Paul's Rev2 turbo

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Pauln
Posts: 850
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 pm
Location: Cardiff, South Wales

Home for Christmas

Post by Pauln »

Well, another deadline slipped, but as he was working on it until midnight on Sunday and delivered it on Christmas Eve, I didn't have the heart to give Derek a hard time.

So, back for Christmas...

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As it was a nice dry day today, I spent some time cleaning out the frunk and trying to remove surplus traces of dried polish from nooks and crannies on the bodywork.

Rather pleased with the new Aerowave front lip, and the new clear toblerones.

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But there's bad news at the rear.

Derek tried to paint the Autopista spoiler without taking it apart as the screw were in a bad way, but that didn't work out. So he's going to take it apart when he's back in the New Year, and paint it again. In the meantime, he's given the old spoiler a quick lick of paint and put that back on.

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It doesn't really show in the photos, but he unfortunately got a run in the lacquer on the rear bumper, so that is also being re-done in the new year.

But the good news is that I now have Bomex style quarter vents to hopefully improve air intake in the engine bay a bit, a new aircon condenser and drier, and new t-bar seals.

I often wondered what t-bar seals should really look like. The previous ones were bodged with lumps of black rubber sealer all over the place to try to keep the rain out.

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So next up I need to give the engine bay, boot and interior a good clean, and then try to install replacement looms in the doors to get the new folding mirrors working, followed by new speakers and chrome door handles.

Not to mention try to sort out why the heater doesn't seem to be pumping out the heat as it should, and the hand brake warning light keeps flashing on and off when the brake is applied.

I've come to the conclusion that if it's laid up for any length of time the car craves attention and so deliberately develops faults to make sure it gets it :D

Hopefully come the better weather all will finally be sorted.

Paul
Pauln
Posts: 850
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 pm
Location: Cardiff, South Wales

New Year Update

Post by Pauln »

Whilst waiting for Winter to really kick in I've been trying to make the best the dry but chilly weather to get on top of my to do list, before it goes back to the body shop for snagging.

First the engine bay, boot and interior were given a good clean to remove the grime left behind by the body shop, and then it was time to tackle some of the small things that have been niggling me.

First up, a heater that just pumps out cold air. As suspected this was air in the system, with the cooling system bled, the heater sprang back into life. I'm really not sure how or why air got into the system, and the only possible reason for this that I could find was that the coolant overflow tank was very low.

Onto the flashing hand brake warning light. As I'd previously modified the wiring at the hand brake lever to create a signal for the head unit, I decided to start at that end. The connections all looked OK, but the stock wiring felt a bit "limp", so suspecting a possible internal break I stripped it back several inches and remade the connectors.

Needless to say that made no difference what so ever.

I then noticed that the door open dash warning light had also stopped working, so turned my attention to checking the speedo cluster for loose connections. Having removed the cluster I discovered the fit of the led lamps I'd installed a while ago had become very slack. One of them actually fell out of it's holder when I took it out of the cluster!

Replacing the leds fixed that particular issue, and all the warning lights are now working as they should.

With the minor issues sorted, it was time to move on to the main event. Swapping the door looms for folding mirror looms, and fitting new speakers and crossovers in the door.

I've been meaning to do this job for some time, but kept putting this off, suspecting it was going to be a right faff, especially when you have to work in the street. Oh for a nice warm garage to work in :(

When I took the door cards off, I could see what a bodge a previous owner had made of fitting 6.5" Alpine dual concentric speakers. Rather than fit a spacer the speaker had been pushed in at whatever angle was needed for clearance and held in with a couple of self tapping screws. The result being that only one side of the speaker was actually contacting the surrounding metal work.

After taking the old speakers out, I started working out how best to fit the new Vibe Woofers. These are also 6.5" diameter speakers, but have a larger magnet and require more fitting depth than the Alpines.

I wasn't keen on the idea of constructing custom mdf spacers from scratch. So I carefully measured the required internal and external diameter and the depth of spacer required to fit the speaker in the door, whilst ensuring no major visible modifications to the door card would be needed, as I wanted to retain the stock look when everything was back in place.

Luckily I found a pair of mdf rings on eBay which looked as though they were ideal for the job.

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These were finished in what appeared to be a thin coat of varnish, and had an outside diameter small enough to fit the door car, and big enough to allow me to screw the speaker down safely. The dimensions were tight, but I felt there was a good chance that it would all work out OK.

