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Day 1543 “Target Acquired”

I tackled the FPR this weekend. It’s not a terrible install, but not as easy as I would have liked it to be.

First that pesky STB,  since its bolted to the cowl. :-\

Dirty, dirty, Dirty. It still has the dust from the paint job.

Target acquired!

Target eliminated!

So while preparing myself to do this, I realized that this FPR hasn’t been replaced since I’ve own the car (since 160K) so I’m going out on a limb and say it has the full 250,000 miles on it.

New FPR installed:

This was left over. I assume its for another rail cause it didn’t fit well and the books show nothing like it. The c clip is installed, which is all it had to begin with.

Here are the old and broken bits. I have no idea what purpose those plastic rings on the base of the injector serve but they are mostly gone now. I think 2 still have them attached.

And because Kris had his episode earlier this month, I decided to get new o-rings.

Here is the Felpro part number for the box of 4 rings, if you needed to know

So, new o-rings are installed and I somehow lost a injector retainer. if your looking for them at a parts house good luck. I, however, found them at Autozone. FYI it probably doesn’t come up if you’re looking for them by car and model.

So it’s all put back together and we will see if the hard starts are gone. Lets hope.

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Day 1561 “Headlight Comparison”

I’ve been meaning to grab some pics of my projectors at night and I did. Of course my new phone has a much better camera than the old phone. So the pics looks underexposed compared to the others but you get the picture.

Bottom line is I like my projectors.

Stock:

C-10 Conversion

Low:

High:

Custom Projectors

Low:

High:

Day 1572 “Melted”

So, I tackled a few annoyances this weekend. First, I replaced the Driver HID ballast as it was on the fritz. TRS replaced it free of charge. (5 year warranty)

Second was to tackle a few hiccups on my Keyless ignition. Third was to swap my headunit back to the 6300 since my din and a half decided to go bad or at least sick with static and popping. Not bad for a 10+year old headunit that has been used pretty heavy.

Step one unhook everything. :-\ I really didn’t want to. I took a picture to remember the colors and thankfully so because I had forgotten what pink was.

Upon inspection it seems these cheap fuses are terrible. Every one of these fuses melt under a load. I need to throw these fuses away. They suck.

Another potential problem was cheap relays.

This one is the “On” relay. It carries the current when the car is running. Seems buying robust components is important if you want a reliable system. Go figure.

I got the relays hooked up and then realized I’m out of electrical tape.

A quick run to Lowe’s and problem solved.

Fuse replaced and its ready for install.

Hours later:

To celebrate, I washed the car. Finally.

Day 1582 “Go Me”

My fuel system continues to have problems.

It left me on the side of the road yesterday after work. My knowing that I have a fuel leak assumed that whatever was leaking just finally let go and holds no pressure.

I first had to unhook the speaker box from over my fuel pump hatch and thats no easy task. I peeled back the carpet. Luckly had the tools in the car to pull the pump. It’s still a bitch to unhook the lines over the tank as I didn’t cut the hatch big enough to reach them easily.

But I did manage to pull the pump after an hour of messing around. I checked everything. I reseated the primary and tightened the hose clamp at the pump and checked the line for splits. nothing looked out of place. :-\

So I put everything back together and tried to start the car. Nothing.

So following my second instinct. Check the simple stuff.  Turned out to be the fuel pump relay. I’m so stupid. It would have taken me 5 mins to find it but I decided to make an idiot out of myself instead. Go me.

Day 1583 “Lesson on Light”

So since I’ve been tinkering with the car a bit, I decided to tackle one of the projects revisions that I’ve been wanting to do.

I have not liked the Color rendering of the LEDs in my dome light that I modified.

And for those who don’t know what color rendering is, the quick version is the ability of light produce color on objects. its get really complicated but the yellow street lights that make you look all the same color have a low CRI (color rendering index) at around 30. A standard light bulb has a CRI of 100. meaning it renders color 100% essentially. Fluorescent and LEDs usually have a CRI of 80 which is what most artificial light is standard at.

So what’s the problem? Well, LEDs themselves cannot be “white”. They can look white but they do not produce 100% white light. Its works by 1 of 2 ways. 1.) A combination of Blue Diode and Yellow substrate which most/all 5mm or similar LEDs are. They are the Cheaper kind. or 2.) They are Blue LEDs that are behind a White Phosphor which will react to blue light. The mix of phosphor determines the color of the light and the CRI.

