stuck in the puller). It of course shorted out where the wiring was broken.

The washer jets at the front were both totally blocked up, so some spares went on. After I flushed out the nasty swamp water in the lines of course!

A new right mirror went on because the one that was there was pretty destroyed, and in fact fell to pieces on the first drive. Replacement glass is on route from Nissan Boy for the left mirror as it's clearly a bad aftermarket replacement. The low spec mirrors are bad enough, like looking through binoculars. The one currently on there is like looking through a telescope.
I cleared out the mold more or less from the interior so it wasn't such a biohazard.

And there we go. The sunroof would pop out but it got jammed when I tried to roll it back into the roof.

So, today I made a start on some things!
Here is the car, notice that it has a second facelift tail light on the left side. It's much more obvious when the lights are off since the indicator and reverse are pink instead of orange/white. Also, the side plastic is pale pink instead of black.

Oh yeah. It's got that fruity Inspiration interior trim. I like it, it's hideous 90s and I totally dig that. Despite being disgustingly moldy, the interior is in pretty good shape.

In the engine bay it is quite stock. The air filter looks pretty good, as do the belts. It's a bit dirty but I don't see any obvious rust here. Not yet at least. Expansion tank doesn't have a hole in it.

Bear in mind it's filthy, but the paint looks reasonable. I considered getting some front fogs but they are too expensive, for this car at least.

Now this was surprising. It seems that on a first facelift, the 12V socket was an optional extra. What!? Also, the storage hole seems to be black and separate from this panel.

Now, the first thing to investigate was that sunroof. There are damp patches in the headliner so clearly something's up.
I noticed that it has these little rubbery trim pieces that cover the screws up. I haven't seen this before. These are definitely going on my main K11.

I did get the sunroof fully open eventually, but it's still jamming on the right side at the back. The wind deflector is also so stiff that it doesn't deploy fully without pushing it up.

Clearly something was still wrong as it was grinding paint off of the roof when it closed again.

I found the source of the problem, or at least the general area in fault. The right side mechanism was moving entirely when it tried to lower the glass. So, the mechanism that is supposed to support and guide the glass was moving with it, and not lowering it. So that's why it was jamming.

I decided to move on for now, as I wanted to make a critical modification while I had time. And that of course is to re-route the sunroof drain pipes. I had some trouble at the start with this foam near the door. I didn't realise there was foam at the top as well as the lower part. It was really hard to get out and I tried for ages with many tools (and many cut/grazed hands), before I realised I could pull it out from behind the dash.

I had to try to remember how I did this on my main car. I got the pipe and sent it through the door harness grommet.

Next up, I sent it to the guard liner / splash guard, as before.

For some reason this one is incredibly long, so I actually routed it through an existing hole in the plastic, then tied it down with some AJ4 red cable ties. Looks good!

Now onto the other side, this time prepared with some experience again.
This wing had a lot of mud and leaves in it. No wonder there was a thick growth of moss coming out of it. This would have definitely caused some serious corrosion in time.

With that away...

I did the same again. This time the pipe was much shorter. I hope the pipe on the other side hasn't come off or something. For this I had to hack a hole for the pipe to pass through. I couldn't be bothered to drill things so I did it very low-budget.

Back on that sunroof. I noticed a screw that looked like it could have been responsible for holding the mechanism in place. I tried it and it was quite loose. So I tightened it up.

But this caused the mechanism to not move on that side at all. I tried loosening it, it still didn't move. Something may have snapped, so I had to manually push the mechanism on that side to close the roof. It now doesn't operate at all, so I guess I made nagative progress there.

I moved on to the rear pipes.
It's pretty easy to access them without popouts, the panels don't even need to come off completely. As before, I pushed the pipes through the pocket flaps at the back.

On one side I was able to grab the pipe and hang it out of the bumper.

The other one was shorter, or it was routed around the fuel filler, so the best I could do was make it exit into the bumper, which should still be fine. The pockets are a bit rusty, but they're not crumbling. At least not much.

I went back inside and added a 12V socket. I had a hard time finding the plug for it, it was buried deep in the lower panel into the carpet.
That's an optional extra added then! You can see here that the storage hole is a separate piece screwed in, I'm certain that's not the case on second facelifts. I removed the radio while I was here as I'll fit the one from my N13 once I switch over.

Now that I had 12 volts of DC, I tried to pump air into the totally flat spare tyre. Sadly, it let it all out immediately.

So for now, I grabbed a good spare wheel from my garage. The only problem is that it's a 14" wheel, and this car has 13"s.

One last thing I wanted to change while I had the light and the motivation (and time) was the boot handle. This thing was an absolute biohazard. And the first facelift handle is so ugly.

I had a spare preface handle in the garage, which is supposed to be going on my grey K11 (and get painted). The one on there currently is a temporary one for Japfest. But since I'm not driving that one soon, and the temp one is reasonable, I'll put this preface handle on this car. That looks much better!

Tomorrow I'll do some more work on this, but for now, it's looking good, and I have plans for it. Bring on the MOT.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Today, I continued. Sadly it was raining all day long so I couldn't take the sunroof glass off to look at the problem in the mechanism. I did, however, suspect a loose drain pipe on the front right, both because of the wet patch and the extreme length of the re-route.
I was correct, it was not attached. I can't guess how this could happen, but I think someone has been fiddling in here before.

So, I pulled it out from the outside. So much for those red cable ties.

Getting it back in the car was actually quite difficult. I almost got it all the way through but it would snag somewhere. I decided to reroute it entirely and send it down alongside the aerial wire. I almost did a really neat job of this, but I broke the top clip of the pillar trim near the end. I have spares but I think first facelifts might be a slightly different colour. I'll check some time.

I decided to move onto something more aesthetic. If you've read this blog before, you might already know what's coming from the next photo. I am scraping off the glue, diffuser and blue filter from the back of this extremely dirty vent faceplate. This took much more effort than I remembered!

Eventually I got there though. You can see here that even the symbols that appear clear have a blue filter over them, to make the amber bulbs look white (at an expense of brightness).