The first job was to drill three countersunk holes to allow the spacers to be screwed to the door using the stock mounting holes. With the spacers fixed to the doors, I then marked four suitable fixing points for the speakers, and drilled appropriate pilot holes.

The finished spacers were then treated to a healthy coat of black paint to offer a bit of protection.

Whilst that was drying, I fitted sound deadening material inside doors immediately behind the speaker position, to try to reduce any possible drumming issues. I also used the sound deadening material to cut out gaskets for the rings, to try to ensure a good seal between the door and the spacer. A second layer was also added at the bottom, where the door profile falls away.

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I then screwed the spacers in place, squashing the material until no gaps were visible.

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That done, it was time to swap over the door looms. But more about that later.

With the new looms in place, I started to wire up the speakers.

The old Alpines had concentrically mounted tweeters, and whilst the installation was poor, the speakers actually sounded OK. However, I much prefer tweeters mounted in the stock position close to ear height.

I also wanted to fit Vibe Blackair component speakers as I thought they would be a better match for the Vibe rear speakers and sub I fitted some time ago.

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My aim was to make the system reliable and easy to maintain, whilst retaining the stock look. I therefore soldered short leads on to the woofers with bullet connectors, and trimmed the leads fitted to the tweeters to an appropriate length, before again fitting bullet connectors. The speaker feeds in the door wiring looms were was also terminated in bullet connectors.

Having wired the crossover with similar short leads and bullet connectors, I fixed them inside the door behind the woofers, using extra strong self adhesive velcro pads. These were almost the same size as the crossovers and seem to have stuck solidly, and withstood door slamming, etc.

I used these rather than straight self adhesive pads to hopefully allow removal of the crossovers, if anything goes wrong. When deciding where to mount the crossovers, it's obviously important to check that they don't foul the window when it's lowered. I then fitted the supplied speaker gaskets to the spacers.

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That done, I connected everything up, and screwed the woofers in place.

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I fixed the tweeters to the stock brackets behind the mirrors using strong self adhesive pads, as the brackets can always be unscrewed if needs be.

After a quick check that everything was working OK, it was time to trim back the circle inside the door cards, that normally surrounds the smaller stock speaker.

Using a sharp knife I cut vertically through the circle at regular intervals, then bent the first section flat to make room to cut horizontally around the circle as tight as possible to the inner surface of the door card.

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After removing any sharp edges with wet and dry, the card looked reasonably presentable.

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All that was left was to fit the door cards back on the car to cover everything up...

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... and then sit back, close the doors, and turn up the volume.

The bass now seems much tighter, with more kick when needed. Whilst at the same time it doesn't muddy the sound on lighter material. High level tweeters have also improved the perceived sound quality. I'm well pleased. Job done.

Now it's time to rewind to the swapping the door looms. As I feared, this turned out to be a real pain.

When I took a look at the existing door loom plugs on the driver's side I found a pair of wires from the alarm had been spliced into the loom. Having made a note of the cable colours, I cut the wires to the alarm and fitted bullet connectors. I then spliced two new cables with bullet connectors into the new loom.

Taking note of the existing loom's path through the door, and where it was attached, I unplugged everything and slowly pushed the loom back into the door. Because of limited access, the hardest part was guiding the plugs past all the wiring by the fuse panel in the foot well, and through the adjacent hole.

This would probably have been much easier if I had a stock seat, rather than a fixed bucket, or if I'd removed my seat before starting this job.

Some of the attachment points in the door were easy to release, others were a bit of a pig, and I was forced to resort to brute force. Once the old loom was out, it was time to reverse, and pull the new loom through the door back into the foot well. Getting the plugs through the hole in the foot well one at a time, again proved the trickiest part. But I got there in the end

Having plugged everything back up, I re-attached the loom to the various fixing points in the door. The final task on the driver's side was to install the folding mirror relay in the foot well. It quickly became obvious that I would need to take the seat out to gain access to do this. This probably wouldn't be necessary with a stock seat, but my bucket seat does badly restrict easy access to the foot well. I just wish I'd removed the bucket seat at very the start, as it would have made the whole job so much easier. Ain't hindsight a wonderful thing :D

With the seat removed, I dropped the panel housing housing the fog light switch, and removed the horizontal plastic air duct. The plug for the folding mirror relay and, the bolt to fix it to are located close to the duct for the right hand air outlet.