Bottom line if something like a red LED only puts out red light, things can only reflect red light. red things look red and blue things look black because they don’t reflect red. Believe it or not that is the short version.

So my first install looked like this. As you can see everything looks the same color while in fact they are not. If your working in the back and trying to locate a red wire is somewhat challenging.

Old LED setup:

This is the new LEDs that I acquired from work. These require a heat sink of some kind to keep the heat away from the leds. A piece of sheet Aluminum is more than enough.

Its pretty thin.

Black finishes the inside of the dome:

It looks pretty sexy so far.

So to recap this is the old output and appearance.

And here is the new LED Strip. So much win.

This is without the lens on because its super bright without it.

This is a super overexposed shot to show the difference front to back.

Day 1660 “LED Bench Test Results”

I had to fix a couple things over the holidays.

One big one was the 3rd LED brake light that I had put together with ebay LEDs. This was basically a bench test to see how the LEDs held up. The Ebay LEDs didn’t do too well. They did last almost a year but that’s not acceptable for an LED setup.

I managed to get some higher end LEDs. These are very robust. The nominal voltage is 2v but these guys can handle up to 18v for short periods and still work afterwards. Voltage spikes, which is what I suspect was the cause of the failure, can also be fixed by introducing a zener diode which may be what I use to regulate the voltage when I go all LED. Nonetheless a good bench test and we will see how well these guys hold up.

Ebay Leds initially installed

Ebay LEDs after 1 year:

New Cree LEDs:

Assembled and ready to install.

Another thing was my OBD2 BT adapter. It has a flaw where the pins aren’t fixed and they push in but I took it apart and super glued the pins to keep them from moving when I plug and unplug adapter. Full product review here

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Day 1704 “C5 Rims”

Well, G19 is right around the corner and here is my list this year. It’s not very long thankfully.

-Finish the interior (headliner, door panel swap, etc)
-Rims/Tires
-Looking into power window conversion (aftermarket, considering I don’t have the wiring for stock)
-Basic tune up and maybe some repairs here and there

This year I might actually get to check off all of them. LOL

So, I get to check off one of them right now

I managed to catch set of C5 rims with a decent set of tires on them.

I had to drive to AL to get them but it was worth the drive I think

they were pretty dirty so I decided to give them a good scrub and polish

I was so happy it turned out to be 65 on saturday because it made this not so bad to do

By the end of saturday they were all polished. I just needed to clean up the mess and mount them.

On sunday, Damn it was cold. It went from 65 on saturday to a low of 20 saturday night. I’ve never seen a 45 deg shift in one day. Hey Winter, I hate you!

I did manage to mount and clean them up. The car is still filthy but at least the rims distract you from that.

It honestly doesn’t look like my car anymore. I’m so used to black salad shooters.

To anyone that is mounting c5 rims on an LT1 hubs, get ready to file or sand material out of the center. It’s about .015″ smaller than you need it to be to fit. Nothing a minute or 2 with a round file couldn’t fix.

Day 1742 “G19 Plans”

So by now I usually have my gathering plans as to what I will have done in time for G19.

My list is small, which makes it easy lol

–First thing was the rims, which is done.

–Interior- Finish it. (Door panels, headliner, new steering wheel, etc)

-I’m going to try and clean up some wiring for like the stereo and such to get it looking cleaner.

–The Big thing on the list this year, besides the wheels, is what I’m calling an Autoloc conversion. Autoloc is a company that offers modular components that update an old car to have new car features. power windows, locks, keyless ignition, and a number of other stuff.

I’m going to convert my doors to power (windows, locks)

I’m also going to get an RFID module that will immobilize the car when I walk away and also lock the doors. When I return it will unlock the doors, completely hands free.

Finally, I’ll be ditching my touch screen ignition. I’m sorta heart broken to do it. I’m proud of it and it’s been a very reliable system. The downside is that it uses batteries. Which will fail at some point. I’m going with a more conventional push button start. That should be more reliable and have a greater shelf life than my battery operated system.

My goal is to never have to pull my keys out of my pocket.

The power windows are a universal kit that attaches to the crank. I hope that it works as well as the factory and maybe even survives longer

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