This needed a thorough clean. I also tried to unclog the front washer jets as they had, well, clogged again. I haven't had much luck with this in the past so I might just get some universal ones again, like in the very early days. They're soaking in the bowl.

Now for the lighting part. I've done this enough times that it took only an hour or so. I went for a plain card insert with some basic strips on it. I sent the wire out of the back into the shell of a cheap T10 unit so it can easily plug into the existing socket.

I really should have tested for accidental continuity before trying it out, because there was some, thus the fuse blew. I found the bridge quickly (the first two wires I added were a bit melted) and got it in. It looks great, but the blue strips were causing the surrounding area to be purple!

To make this better, I folded some bits of electrical tape to form some dividers. This sorted the purple problem.

That looks much better. I'm going for red on this car, with some orange in places.

With the knobs back on, the end result is nice. I have bought some more red T3s for the two switches above since they look really out of place.

A cool thing about how I did this one is that the temperature knob lights up blue while it's in the blue zone. That's cool!

And it goes red again in the red zone.

Later on, I went to wash the car. This might be the first wash in over two years. Clearly it was needing this.

That's better.

I'll hopefully do some more work on this car during this week, around work and other responsibilities. Soon it'll be MOT time and hopefully I can start driving this daily while I get the N13 registered.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Yesterday I decided to take apart the main gauges to fancy them up a little. I've done this a few times now so it didn't take long to prep it and plan out how to do it. I tried to pull the needles off using various strings but they all snapped. They're harder to get off than usual because this set has never been taken apart. I ended up using some relatively flat scissors and levering against the white plastic. This left a few little scratches but they're mostly under the needle base so it can't really be seen.

When I lifted the face away I found that the LCD had a plastic piece that is the same shape as the hole in the face. This is neat, I always thought it looked a bit rubbish how there was a gap between the LCD and the face, I suppose these slightly older cars had that sorted.

I will probably put this in my main car because the custom face I made for it is currently a crudely cut rectangle. I was going to 3D print something to cover it up but maybe this looks alright.

With the PCB separated. I noticed that this one has two SMDs for the airbag light. Interesting!

It was time to start sticking on the lights then. I followed the same pattern as I did with the RGB ones on my main car. These are red, with orange behind the LCD and around the needle bases.

Today, I began soldering things in. First, I wanted to wire these lights in in a better way to my main car. Instead of having a second plug in the dash for the backlighting, I soldered them directly to the PCB, so you can just plug in this unit like normal and it works. I first had to test that I got the polarity right as I had no idea which was positive and negative on the PCB. Luckily I got it right the first time.

For future reference, the polarity on the backlighting is shown below. At least, the one for the LCD screen.

I got the rest wired in. Well, I forgot one of them, but after that I tested it again, and look at that result. That's what I like to see.

The result with the face plate on was underwhelming, sadly. First of all, the clear plastic diffuser was clashing badly with the top curved strip of lights, so I had to dangle it. This made the top of the speed gauge not light up much. Secondly, the stock gauge face has a blue filter in it. Quite a strong one! So the red light can only penetrate the blue filter a little. So it's actually not very bright.
What I am going to do to make this better is to put some red T5s in the normal locations. Four extra SMDs won't do a lot, but they are all positioned inside gaps in the diffuser, so theoretically that red light will spread all over just from those four. If that doesn't solve it, I might need to get more creative with this one.

Anyway, some red T3s arrived today so I put them in the switches above the heater controls. As usual the T3s were a massive pain as they are never quite the right shape. Hopefully these stay connected for at least a while.

Before I finished, I searched the garage for some optional extras to upgrade with. I found some pillar tweeters (that should solve the broken pillar trim mount) and a rear ashtray (I use it to store an aux cable). I also have a black centre console trim, which has seat heater switches and a headlight washer switch, which I might consider fitting, but then I'd consider fitting heated seats and headlight washers... Hmm.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Today I added the rear ashtray to the red K11.

I also fitted the pillar speakers. I broke the top tab on the left one which sucks.

I then decided to have a closer look at the sunroof. I didn't have long but I figured I might get an idea of what's wrong with it, so first I removed the glass. It was extremely moist under the roof. I also tested all of the sunroof drains and they are clear.

With that gone, I got a much better look at how it works, and what was wrong.

Unfortunately, it jammed. The left side still works, but the right side was stuck. In trying to close it, I got the shutter stuck closed too. So I had to take it off (or break it off). It was now getting dark and I needed to go.

I found out why it was jamming this time. The sliding mechanism that pivots the glass was jammed upwards, which was clashing on the roof. I tried all I could but I couldn't get it to move.

I had to rest the glass back on and cover the car. Lucky for me, Eddie has a spare sunroof and he only needs it for the glass. I need an entire sunroof minus the glass, so this works out very well. He's coming over next weekend and we can replace his glass and my mechanism.

It's also lucky that I'm not using this car yet.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Some new rear shock absorbers arrived. These were cheap, from eBay. The rear shocks in the red car are so bad that it wobbles around when cornering at speed. With the new ones in, it should handle great, especially with the dual anti roll bars.

Today, I decided to remove the pollen filter. This is for several reasons. Firstly, pollen doesn't affect me, and I don't mind the occasional bit of crunchy leaf coming through the vent, it rarely happens anyway.
Secondly, the filter massively restricts airflow. Even when the fan is on full speed, it's terrible. To make it worse, the filter was really clogged up.
Thirdly, multiple people have said it makes some vents go cold, I am still investigating that.
Sadly, I had to cut the strange perforation in the dash, which is the way it's designed to be done.
I got away with only cutting one side, I really didn't want this to get ugly. The filter was also being blocked by the cable for the fan flap for recirculation, but I managed to squeeze it past without bending the cable (resulting in that common, horrible lever not staying as far as it goes to the left or right).

The filter was gross.

With the glovebox back in, it didn't look too bad. I didn't realise the glovebox would cover most of it. I may still do something to neaten it up where it's been cut.

I thought I paid £350 for this car, but it turns out I actually paid £349.80, nice.