I'm afraid I forgot to take a photo of this when everything was removed, but you can just about see the black folding mirror relay on this photo which was taken when everything was back in place.

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Fortunately the passenger seat is currently stock, which made swapping the door loom that side much easier. But during the jiggling to get the new loom plugs back into the foot well, a large gray connector dropped into view. The obvious question I now faced was, had I accidentally managed to disconnect something, or was this just an unused connector I'd disturbed.

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Having had a good look around I couldn't see anything it ought to be plugged into, so for the time being pressed on.

With the new loom in place and everything reconnected, I started to check all the electrics were working correctly. All was well until I shut the door and the speaker suddenly cut out. When I opened the door it then started working again. I checked all the audio connections inside the door, no problems there. This seemed to suggest there was a problem with the speaker wiring in the loom I'd just fitted. What a pain.

After much cussing and a few cuts on my hands, I eventually managed to pull a new pair of wires through the rubber tube between the door and the car, using a flat spring cable puller. Having spliced these into the correct wires at the plug end, and connected the new wires to the crossover, all was well.

But there remained nagging doubts about the "spare" gray connector, so I decided to take out the glove box to double check the matching socket wasn't dangling behind there, unloved. You can also see the bullet connectors used to join the new red and blue speaker wires to the loom plug wiring in the following photo.

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At first I thought I'd found something, but on closer inspection the two connectors didn't match. So reassured I put everything back together and refitted the plastic sheets on the door. These weren't in the best of shape and needed patching in several places.

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As you can see in this last shot, I've also replaced both inside door handles with chrome ones. A bit of bling never did anyone any harm.

The car is currently due to return to the body shop on Monday to have the Autopista spoiler fitted, and the issues with the paint finish on the inside door sills and rear bumper sorted out. Hopefully I'll have it back by the following weekend.

Paul
Pauln
Posts: 850
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 pm
Location: Cardiff, South Wales

Re: Paul's Rev2 turbo

Post by Pauln »

Time for a long overdue update.

Things never seem to go according to plan. Before taking the car back to the body shop, I succeeded in grounding the new Aerowave front lip when coming out of a back lane near home. Fortunately the damage wasn't too bad, and was rectified when the body shop attended to the issues with the paint finish on the inside door sills and rear bumper. In the past I've been a bit too liberal with the silicon spray when trying to "revitalize" my old t-bar seals and this had sunk in to the paint on the door sills, causing a bad reaction when Derek tried to paint them. The solution was silicon killer - I never knew such a thing existed.

Unfortunately there were yet more problems with the Autopista rear spoiler. When they baked the paint new cracks appeared, so that needs further repairs and respraying before it can be fitted.

Whilst the Aerowave front lip looks good, I'm not convinced how practical it's going to be in the long run. I unfortunately grounded it again when I lost my way in Bristol, and ended up going down one steep hill and trying to turn right up another at the bottom. Fair play, the lip folded back rather than snapped, but it got scratched badly in the process and managed to dislodge the first two under trays that protect the radiator, which made a right mess of the two trays by the time I was able to pull in. Luckily I managed to scrounge a couple of large cable ties to get me back to Cardiff.

So it was time for another trip to the body shop to try to sort the mess out. I'm beginning to think that lip is jinxed. But at least I was able to trace two replacement under trays through the forums which were in really good condition and have now been fitted.

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More woes were to follow. Within a few days the engine management light started flashing erratically, and finally stayed on all the time, even when I bridged the pins in the diagnostics port to check error codes. Curiously it would sometimes start to fade out as the engine warmed up. Opening up my Access ECU I found a couple of capacitors had started to leak. Fortunately I'd previously changed thr usual capacitors that are prone to leaking in my stock ECU, and had kept it as a spare. So changing back to stock solved the issue.

Good Rev 2 ECU's are getting hard to get hold of these days, so I've removed the gunk discharged by the capacitors in the Access ECU, given the motherboard a quick clean, and will try to repair that later in the year, probably over Winter.

With the Autopista rear spoiler finally sorted and painted, that's now been fitted to the car and looks a treat.

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And works well the Aerowave front lip.

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The Anniversary replacement sill trim panels with the natty metal inserts I purchased a while ago have also finally been fitted. Nothing like a bit of bling to brighten things up.

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My next project is to give the dash plastic trim the carbonfibre hydrographic treatment. Having obtained spare trim panels, I've dropped these off at AquaGraphix in Aberbargoed who are doing the work for me.

