Today I did something to my car (volume 2)

Nearly there, we ran out of paint. Need to hit the roof and bonnet later on.

Not much, you can get colour matched paint on eBay, clear and base is only about €30, few sanding materials, about a fifth the price of a pro job.

Voodoomelon wrote: »

Not much, you can get colour matched paint on eBay, clear and base is only about €30, few sanding materials, about a fifth the price of a pro job.

Also Vinny Bryne's as recommenced to me on here do that for E20 IIRC just call ahead with your paint code. Nice, helpful people too. Guess they are closed now though... but normally you can collect or have it posted.

https://www.vinnybyrne.com/

Put it all back together today. Very pleased with how it turned out.

Went to take sump nut off yesterday no joy,hammer involved,also rounding of nut,
(Wanted to get every drop out rather than use my vac pump
Anyway had to resort to it in the end up,but didn't I knock over the shagging pump cannister and fecking oil all over my drive,so wire brush,Daz,old T shirt,brake cleaner used to clean up,one bollox of a day

Titzon Toast wrote: »

At least you had a nice day for it though eh?!

Up to then absolutely great, normally on a Honda insight ,sump nut is different as in its a square insert,this one( changed car last summer)it's a bloody 17 spanner job,I crucified it

This is what I did today and every day for the next year:



Make sure to follow along!

Voodoomelon, do you also have a silver X5?

Voodoomelon wrote: »

Nope, jeeps ain't my thing.

Ah OK, I pass an 850 regularly in Dublin and he has an X5 outside usually too... Not you so!

Check out the backed-out banjo bolt, this is why the valve covers came off to check em:


Episode 3 landing this week.

Aye I referenced his vids a few times, useful resource, but he skips some of the detail which is understandable as there's so much of it.

A few weeks ago i did the water pump and thermostat on my Mk2 Fiesta.

I noticed the metal coolant pipe was badly corroded. After doing the job I put everything back together but was not happy with the pipe. Would not have had any faith in it. Took it off today and it was in bad shape, but then it has been there for 35 years.

I had a new one made up from a chap in the UK in aluminium so it should see her right for another 35 years.



I put everything back together, and put a new gasket on the thermostat housing ( i did not do it when i changed the thermostat previously, as I knew it was coming back off). Torqued everything back up and started the car to circulate the coolant. There was some weeping from the thermostat housing. I nipped up the bolts and the bloody housing cracked. :mad:



Not the end of the world - found a NOS one on ebay for £15 so I bought two.

The new gasket that I put on was noticeably thinner than the previous one. Reckon this is the cause.

Ah well - an excuse to turn some spanners when the new bits come again

Very nice. What was your paint process for the covers and intake?

The Z has suffered a coolant leak. Seeing that it's at the back of the engine, off with the plenum. Find a hard hose that's bust, excellent! Bypass some coolant lines under the plenum, remove the PCV system, remove the EGR, put it all back together. Still leaking!


So it's the hard pipe that's failed. Means an... Engine out job I have a few bits on order and awaiting arrival before I take this on, some of the other bits such as JECS 740cc injectors and GT2860r turbos are sitting in my kitchen


I'll put some pictures up when it's all done

This is a bit of an ongoing project on the Boxster from last season when I upgraded the head unit. The new unit was dramatic improvement in functionality and also on the sound side. However as I had just the basic minimal spec of the two dash speakers I though there was room for improvement.

For reference here is the new head unit. I went with this one as the colours are programmable, its single DIN and was €100 ish? The nice thing about it is that it has an app on the phone. So your phone becomes a full GUI for the head unit giving you all the basic stuff you need like radio tuning, spotify, maps, phone etc, basically its close to a double DIN android in a small foot print. I'm no audiophile and prefer the flat 6 sound track so this was deemed adequate to satisfy any passengers needs. Its not a perfect match for the interior as the plastic is a bit glossy and the font is slight different but at a passing glance it doesn't look out of place.



As far as I can make out Porsche offered a sound option that included speakers in the rear storage cubby so I thought I'd have a go a myself. The approach with my car for any mods is to keep the original parts so it can always go back 100% stock in the future without a lot of hassle.

Armed with my newfound enthusiasm off to ebay I go and after a few false starts I got a blue cubby delivered for around €50.00. So out came the two side storage bins. These are held with 3 torx self tapers and hot melt glued in place for additional aggro. After much cutting and prising they eventually parted ways and left perfect locating slots as a foundation to work from.

Armed with some solid info I started looking at the largest speakers I could fit in there and at a push I took a punt on a set of Pioneer TS-A4670F 4-Way Coaxial 4 x 6-Inch speakers. Here Amazon proved my friend, well sort of, in my haste and excitement I didn't read the advert properly and thought they were single units. Obviously as I needed two I bought two only to have two sets of two when they were delivered. I now have a spare set that I must do something with.

When lockdown kicked in I pulled it all out and got stuck in doing a bit now and again. Fitting these was going to be touch and go as space was really tight. Using few A4 pages I started refining templates, then transferred that to a cornflakes boxes for more fine tuning. The speakers come with some mounting plates to sit in if going in a door so I used them to trace the outline of the opening. Top and bottom clearance was maybe 8-10mm in total of spare material so lots of breakage anticipated at this stage.

I had a look online for some proper material for the baking / mounting board, it all seemed too complicated so found a piece of 3.2mm MDF lying around. The width worked for the slots and the delicate master carpentry tasks were handled with the scroll saw (a lidl special form way back). Template transferred and after a previous night of abstinence I started cutting with a steady hand. Slowly, slowly catchy monkey as they say. Fingers still attached and quick test fit showed that some trimming was needed at the base, the angles and depth of the tMDF compared to the cardboard needed more clearance. No big deal with Lidls finest, test fitted and it was nice and snug so them cut the other side. Result!

Speakers were test fitted to get the hole locations for the securing bolts and then drilled out. The material at the top and bottom is so thin its a delicate exercise and would be very easy to break them. This is where a superior material might help, maybe even a plastic as the MDF is flimsy.

I lashed a few coats of black spray paint on them for that super professional look, also serves to hide the fact that it was gunthered together by a person of mediocre skills. Speaker cable was obtained from Amazon and run in with a good connector I found in work. All slotted in place and hooked up to a crap CD unit and it sounds decent. It won't win any awards but should be nice upgrade to the existing system.

I now need to fit some grids or fabric to the front openings and just run the cable from the head unit down the left sill and up to the parcel shelf. Probably an afternoons work taking any time and drinking coffee.

So a nice little project for less than €100 all in. Not difficult just a little time consuming Cutting the MDF is the hardest, out of interest I did try with a jig saw and the finest blade I could find and I made a unintentional jigsaw puzzle out of it, bits of MDF everywhere. There just isn't enough material at the top and bottom to handle the aggressive action of the blade.

Here's a few pics as I'm bored.