The "Today I did something to my car" thread

First clean in a week or so, well needed. Enjoy the weather folks!

Sorry for double post, cant add photos in edit option on phone. Heres another picture, needs to be lowered badly!! Might respray alloys gold.. .

Yeah sorry, thats what I meant. The bronze/gold colour similar to Imprezas :-) Will look up on that, cheers!

Went on findapart and stuck a few part requests in, spoiler, side skirt's and few bits and bobs :-)

@advertsfox where did you get the aerial? Any pictures?

Despite this being my pride and joy, I only got around to getting it cleaned today for the first time in just way too long. It's shameful really, but I think it's come up well. The inside is still as new so haven't grabbed any pics of that. Marked difference between before/after!


Before:




After:

Today I decided to hard wire in a phone charger, mainly because I use it as a GPS and it’s nice to have it fully charged on arrival.
I got a 3m iPhone cable and a cigarette lighter adapter from lidl a while back that had usb slots.
In order to run the wire from the glovebox to the drivers a pillar, I went through the lower dashboard.
On the drivers side there are 4 screws, one to the left of the steering column, two to the right, and one low down under a panel.




Slide it towards you first, then to the right to remove it from the centre console.
You also need to be careful of the foot well light that needs disconnecting.
Because I planned out the wire routing, I also removed the air vent and light control pannel.
Two screws at the bottom, pull out at the bottom and then down.





On the back you’ll find the three bulbs that light the pannel, these often need replacing, a common fault on high hour Volvo S40/V40 s. Twist out using a flat head screwdriver. Replacement bulbs are dealer recomended becasuse of the odd fitment
I had fixed these previously so no need this time.



Next onto the centre console,
Removed the radio and heater control panel cover.(( anticipated having to remove the radio surround today but got lucky with skinny arms!) The 3 bulbs in the heater control panel often need replacing at the same time as the others, remove the 4 visible screws and the two more under the radio. The control panel can then be wiggled out. Again I had already done this.



Onto the glove box, there’s a shelf in the glove box held on with two screws, remove them and unclip the shelf, revealing a nice hole for wires.






The easy part was actually feeding the wires through the dashboard and over.
I fed the wires out thorough the a-pillar/dashboard panel gap.



Then as the famous manuals say, assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
A handy little nugget for other Volvo S40/V40 owners is if you remove one of the blanks and see the below, your car is pre-wired for heated seats! Its also on my list of mods.





I haven’t fully completed the job, need a multimeter to determine the positive of the adaptor so I can wire it to the fuse box with this;



Thanks for reading

Don't clean in the sun !

Supergurrier wrote: »

Don't clean in the sun !

You can clean in the soon, just don't wax or polish in the sun.

toastedpickles wrote: »

Stupid question but why?

Not sure really, I presume the stuff just kind of bakes onto the car.
This is why we need the detailing forum... NOW! :pac:

Cleaning in the sun more time for shampoo to dry into the paint/watermarks and all that bad kind of stuff.

Polishing and waxing is obvious you aint gonna get no proper hazing in direct sunlight.

Drying properly(good quality drying towel) and having the time to do it on a cool evening is the key to a spotless car

I do be staring at the car looking like a leopard with water spots during a fine day off muttering to myself "Just you wait until 8 o'clock boyo"

As for polishing im not so sure, hand polishing still kidna scares me as the paint always goes wonky and i panic and have to use a wet cloth to get it all off

(Saves for DA)

Supergurrier wrote: »

You probably don't live in a radioactive limescale crazy chernobyl hard water area like me then.

That's Galways for ya.
Up in my cousin's on Cleggan we took samples of tap and rain water and looked at them under a microscope.
Let's just say we were drinking filtered rain water after that. :pac:

toastedpickles wrote: »

Same as meself there, except I've no access to a hose

Yikes! And I complain about not having a pressure washer...

Since I had the front plate holder removed and the bumper smoothed, I needed something to hold a plate that didn't require the front bumper to be re-drilled. I sourced a kit from M-Fest in California, which after weeks of no response from their customer support and a PayPal dispute, they finally shipped last Friday and it arrived yesterday.



As it turns out, it was a piece of over engineered ****.



The tow hook adapter was temperamental and liable to pop the plate shaft out at any time. The shaft also stuck out a mile from the front bumper and the plate frame wouldn't secure to the shaft so it would just spin and / or fall off.



I visited a local engineering place with an idea yesterday afternoon. Using the car's original tow hook, he machined it into a shorter and more simpler version of the M-Fest version. Note the slats so it can be tightened with the supplied 10mm spanner in the BMW's tool box.



We re-used the plate frame, but used countersunk bolts and changed the allen key bolt which secures the frame to the shaft.



With the modified tow hook installed and tightened, it's a simple case of popping the frame onto the shaft, aligning it and tightening one bolt.



The number plate is attached to the frame with velcro. It sits dead tight to the front bumper but won't touch it at speed.



I can remove it in about 30 seconds or so with just a 5mm allen key and a 10mm spanner. Really happy with it now