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!

[saintjamesy89]

Nothing much to report on the BX front, the car is still in pretty much daily use and I am still very much enjoying the decent 7 speaker system!

We had a bit of a shuffle around with cars this year and now the OH has a MK1 Nissan Leaf which is stupidly cheap to run (we have solar and battery storage on the house), the utility car, a Volvo 740 GLE with a/c is less cheap to run but I love it and you can't deny it's practicality! We also still have the back-up/spare Kia of boredom, it's MOT is due in a few weeks so once it has a clean 12 months it'll be moving on.

For the Volvo 740 GLE, the engine I built that is in the hearse will be going in this in the next year or two when I have time for that project, then the hearse can move on to pastures new to free up some space. The estate is unfortunately a 2.3 naturally aspirated petrol and paired with the ZF auto, the autobox saps a fair bit of go in these and the Aisin Warner boxes some came with are much better - but the hearse engine has the best manual box these came with attached, so that solves that. I do like this car and it makes a great pairing with the BX.

This is me in the Volvo going up Prescott hill climb in August


Wheels and exhaust obviously not standard, it needed both when I bought it but do plan to get the exhaust guy to shorten the rear pipes a bit so they are more tidily tucked back under the bumper. It is one of those one owner from new cars with STACKS of history, including all the original sales documentation. I machine polished it just before taking these photos and whilst the original paint comes up very well, there are loads of scratches etc.




I totally forgot to pop the GT's dyno video on here! Just in case you haven't seen it, grab a cuppa and have a watch. I'm certainly happy with the outcome
Replacement wheel trim sourced btw.

[Jaba]

Great progress Tom.
What sort of condenser are you looking for. The one which looks like flat folded ally or the other style which looks like 10 or 12mm copper pipe.

[panky]

The GT sounds awesome on the dyno, did you ever get the wheel trim back.
I know when Kitch did DKK years ago it was spot on book.

[saintjamesy89]

Great progress Tom.
What sort of condenser are you looking for. The one which looks like flat folded ally or the other style which looks like 10 or 12mm copper pipe.

Thanks John, it's getting to the stage where any condenser that fits would be good! The current is the old copper pipe type, my best guess is the condenser hose union (on the compressor to condenser pipe) is the correct size but wrong thread pitch. I have tried fitting it twice now, each time the threads on the condenser suffered a little moredamagee, I thought it was just cross threaded initially but I dont think thats it.
The correct hose fitting would hopefully be ok once it got past the damaged area but it would be fiddly operation!

Interestingly i have a similar a/c issue in the Volvo, old knackered hoses need replacing but no business is able to help. I plan to order the pipe unions i need, check fitment on the car and then get Pirtek in Bristol to make hoses up. Bit of a faff, but hopefully doable.