I had some more time on my hands so I figured I'd start to take parts off for the sunroof swap. At the same time I cleaned all of these parts with vinegar, bicarbonate and dash cleaning spray, because they were still gross.
I carried on and eventually I ended up taking the entire headliner out anyway. Good!

It has been very wet under the roof, and one of the areas I suspect (other than the sunroof drains being disconnected (the front left was also partially out)) is the aerial.
It was also in terrible shape.
So I decided to remove it, the same way as I did on my main car.

I cut some metal from the same piece of Cassie as I did when I did this for my main K11.

And with the help of Milliput, I sealed up the hole for good.

Hopefully now, things will be much less wet. I'm trying to dry the interior out a bit before I put it all back together.

I might find some kind of solution for an internal aerial if that's something a future buyer wants. Personally I don't know why you'd want to listen to radio stations anyway, when you can choose your own high quality music using a USB drive or by connecting a phone and playing files or using spotify.
More parts are going to arrive tomorrow.

 

[flyboypuoi]

A care package arrived from nissan boy, as usual it contained something I wanted to buy from him and also a bunch of random small parts. At the same time, several packages arrived, so I had a table full of stuff.

I wanted to change an internal backlight in a switch. Luckily, it wasn't soldered into the mechanism on this one, rather, an older design with this rubber block (I've seen these in my N13). This made things so much easier, I took a T3 cap off and switched them over.

And tested it on my mains 12V tester. Looks great. Can you tell what switch it is yet?

It's a headlamp wash switch. I looked at getting some K11 headlight washer jets but couldn't find any at this time. Well, I just want the switch to look cool at the moment. And it does.

Now that looks cool. I think I might do another backlit headlight level switch, the same as in my grey K11. Just, red.

Now that the remaining T5s arrived, I put some red ones in the normal locations in the main gauges, hoping that it would fill light into the diffuser and light up the patchy areas.

I also added the warning lights (with much fiddling, breaking, and getting the polarity wrong 3 times in a row). For the orange lights, I used these stained incandescent bulbs I picked up abroad. They should glow nicer, and it looks like they have big filaments (with 3 rods instead of 2) which I guess is the brighter design.

I wasn't totally satisfied with the backlighting so I added another strip, pointed at the dark patch at the top.

Not bad. The light spread actually looks worse in person, but the colours look much better. I guess that'll do, for now at least.

The warning lights all look really good too. Other than having the ugly first facelift circle design. The red is much more similar between the brake and battery warning lights in person.

Just before it got too dark and cold, I fitted the Terrano wiper stalk. Nice. I tested everything other than the washer functions, it works as it should.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Today I went to change the coolant and was met with a surprise...

I changed the coolant becuase it looked like this.

While I was waiting for it to drain fully, I figured I'd take the headlights out. I'll probably put some second face ones in. Though, I think all of my spares have moisture or alignment issues. Plus I kind of want the orange lenses. Maybe I'll buy some more.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Yesterday I had a go at removing the rear shock absorbers. The known method of using some mole-grips on the top did not work. It just slipped off each time. It turned out that an adjustable spanner was capable of holding the shock while I undid it, though. Mole-grips were used to grab the bottom once the nut was rasied enough, it was difficult on the left side because I damaged the thread while trying another method. But now they're loose on the top.

I also fitted my generic windscreen jets. These were missing the nuts that hold them in place but luckily I had two that fit. They work really well.

Today, I decided to modify some of my headlights. I actually mixed the pair up, since some had missing studs or the indicator socket was jammed.
This time I used my oven for the first time. I should have done this in the past, this took no time at all! And it was much easier. Damn, and to think how many times I've opened up headlights, not even using a particularly hot hair dryer. And I could do this in the warmth of my home.

One of these was really mis-aligned. I had even slightly broken the manual adjuster, trying to force it into a better position.
I found out more closely how it all works. I also found a third adjuster, but it's inaccessible from the back, which is quite a waste.
These are the adjuster motors. These come off by twisting them, then lifting the white end bits to the top of the headlight reflector.
These can be twisted at the ends to manually adjust above the electric adjustment. One was massively out. I set them both quite low.

It was really easy to re-assemble the lights too. So, this time I've gone for the orange lenses. For a couple of reasons. I think the colour suits better with this red car, especially with orange side and rear indicators.
Also, the lens isn't just for colour. They spread the light out, and without them, I've noticed that the indicators aren't so good, particularly in daytime.

You might notice that something is missing from the headlights. I'm trying out an idea I've had, tomorrow I'll see if it's any good.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Today I had just a little bit of time before work to do something.
Here's the assembled headlight. With the missing part in place. It's the cap that covers the bulb. I painted it black.
I didn't paint it very well, but I think this will do for now. It's high temp paint. I was thinking of lining the inside bit with foil tape but figured it doesn't reflect anything, besides, it was already black on the inside. I think this looks nice!

In order to fit these lights, I needed to change the indicator bulbs. It turns out that first facelift cars seem to have BAU-15 bulbs instead of BA-15, so I had to find a pair of spare sockets. Luckily the plug is the same.
I don't know what has happened to this bulb in this car. The other has been replaced with a new one, I remember seeing something about bulb discolouration in the MOT history.

I just about had time to fit them to the car, but I didn't tighten the nuts or screws. So I better remember to do that.
These look really great!

Eddie is coming tomorrow, we will get a lot done and there will be some good photos.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Eddie came today. After some well deserved catching up, we began. I removed the sunroof entirely from my red K11.
It's a little crunchy on the right side, I can try to tidy that up some time.

It was very moist on the inside of the roof, so I wiped off the water. This must have been building up from when the drain was off.

While Eddie fitted his new sunroof glass (his seal was pretty destroyed), I tried to remove his aerial.

I gave him my old aerial since I don't use it anymore, and we adjusted his glass as well as we could.

We got my new sunroof mechanism fitted and got the glass in and adjusted too. Now the car can be exposed to normal elements without water getting inside.

Mine was a little bit better of a fit than Eddies, but both seem more than fine. Both really need a clean. We scrubbed vinegar on the seals to kill off any algae or whatever, which needs cleaning off.