I just hope they turn out as well as the examples they showed me. But I'm hanging on to the standard trim panels in case they don't, or I change my mind at some point.

I've also purchased a second Vinyl Mirco RTS seat and Bride TO50XL sub frame for the passenger side.

The Mirco seat is about the widest that will fit in the MR2 cabin, and is really comfortable. Whilst the Bride sub frame allows the seat to be fitted pretty much as low as is practical, whilst retaining sliders.

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Delivery of the seat, which is being manufactured to order as I wanted it to match the driver's seat, is estimated at 2 - 3 weeks. I hope that proves to be the case as I've already sold my existing passenger seat, and it's due to be picked up in around 4 weeks time.

So plenty to keep me busy.

Paul
Pauln
Posts: 850
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 pm
Location: Cardiff, South Wales

Re: Paul's Rev2 turbo

Post by Pauln »

Marmite time.

I picked up the dash trim parts from AquaGraphix yesterday and have started putting them back together ready for replacing my existing dash trim panels.

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The photo doesn't really do the finish justice. Too much shine and not enough light on this wet and miserable day. I'm not convinced about the speedo cluster, that might be a panel too far. But I'll wait to see what it looks like in place. It's also not quite what I asked for, which was just to coat the rear surface and leave the rest mat black.

But other than that, I'm pleased with the finish overall.

The carbon fibre look is something I've always fancied, but by keeping the original panels I can always revert at a later date if I change my mind.

The seat has also been dispatched from Poland and has so far made it to Germany, so that shouldn't take too long to arrive now.

It feels just like Christmas. Or maybe that's just the weather :D

Paul
Pauln
Posts: 850
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 pm
Location: Cardiff, South Wales

Re: Paul's Rev2 turbo

Post by Pauln »

Small update. The new Mirco RTS passenger seat has arrived.

This was made to order as I wanted it to match my existing driver's seat.

I ordered the seat on the 6th June, and it arrived from the factory in Poland 11 days later.

Now that's what I call an amazing turn around.

So the next job is to get it mounted on the Bride rails, and adjust everything for the best fit in the cabin.

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I've started by bolting on a stock seat belt buckle from a Celica MK6. This stands a bit higher than the MR2 version, which makes it a little bit easier to clip in in quite a tight space between the seat and the tunnel. Well it did on the driver's side, so I'm hoping the same will be true on the passenger side.

The passenger Schroth harness has also arrived. So once the seat position is finalized I can create the necessary fixing points for the harness.

Paul
Draven
Posts: 14965
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2006 8:34 am
Location: One of the Hamptons.
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Re: Paul's Rev2 turbo

Post by Draven »

Wow good work being done here, keep it up. :thumleft:
Pauln
Posts: 850
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 pm
Location: Cardiff, South Wales

Re: Paul's Rev2 turbo

Post by Pauln »

Taking advantage of a couple of days without rain, I've installed the second Mirco RTS seat, so now have a matching pair.

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For some reason, I actually found it harder to fit the passenger seat in, than I did the driver's seat. Because of the width of these seats, you have to fit them slightly towards the centre to allow the stock three point belt to move freely through the door pillar mount.

I've also now threaded both stock three point straps through the harness cuts outs in both seats, which seems to work a bit better. But it's easy enough to change back if this proves a pain.

Unfortunately, despite the harness inner lap belt eye bolt being fitted in the same position on both sides of the car, the passenger seat can't be pushed back quite as far as the drivers seat before the rear end of the side mount fouls the lap strap and eye bolt.

I'm really not sure why that is, and can only think the two halves of the cabin aren't actually identical.

But it was much easier drilling holes through the firewall for the passenger shoulder strap eye bolts as there really nothing in the way on the engine side of the firewall, unlike the situation on the driver's side.

I'll give a bit more thought to the positioning of the passenger seat when I have some spare time. But for now there's enough space for me to comfortably fit in, so it should be OK, for most passengers.

I've also replaced the gear lever trim panel, and the interior light cover with the dipped mock carbon fibre replacements I'm really pleased with these, and can't way to see the full effect when I replace all the dash trim panels as well. Should give the inside a bit of a lift. Though I know it's not a look that everyone likes.

Paul
Gullzter
Posts: 2844
Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:04 am
Location: Glasgow

Re: Paul's Rev2 turbo

Post by Gullzter »

Looking fantastic Paul, the schroth belt is amazing, one of the best features I had in my 2 :lol:
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