GT mediated Awesomeness

[saintjamesy89]

A couple of positives this week:
- 3" speakers ordered for the c pillars (around 45-50mm depth so not a huge amount but hopefully enough!)
-V5 returned from the DVLA with the desirable historical tax class
-TRS is now FINALLY registered! Poor thing can hopefully find a loving home at long last.

I hope to.fit the speakers Thurs/Friday, quite excited about it! I also ordered 2 universal windscreen washer pumps, the front pump died last week, so I swapped the rear over but that one was always the weaker of the two, so I'm not sure how long it'll last.

[saintjamesy89]

C Pillar speakers installed, albeit with mixed success! Not a bad job with all the right stuff at hand, however only the passenger speaker is currently working, I'll assume there is a dodgy wire at the head unit end, it was a little cramped in the centre console with all the extra wires in there!

Step 1 - Remove trims carefully, 3" Audison speaker and NOS C Pillar BX mount ready to go.









Step 2 - Install Rivnuts in the square holes already present, the rivnuts I had were a little too large for the holes so I had to drill them out a little and persuade them in with a persuasion tool. A nice secure fit though! Also slapped, inexpertly, some sound insulation in the speaker area for a little better sound quality and general wind noise reduction.





Step 3 - Attach the speakers to the mounts, they were almost a perfect fit! The mounting holes were a 99% match with only a little fiddling to get the screws through the mount holes and metal mounting clips provided with the speakers. I went for 3" (70mm) Audison Voce AV3.0 component mid-range jobbies, expensive but as with the dash 2" speakers - excellent quality and as above, almost perfect fit in the BX.









Step 4 - Mount speakers to car, two bolt per side. The insulation actually interfered with the way the bracket fitted and needed a bit of fiddling to get into the right place, I had to ever so slightly bend the bracket mount tab for a good fit but not too tricky. The wires needed spade ends fitting of course.





Step 5 - Refit trims, interestingly the speakers aren't quite central to the trim cut out but this doesn't see to affect the sound. Ideally I'd have given the C pillar trims a good cleaning whilst they were out, but as usual I was under time pressure...





The speaker grilles had a sticky cover on the rear that I removed, I guess as these were blanks before your rear passengers don't want to be able to see metal behind the grills!







So next few jobs to do involve removing the centre console, I need to reinstate the reverse lock out, I know where first is but anyone who doesn't drive the car regularly won't - especially with the slack and vague gear selection...!
Whilst in there I want to sort out the heater control illumination, some bulbs didn't survive the A/C swap and one even got dislodged and shines in your face by the sliders rather than actually illuminating the control panel. The drivers side rear speaker wiring of course needs looking at as does the head unit rheostat wire, the head unit no longer dims with the rest of the lights, I remember installing the orange wire on the HU but it obviously has an issue somewhere.

[saintjamesy89]

We have plates!

[saintjamesy89]

We have adjustable boom booms I can now adjust the bass output of each underseat subwoofer on the go (there is another on the passenger side). Previously the subs were set at 50% and to adjust it involved kneeling on the floor and moving the seat back to get fingers underneath the front of the seat. Much better! I hope to do a few more jobs to solve bothersome niggles over the next few weeks. The car is running great with all the use it is getting at the moment though.

We'll see how irritated I get by the blue LED! Hopefully only noticeable at night on the floor, when the seat is in the normal position (further forward) it'll screen most of it.

[saintjamesy89]

A few small wins today, I had the lower dash and centre console out to investigate the non-functional rear speaker, head unit dimmer in-op and heater control lighting.

Rear speaker was a bit of a weird one, there was power at the head unit plug end for the rear right hand speaker (the purple wires), I made up a test speaker from one of the old dash top jobbies and a length of spare speakre wire, however there was no power at the other end of the same wire where it enters the white plug. I can only suspect a broken wire, to my (very!) limited knowledge there isn't much else to cause it! I think perhaps the same story applies to the dimmer switch head unit control, there is 12v going from the dimmer switch but not getting go the head unit even though the wires appear connected and intact - not essential.



I tried to remove the purple wires from the black head unit plug but I would have just ruined it, so I did a bit of a heath robinson approach and popped a new wire in next to each of the purple wires - success!

The next challenge was the heater control lighting, just one of of 6 bulbs here works and that buld had been dislodged from its home meaning it shines in your eyes, not ideal -especially in the dark.



But, now we have all lights functional and in the correct place except the cigar lighter surround, no matter how much wiggling etc I did this one wouldn't come on but whilst it owsuld have been nice, it isn't essential by any means.



Next was the washer pump situation, the front one had given up earlier in the year so I swapped over the rear and now both are in-op! So I bought a pair fron carbuildersolutions and came across a good looking bracket in the shed - there is a nice piece of metal in the middle of the scuttle to mount them which should be hidden by the wiper mechanism cover I am yet to find.







I extended the wiring from the ends of the scuttle where the pumps usually sit back to the middle, so a set of OG pumps can go back in if necessary by just umplugging the extensions, there was just enough space in the conduit on the drivers side to tuck them in, but no the passengers unfortunately. Whilst doing this I noticed a split in the pipes - so whilst its all plumbed in, there is still no windscreeen wash! Pipe ordered.

The GT is off to Rich at Southways in June and there are one or two bits i'd like to get done beforehand, the front pads suffered from excessive heat back along when the calipers were binding and are now squealing, so I have new pads to go on.

Onto the a/c, what a headache. I had hoped to get the a/c operational long before now but finding someone to look at why the hoses won't fit onto the compressor is proving to be very difficult indeed! Out of many businesses I have tried in Dorset, Somerset and Devon ONLY 1 seems able/willing to help, the most common response was "i'm too busy, can't take on any more work". There is a guy near Bristol that makes hydraulic hoses and said he can change the fixings on the ends of such pipes, he won't touch the car though so I hope to book in with him to find the correct fittings, then he can modify the hoses.
Still on a/c, the thread on the current condenser is quite busted, I have ordered a three square file to try and repair the threads but also may have found a good used condenser in France via the really nice guy who sorted me out with the correct carb for the TRS, huge fingers crossed on that front!

[panky]

Air con would be quite useful at the moment

[saintjamesy89]

It sure would!