Eddie was about to go, when we talked about his boot wiring now working. We were curious to know if a wiper motor would now work. Luckily I had one spare. It did work.
I decided to give it to him. I didn't have a wiper arm though. He'll need a pre/first face one because the ugly second facelift wiper arms don't fit with the mid-spoiler.
It's a second face motor, so the arm will rest horizontally. I think it may have been from my original K11, Cassie.
It was quite a struggle to get the grommet thing in place, we later discovered that it's easy without the motor in place.

Eddie now has a functioning rear wiper, just without the arm and blade.

We were pretty pleased with our progress today so we got a victory shot.

See you, friend.

I also tightened up my headlights and tried them out. Other than a dodgy connection on the left sidelight, all good. I later noticed that the adjuster motor is iffy in the left light. It keeps moving up and down itself. Maybe I can replace it with a good one now that I know how to get them off.

I also fired up the engine and let it warm up, to check the new coolant was good. Eventually the temperature rose.

More work to be done!

 

[flyboypuoi]

Today, I changed the rear shocks. Here's the comparison.

They weren't too hard to get out. NIce new shiny one in place. The rest of the car is a little bit brown at the rear, but it's definitely not bad.

Using the new bushings, I'm sure they squeezed down much more than the OEM ones. I considered stacking two on each since they came with two, but figured not.

The back now feels incredibly stiff!

Just trying out a mod suggestion, as my tail light setup will not have any reversing lights. These are DRLs. They were cheap. Like, £3 for two cheap. This was only loosely taped on, but the idea was to have these as reversing lights. I didn't go through with it, it doesn't look good.

I later got the roof re-assembled. Lots of painful fibre stuff went into my eyes on two occasions, so don't look up under the roof liner when bending it.

It was getting dark but I wanted to do one last mod. This is a tiny little naked T3, with very thin single-core wire carefully attached.

A bit fiddly, but it's going in a switch. You probably know which one. I've done this before. A couple of tiny holes were drilled out of the back and the wires were this time looped through the mechanism.

There we go, that looks great!

Let's fit it to the car.

 

[flyboypuoi]

A switch arrived. This is from a 200SX, presumably an S14 or maybe S15. This is like the K11 washer switch, but not quite.

Not in incredible condition, but there isn't a lot of choice. Nice clicky feel to it when pressed.

It's got some dummy pins, which is something I haven't seen before. The number of pins suggests that it's backlit. Which of course is very good.

And the important part, I needed to see that it would fit. And luckily it does. This is good. This switch shall be going in the arm rest of my main K11.

That is, unless the second one that I bought looks or feels nicer. I'll see when that arrives (tomorrow I think).
I wanted to see where my Maxtrek tyre lost the air from, so I put some air in it and got some soapy water ready.

Looks like it's coming from those two bubbly areas. I haven't seen this before. I hope I can get this fixed.

While cleaning up the interior of the red car (now booked for an MOT), I added a load of touch-up paint to the upper sill. There was a huge unpained line there, this looks better.

I also wanted to make the gauge backlighting better. It's not great, but it is an improvement.

The battery terminals were corroded, so I cleaned them up.

While I was adjusting the window handles (I like them to both be in the same position, preferably up) I considered putting some dark ones on. As well as that, some dark door handles.
I decided not to. Black ones would have been nice though. I can't be bothered to change the handles anyway.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Another switch arrived. So now I have the choice between two. This one is from a P11 Primera. It came all the way from Lithuania.
I'm not sure if it looks as nice, but it does fit quite flush with the surface it mounts to, unlike the other one I bought. Well, at least I have a choice.

I'm assuming it fits. I didn't check. Looks like it though. Looks like it's backlit, three main pins and two in a separate section.

Today, I took the red car for an MOT test. As always, it was a tense moment, but I tried a new place.

Someone came out to talk to me and told me it was in great shape. That filled me with hope.

And guess what? It passed. In fact, it passed very well. The only minor defect was rust on the rear axle.
When the V5 arrives (It's taking some time!), this car will be ready to hit the roads non-stop!

Just to make my day even better, I took my snow tyre to the usual tyre garage, and they fixed the leak, for free!
These might go on the red car if the conditions get more wintery. It's lucky the car isn't lowered, because they barely fit on the grey car.

Damn. I should've asked them to turn the tyre around, so the tread would face the right way and match the other one. At least it doesn't matter so much with these.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Today, back in the grey K11... I had an idea.
What do you think?

Oh yeah. I am indeed considering going full-blown start-of-the-2000s. It was just a thought but I think I might be feeling quite committed.
I've already sorted out power (not a big massive fat DC to AC inverter!). I'm trying to find a new PS2 Slim for cheap since I want to keep this one inside to use with a TV. If I really can't, though, I do have a non-slim one (which I've owned for nearly 20 years now), it just needs a bit of laser refurbishment, but I could use that in my home and use this one here.
The idea is that it mounts in the seat (access by two zips) where I can relatively easily change the game, memory cards or controllers. And hopefully there's enough air in there (might need to keep the zips open when using) to stay within operating temperatures.

For audio I will use the auxiliary input into my radio and do a neat wire install. For graphics, I am considering some LCD panels which will go into the seat, or something. They'll use an analogue RCA signal (ew), but that's probably okay on a 5-7 inch screen, and I don't think any component signal tiny screens exist. Anyway, it's all just theoretical at the moment.

Back into the red K11. I want to get a feel for my choice of headlamp washer switches so I mounted all of them on the panel. Which one is the best? It might be a bit different on the arm rest though, since I'll be pressing them at a completely different angle.

I decided to get rid of that ugly pink second face tail light and put a LHD first face one on instead. At least, for now. That looks so much better.

I then wired in the left fog lamp.

I decided to remove this thing. I'm still not sure what it is. Perhaps a knee guard? I don't know why it has soft foam at the top, since you can't really touch that part. I guess it's to avoid rattles on the wires under the column. Whatever it is, it's ugly, and constantly in the way when I remove or replace the column trim. It also blocks the storage under the steering wheel. So it's off.
It contained £0.01, lowering the total purchase price of this car even further, to £349.79.

