Nothing Major, but added some accessories, and fixed a few minor issues.
Mod One: Bob's Autosports 80W LED Fog Light Bulbs.
This is pretty basic plug and play bulb replacement. Only issue is one of the bulbs didn't want to latch properly due to some excess casting flash on the connector. Other than that, they work good and match the HID headlights nicely.
Here is the stock bulb versus one of the LED's:
Here is a comparison of the new LED on the right and the stock bulb on the left. And I should note that the LED bulb was about 8" higher off the ground since I pulled that side onto one of my ramps to make more room underneath the car.
Here is the same shot with the headlights and camera flash on. It really shows how much more light there is.
For reference, this is a dark bottle and you can read the lettering on the back of the bottle through it with the light shining in from the side. And this stuff is really really good. Didn't realize till I finished it that it's 10.1%. Super hoppy goodness.
Both lights done and no flash. You can see how much brighter the left is on the ground since it's closer too.
While I was working on the fogs, I found some wear on the front spoiler/bumper so I decided to fix it as best I could with what I had laying around.
You can see where one of the splitter mounting clips tore off of the bumper. For reference, the bumper isn't all dinged up, it's just the clear bra got a bit torn up when this happened I think. No idea what caused it though.
What the piece looked like, and what I had around that was the approximate thickness and shape I wanted.
Yep, I just cut off part of an old striker plate for a door we removed. It's not perfect, but the hole was already in it, and it already holds the splitter much better.
Here it is fully assembled and ready to go in.
Next Project was running the power cord permanently for my new Valentine One. 80mph in second gear makes me worried about a big ticket.
Step one, remove everything up top to figure out where to mount it and run the wires.
Wire in and run along the edge of the headliner to the driver's side A-pillar. On the plus side, it's really easy to just slip the wire into the headliner since it doesn't actually connect to the windshield or have any mounting hardware in the front.
I cost myself a while thinking I could find a decent switched power source from that side or the radio, but eventually just gave up and went to the fuse panel in the passenger footwell on the ECU mount.
I had used some double sided tape to hold the wiring in place and then used painters tape to make sure it didn't go anywhere.
Much consternation later I ran the wire down the passenger a-pillar by wrapping it around the existing headliner harness.
Found a switched source and trimmed the included hardwire adapter to fit the mini fuse plug. The fuse is in-line with the unit just out of frame, so no worries about un-fused power cables.
All buttoned back up and ready to hang the suction cup mount next to the mirror.
Installed in operating position.
I had disassembled the mirror to see if there was an easy way to adapt the mounting bracket to the mirror housing so I could permanently mount the mount, but was unable to do so. It will take some engineering to come up with a good mounting solution. The downside is that by using a screwdriver to pry off the mirror as everyone shows you should do, the mounting plate spring loosened up and the mirror started rattling today. I used some super glue to wick into the space by the mounting rivets to fix that. For future reference, when removing the rear view mirror go from underneath and you can release the latching mechanism and just slide the mirror up.
Mod One: Bob's Autosports 80W LED Fog Light Bulbs.
This is pretty basic plug and play bulb replacement. Only issue is one of the bulbs didn't want to latch properly due to some excess casting flash on the connector. Other than that, they work good and match the HID headlights nicely.
Here is the stock bulb versus one of the LED's:
Here is a comparison of the new LED on the right and the stock bulb on the left. And I should note that the LED bulb was about 8" higher off the ground since I pulled that side onto one of my ramps to make more room underneath the car.
Here is the same shot with the headlights and camera flash on. It really shows how much more light there is.
For reference, this is a dark bottle and you can read the lettering on the back of the bottle through it with the light shining in from the side. And this stuff is really really good. Didn't realize till I finished it that it's 10.1%. Super hoppy goodness.
Both lights done and no flash. You can see how much brighter the left is on the ground since it's closer too.
While I was working on the fogs, I found some wear on the front spoiler/bumper so I decided to fix it as best I could with what I had laying around.
You can see where one of the splitter mounting clips tore off of the bumper. For reference, the bumper isn't all dinged up, it's just the clear bra got a bit torn up when this happened I think. No idea what caused it though.
What the piece looked like, and what I had around that was the approximate thickness and shape I wanted.
Yep, I just cut off part of an old striker plate for a door we removed. It's not perfect, but the hole was already in it, and it already holds the splitter much better.
Here it is fully assembled and ready to go in.
Next Project was running the power cord permanently for my new Valentine One. 80mph in second gear makes me worried about a big ticket.
Step one, remove everything up top to figure out where to mount it and run the wires.
Wire in and run along the edge of the headliner to the driver's side A-pillar. On the plus side, it's really easy to just slip the wire into the headliner since it doesn't actually connect to the windshield or have any mounting hardware in the front.
I cost myself a while thinking I could find a decent switched power source from that side or the radio, but eventually just gave up and went to the fuse panel in the passenger footwell on the ECU mount.
I had used some double sided tape to hold the wiring in place and then used painters tape to make sure it didn't go anywhere.
Much consternation later I ran the wire down the passenger a-pillar by wrapping it around the existing headliner harness.
Found a switched source and trimmed the included hardwire adapter to fit the mini fuse plug. The fuse is in-line with the unit just out of frame, so no worries about un-fused power cables.
All buttoned back up and ready to hang the suction cup mount next to the mirror.
Installed in operating position.
I had disassembled the mirror to see if there was an easy way to adapt the mounting bracket to the mirror housing so I could permanently mount the mount, but was unable to do so. It will take some engineering to come up with a good mounting solution. The downside is that by using a screwdriver to pry off the mirror as everyone shows you should do, the mounting plate spring loosened up and the mirror started rattling today. I used some super glue to wick into the space by the mounting rivets to fix that. For future reference, when removing the rear view mirror go from underneath and you can release the latching mechanism and just slide the mirror up.