With that out of the way, I cleaned this storage area. It was disgusting. Now it's alright.

I decided to put a front fog stalk on the car. Because it was lying around. I would like front fog lamps on this car but I'm waiting to find a dirt cheap set because this is meant to be a cheap temp car. I fitted the relay too, which was really difficult. The first face uses the large type of relay instead of the thin one, interesting. Well, now I can hear it click when I turn the switch. I can also light up the rear fogs without having to turn on the main headlights, which is nice.

I decided to try and adjust the clutch pedal, since it bites right at the top. I couldn't move it much, for some reason this was really difficult today.

One quick look at the dual fog in the dark. Nice.

 

[flyboypuoi]

I decided to fit the cabbage launcher to the red car. Just because it fills in the cutout in the bumper really well. But I couldn't unbolt it. One of the bolts is this strange inverse torx thing, about 10mm. They aren't rusty, I just couldn't get good access with the breaker bar. I'll get some help some time.

I'm working on a tail light project. It involves separating the lenses. This time, I tried the oven method.

For the most part, I got the lenses off in perfect condition, and didn't gouge the rest of the lights.

But... I cooked them a little too hard and they bubbled up and bent on the top lenses.

The other side was worse.

However, I got the bottom lenses off in pretty much perfect shape. This was particularly important because the left one was a LHD import.

The fog reflector was in pretty poor shape from the LHD one. But then I thought about removing it entirely. That way, the bulb can light up the entire lower section. Of course the light won't be such a spotlamp anymore, but for the project, that's not required.

I noticed that the unit on the right was missing the reflector insert for the indicator. That's really weird! How can that be omitted from the factory?

Update on the red car. The V5 arrived (after six weeks). So now I'm driving it.
I installed the Pioneer radio from my N13. An adaptor fitted to another adaptor.

I also looked at the air controls backlights, because the blue section was a bit off and part of it was purple. I need to make some more permanent dividers between the blues and reds.

I got the radio working. Nothing happened for a while, but as I suspected, the radio chassis grounds itself onto the car body. I just didn't realise that it did that on the right screws and not the left (the ones that actually look much more metallic). Lots of sparks occurred at the screw went in.
I couldn't mount it very well, but well enough. It's just poking out a bit too much.

Now I just need to fine tune a couple of things. The RGB orange colour for the screen and middle keys, and the equaliser for this different speaker setup. Thankfully I'm much less limited on the bass than the ones in my N13, where the lowest frequency is set to minimum.

A red vehicle arrived to give me parts of it.

It gave me the mirrors, which are electrically adjusted, and body colour. Or, well, sort of. I didn't realise that this was a different shade of red until now. Hopefully others don't notice either.

Can't see so well, but that looks nicer. I also noticed that I can see significantly better through these mirrors, as the ones that were on the car were both replacement glass/units.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Time to wire in the mirrors!
Luckily I've already done this with mirrors that have even more funtions than these.
...wait. This is different.
I had to get some help here. This switch looks so silly with the missing pins.

While I removed the top half of the rear bench (for my dog cage to fit in), I found a receipt. In 2010, someone in this car bought peanuts and a tuna sandwich.

So, for these mirrors. I needed to send these wires from the switch to these ones in the mirror. The wiring was from an Almera, but I think it's the same in a K11. Maybe.
There are two black wires. It turns out that these are for mirror heaters! Apparently all UK electric mirrors are also heated, so that's great. I checked the continuity and resistance before continuing.

I decided to take these mirror covers and put them in my main K11. Originally I didn't think much of these, but I'd only ever seen grey ones. These are black and look quite nice actually.

On the back, there's some foam around the hole behind it. Too bad one of the tabs is missing.

Nice, that actually looks really good. The red K11 can have the ones from this one, they still look alright.

While setting up the wiring plan, I realised that the door itself is grounded. I found a wire with an eyelet on it and grounded the mirror heater directly to the door. This wire is massive but it was just on-hand. I got some more wire after this.

This left door has been painted at some point. The plastic is not the factory one, and the old glue, bolts and plastic bits have paint on them. I wonder what's happened in here in the past.

My wires didn't quite reach... So close.

And there it is, neatly installed.

The mirrors work perfectly. The adjustment range is actually pretty huge. And they get toasty with the heaters on. I wired them into the rear glass heater switch.
I had a quick go at tidying up the light dividers in here, not perfect but at least nothing is purple anymore. I guess I'll finish this off later, I ran out of time. I also made the fresh/recirc. air lever not work, so I need to take this off and figure out what I did.

Whoops. I started the car a few times during the day, and even drove a bit, but just as I needed to go, it ran out of charge. Clearly this battery needs replacing, I can tell it's not strongly starting and lights dim when I turn the key. Luckily I was able to push it to the N13 and jump off of that.

I was considering fitting central locking since I have the locks for it... But I looked at the wiring and decided not to. After all, I'm supposed to sell this car relatively soon. I want to undo most of my mods (other than the lighting and the mirrors).

 

[flyboypuoi]

I'll be honest, I'm really enjoying this red car. It's looking all cute down there from above. It's also a thrill to drive, being so light.

Finally I was able to test the fuel warning lamp. It's bright! This car seems to barely use any fuel.
This is using one of those frosted incandescent T5s I picked up abroad. I should buy more when I go again.

It hit a displayed 66k miles. Realistically it's driven less, given the over-read. I'd estimate it to be closer to 60k. But that's the case with all wheeled vehicles. The over-read is still about 10% so I'm wondering if the first facelift speedometer drive or gauge hardware accounts for 13 inch wheels compared to the second facelift.
Or maybe it's just got a similar total radius to the 14 inch setups with thinner tyres. Probably that.

Last night, I visited a friend for a few parts and to generally chat ****. I took the cabbage launcher in hopes that he could ugga-dugga off the bolts holding the current one on. Instead he tidied up the insanely poor welds it had. Funny enough, Eddie's old exhaust that spat out its wire was used.
I had a look inside the powerflow, it's like on my bike, a straight thick tube with holes in it, which presumably leads to wire wool or something.

It seems that this is now the Red K11 Gang. Boy does mine look high compared to the other two. But mine can navigate terrible muddy lanes full of holes for dog walking purposes.

The exhaust silencer looked much better than before. Of course this isn't beautiful, but before this it was... well. Disgusting. The pipe leading into the silencer was smaller than the hole in the silencer so that's why it's less of a standard weld. Fine by me though, this is much better.

Reversing in a rainy night sometimes requires the use of the dual fogs, since there's no reversing light. Also the mirrors are pretty poor.

I'd like to do some more stuff today, it's just raining so hard...

 

[flyboypuoi]

The red car continues to be the workhorse.

Today, I worked on all three of my cars. Mostly the only one that isn't a K11, but still.
I tried to squeeze out more air from the coolant of the red one but nothing seems to change and the vents still don't blow very warm. I also fitted a new headlight motor so they are both adjustable, and they're now aimed a little higher, but still more than low enough to not dazzle people.
A K13 also stopped near me.

Another red K11 joined me momentarily.

So, lots of work got done on my N13 but I'll leave that out until I find somewhere to do a Ryan's Sunny Blog.
Onto the grey K11, I test fitted those two headlamp washer switches. I was sure I was going to use the big one, until I saw it in the arm rest...

Hmm. That doesn't look good. Sure, it feels nice to press, but it looks ridiculous.
The other switch looks far better, and actually, pressing it at that close & reversed angle is much nicer than my test fit on the red car. So, I'm going with this one after all.

There was a lot of wiring under the arm rest, luckily some of this is now redundant without the headlight aim switch, so I cut it back. I also removed the dimmer wiring for now. Maybe I'll try to dim the backlights in all of the switches... Eh, maybe it's not worth the hassle. I need to think about what to do with that switch. Maybe I should find some other kind of switch for something.
Luckily I was smart enough to label the wires in here. Also I was smart enough to ground the backlight there in the arm rest, so there is only one wire for that.

Nice, I was given a proper bracket for the arm rest. This will maximise the stability.

If I go ahead with the PS2 project, I will probably put the step-down adaptor here. For some reason, it's always freezing cold around the base of the arm rest, the perfect location for keeping the adaptor cool. It's also near the setup anyway, so, nice.

I removed the GoPro mount, which I must've fitted in like... 2014!?

Now, one last thing, the backlight for the headlamp washer switch. Perfect, it uses that rubber block type of bulb.

Hmm, maybe I can try using one of these huge T3 bulbs?

The rubber broke a little bit, but, that seems to be in. I was just de-pinning some spare plugs for this (no plug with the switches), but I ran out of time. I'll check out how this looks in the future.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Nothing happened for a while because I got Covid and it made me pretty dead.
Something was finally spotted on the floor outside, just by chance. Can you see what?

Let me get a closer one for you. Yes, it's the window winder clip that pinged off and presumably clipped through the floor.

The displayed miles of the red car were almost all the same numbers.

When I was giving the car a rinse, I did something to the front wiper and because they're so large, it got caught under the other one. When I went to wipe some water away, they tangled and this one bent.

Hmm.

Back to normal, pretty much, as long as I keep it bent so the large one rests higher than the smaller one. It did catch again and bend again, I think there is a lot of movement in these wipers so it's possible that they overlap. But I want to keep massive wiper blades because they clear the entire screen.

I hated the wheel trims on this car. I was passively looking for another set, I have one but it's for 14s. Then I decided to take them off and put my centre caps on instead. This looks kinda nice, at least a lot nicer than the original Inspiration trims.

After a wash. I'd repaint the wheels too but this is a temporary car (right?).

Some spark plugs arrived for my main K11. This time I have NGK plugs. There's also an oil filter for each of them, when I get around to it.

I finished off that headlamp washer switch backlight. I had to use a different T3 because the large one was already busted from an AC switch. It's a little hard to notice during the day, but it's lit up nicely.

Today, quick shot of the car. The preface boot handle and the symmetrical tail lights really make this look better.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Here are some random shots I've accumilated while I've had nothing to say. Not a lot has been happening in regards to my cars.

I pulled off the "seal" around the rear glass (not really a seal, more of a trim piece). The way it was poking out was really annoying and it was only getting worse. There was a lot of dirt and moisture in there which probably would have eventually triggered corrosion.

That actually looks pretty neat without it. Other than it being dirty.

I of course gave it a wash immediately to get the dirt out. That's much better.

I drove something else breifly which had a handy camera for viewing interesting cars while driving backwards.

The LHD/RHD first face tail light combo is pretty neat. Would've used preface ones instead but I'm using them for a separate project.

Second face headlights is also an upgrade visually.

Some progress finally on a side project of mine. I want to keep it fairly quiet but I'm doing a practice run first. Can you tell what's happening here?

It's so nice that the K11 fits where other cars don't. This was the only space available and it was occupied by a bin. Well, I'll fit in there.

Last few rides to work with the red car. At this point I had bought another daily, not a Nissan, though! You'll see it in the background in the future, I expect. Not even close to as much fun as this car is to drive.

I'm really going to miss this car.

A little more progress on the special project. It's probably quite clear what's happening here now.

Now it's time to un-modify the red car.

 

[flyboypuoi]

I started at the back. The preface boot handle. It's meant to be painted and put on my main K11, so it's coming off and being replaced by the original first face one. I also prepped the carpets for cleaning.

That's the handle in place and both bulbs working. Nice, next.

Since this car came with a second face tail light, I actually didn't have the RHD left first face tail light. So I put the one it came with back on the left, and a matching RHD one on the right. Some bulbs in these lights seemed not to work fully so I replaced everything until it all lit up as it should.

Meanwhile, I hadn't forgotten about my main K11. I found these bonnet rubbers which I fitted in the corners. I didn't even know these existed until then!

There, that fills in the gaps there and hopefully reduces or eliminates any vibrations between the bonnet and headlights.

Back to the red car. Back on go the first facelift headlights. I like these in their own way, the end of the non-clear glass era.

With the Inspiration wheel trims back on, this car was starting to look like it did when I got it. Just, in much cleaner shape.

When I removed my rear ashtray, I couldn't find the matching trim panel, so I used this Tempest coloured one instead. Luckily first faces had a kind of two-tone interior... I think it looks fine. Easily swapped if wanted.

Original sun visors back on. I was using some preface ones, I think.

A couple of bits needed repair here. One was the backlight for the heater switch, that seemed fine after some tweaking. The other thing was the fresh air lever, or, I thought it needed repair. It turned out to just be really stiff. I thought it was stuck!

The backlighting in there also needed a little work. The blue divider was sagging, so one of the three blue dots wasn't lighting up. I fixed this with a bit of glue.

Much better.

Regular pillar trims refitted.

I forgot to get a photo, but both of the stalks were swapped with the basic versions the car came with.
I also put a basic centre panel without the seat heater switches and headlamp washer switch. I decided to use this Tempest one which is a similar match to most first facelifts (despite this one coming with a silver panel). I left the 12V socket in there even though the car didn't come with one. I also left the custom backlit headlamp level switch in there.

Now I needed to refit the rear bench upper half. This has been unused so it's still very clean.

I did all I could to clean the boot carpet and surrounding carpet areas.

With some great effort the rear bench was looking clean.

And same with the front seats and footwells.

I also cleaned the dashboard and door cards. This car is looking very fresh now.

Boot looks alright. I almost forgot about the parcel shelf.

A last clean was needed, I ususally don't use the brush but I did use it along the sills, wheels, and inside of the bonnet.

Looking great.

Now to make the eBay listing, I guess...

 

[flyboypuoi]

I'm just going to dump a bunch of photos here for the eBay listing, since I have so many.

Nissan K11 Micra | eBay

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[flyboypuoi]

One last engine start on the night before the auction ended. Hadn't been started since taking the photos since I was using one of my other cars.

I had to go to sleep because of work, but the auction ended and one lucky winner picked up the car today.
I'm so glad it seems to be going to someone who will look after it.
I'll admit I was getting pretty sad when it was time to see it leave.

Farewell W909RAX, many more adventures await!
Here's an unlisted video of my last drive back from the photo shoot.

 

[flyboypuoi]

It's been a while. You know how it is.
I figured I'd make an update because I'm working on this car again. This is over the last few months. I'm missing this car so much and it's stupid to let it hide away under cobwebs and moss at the back of my driveway. So let's begin!
I remade the panel for the switches and equaliser. This time it didn't crack when I drilled the holes. I went up 1mm at a time. It did chip off but the switches cover that. Now all I have to do is glue it in place.

I will need to leave some kind of gap for the audio input for the PS2 install.

The main thing that is getting this car back into the glory days is a new engine. The CG13 was probably the main reason this car got a bit abandoned. It was just constantly leaking even after I patched up as many leaks as I could find.
So, here's a CGA3 again. This is apparently on low miles. Maybe somewhere between 40k and 45k. But while the engine is out, I figured I'd make the most of it. I bought an engine stand so I could work on it much much easier.

Its missing a few bits but nothing I don't have spares for. So I started to take parts off. There was quite a lot of oil in the intake manifold but apparently that's quite normal.

Next, I wanted to see the camshafts to figure if this had oil changes often enough. Seems to look alright in here, so that's good.

For my birthday, I recieved GizFab "Gizmo" side spats! I've always wanted a set of these.

The engine needed quite a thorough clean, as you'd expect.

It was starting to look really good. Quite a lot of wirebrushing was needed to shine the surfaces up.

I removed the sump.Then I removed the rear main seal retainer.

Out came the rear main seal, and in went the new one. It was pretty easy to do, providing the sump is removed. So I highly recommend doing it if you're taking the sump off.

I wanted to take off the crankshaft pulley, but I don't have any kind of impact driver. So, I put a couple of flywheel bolts on the back (luckily I have some), wedged a spanner in between the bolts and the engine stand, and locked the crankshaft in place.

Using one of my handy wood planks to support the engine, I undid the bolt with a breaker bar. And it worked.

Away with the heavy pulley. This one is solid and weighs so much more than the one you find on a CG10. One of the mods I like the most for this car is to reduce the mass of moving engine components, it makes such a difference here.

To remove the front main seal, I'd need to remove the lower timing cover. I had a very hard time until I realised that you need to also remove the top timing cover to access a couple of bolts. With the timing exposed, I figured I'd check the chain tensioners. I'm glad I did, because the top one was very stiff. I tried to see if I could loosen it up and figure out how the mechanism works, but I couldn't reassemble it. It didn't look great anyway. So I took one from my spare engine in the back of the garage. Very handy to have for this project, I found.

New tensioner in.

The front main seal is fitted in the timing cover, which is also the oil pump. So the oil pickup line needed to be disconnected. This is a much smaller seal. Two new seals in place and ready to go!

I refitted the rear seal. It of course needed new silicone sealant, but I added a little extra on the outside just in case. I better not see any oil leaks from here ever again. It was quite tricky to line it up perfectly with the crankshaft without touching the new gasket on anything, especially as the engine stand is on that side.

Another copious amount of high-temp silicone for the lower timing cover/front main seal/oil pump. Again it was tricky to line it up without touching the unset gasket on anything. Of course, both surfaces need to be clean and the gasket channels need emptying out of the old sealant.

And same again for the top cover. You can even see the sealant coming out of the edges. Is it obvious that I've had oil problems in the past?

Now things were starting to get interesting! I cleaned up the intake manifold and the coolant pipe, and taped off bits that shouldn't be painted. Then I applied a gracious amount of silver engine enamel.

Now, the sump needed refitting. New "half-moon" seals under both of the main seals, and possibly a record-breaking amount of silicone around the edges. I have a feeling this will never come off again. One bolt snapped, but there are many others, and the seal is really what holds it in place. I previously added a little paint on this sump where it had gotten rusty at the front. That extra sealant around the crankshaft was just another precautionary extra bead on the outside. I pulled it off when it set because it wasn't doing anything, nor holding on well.

Now I needed to mask up areas on the engine itself where again, paint shouldn't go. I used the old exhaust gaskets here to get a perfect mask shape.

The intake manifold was less precise but that's not visible when it's fitted. For the oil filter, I just wrapped up the new one in masking tape.

And so I got painting.
But I've run out of photo space on this post, so I will continue shortly.

 

[flyboypuoi]

Part two! Painting!
I decided to go with black! And I'm glad I did. This looks awesome!

Some more silver parts too.

I made a small mistake. Something I've done before, too! I tightened one of the cam cover bolts down too hard. It was the last one, too! And I just decided to turn it one extra turn... The edge ones have an overhang so they're easy to overdo, and crack the cover. Annoying. Well, I'd need a new one. At least I didn't paint this one particularly well.

Now, time to add silver bits! Look at how awesome this looks!

The bootleg Nismo cap looks really good here.

Fuel rail in. I had to take this off of the car itself, and put a spare in. This one uses bigger injectors. And the most important part is that they are red instead of blue, suits the engine bay scheme much better.

I got a new cam cover. Hold on... this is one of my old ones! I don't know what kind of adventures this one has been on in my absence, but it looks like it's taken a beating. Still holding up quite well though! In some ways I like the weathered look!

Some more parts fitted after painting.

And some new belts too. The pulleys were all wirerushed to take the rust off. I've also selected the water pump pulley with holes in it, for a little more mass reduction. This time, of course, there's no AC compressor as my car doesn't have AC. That also removes a lot of other parts which weigh a lot. I tried to split open an alternator to paint the casing, but it just kind of broke. So I took another one and just wirebrushed it heavily. I suppose it would have been possible to mask the holes up and paint, but I didn't bother.

New exhaust manifold gaskets fitted.

It took a long time, but I managed to remove basically all of the red and black paint from my old cam cover.

Since I used up all of the black enamel paint, I used regular black. I put some primer down first, this time.

And then the black paint.

With a new cam cover gasket, look at how clean the inside is! It was full of debris when I got it. Even a screw was rattling around in the middle bit (inside that hole in the middle). Now it almost looks new.

The text got filed down followed by a little sanding to shine it up. Now that looks amazing...

I even started painting parts that were already on the car. Since this is my only engine mount.

Now, the old engine still has one more task before it goes away. It has to take me, the car, and the new engine to the location where I'm doing the swap. So I had to try and start it up. The first issue was the battery. It was already pretty dead before I left the car to sleep. I tried both of my jump batteries, but they emptied on it. So I had to charge one up again. This required all of my cars to cooperate.

But the battery died again. So I decided instead to jump the car on another. The only problem was that I couldn't get a car near the front of it. So I had to do some real silly cable-on-cable things to get a connection.

I got connection, but the car still wouldn't start. In fact, the lights went so dim on my N13 that they almost went off entirely (engine running!), every time I tried to start the K11. It seemed the K11 battery was so beyond life that it would empty out even good batteries. So I stopped. Also, the fuel line was leaking on the K11. I tightened it, but I later found out it had perished.
I figured I'd put some more parts on the engine to see how it would look once done. It's coming along very well...

I got a new battery. This is a 054 battery. It's not as wide, but the other dimensions are the same. Finally I have the terminals on the correct side, so the wires can relax. I had to take the terminal sleeves from the old battery, they can be hammered off and squeezed back on. I painted the battery tray while I had the opportunity. With this new battery fitted, I was able to start the engine, but the fuel line was spraying fuel out. So I am now waiting for a new line to come, it will be a braided stainless steel one.

Yesterday, I decided to tackle the rear fog lamp issue. While doing this, I could do a few other things too, if I took the bumper off. So I did!

One of the things I wanted to change was these mudflaps. Painting them is obviously not a good choice. Even the expensive "flexible" paint was no good. I suppose I often reversed the flaps into curbs which didn't help. Anyway, the second facelift mudflaps are a bit skinny, which is especially bad if I add these side spats, it'd look wrong. I found out a while ago that these flaps from a prefacelift (I think) are about the same shape, to my surprise. So that's what I fitted. Unfortunately there were three completely siezed screws which took an extremely long time to extract.

Fitting them was relatively simple. I had to hold them tight in position since they aren't really the same shape after all. This is quite hard because the bumper was flapping about on my painting box, I of course don't want to scratch it. Once I got them in place, I drilled new holes (my drill has magically repaired itself) and put new screws in. The middle holes needed longer screws which were not screwed all the way in.

There we go. They look so much better. While the bumper was off, I also completely remade the fog lamp wiring (including the backup turn indicator function), using much larger diodes. Hopefully that was the problem and now they'll work.

The other thing I wanted to tackle was the exhaust. I've decided again to use the Powerflow cabbage launcher. But, the nuts holding it to the mid-section were free spinning, so I wasn't able to take it off.

I've run out of photo space again, almost done though...

 

[flyboypuoi]

Part three, final part.
Today, I wanted to get that exhaust off. The only way to really do it this time, was to unbolt the mid-section. I needed to add some more exhaust bandage on it anyway since last time, I ran out.

Thankfully, those bolts were still shiny silver and came right off! Pulling the entire section out over the axle was tricky but I did it.

I noticed that there wasn't any exhaust bandage on the mid-section anyway, I guess it fell off. Maybe I won't add more then. Maybe just some thick high temp paint. I did decide to file down the inside of the straight-through pipe to reduce the weld bumps a bit to clear it up. Now then, time for the bean can. I think I will fit it before I add the bumper and see if I need to trim the exhaust cutout a little. It would look really nice with a bigger hole, I'd have to make sure I'd do it well though.

Now, one last thing tonight. The logos on the mudflaps were a bit worn. So I decided to add some paint on them. I used my silver metallic paint.

That looks a lot nicer.

This side looks even better. Looks even better in person.

I am now up to date on here. I'm waiting on the new fuel line, a fuel filter, and some other minor bits. Postage is heavily delayed right now so my chances of doing this in 2022 are deminishing. I also want to paint the side spats and glue them on. After a lot of thinking, I've decided to paint them black.