I've been doing a lot of work on the interior at the moment. Mainly a few little things I've been wanting to do but wanted to do them all at once. But first...
These are the locking LCA washers I still haven't installed yet haha.
20210220_160402 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
The interior project started with having the idea of adding a spring under the shift boot to hold it up instead of sagging down and showing part of the shift linkage.
20210221_220110 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
The shifter panel has been popping up on the driver's front corner and it drives me crazy. I widened the metal tab and did a test fit and I think it'll work, but I have to do the other side too.
20210221_220012 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
I bought a wireless charging phone holder on Amazon for the Pathfinder and it's awesome, so I got one for Jewel's car a couple years ago too. She didn't use it and I didn't either because, as I just discovered, for some reason you have to remove the phone case for that one to charge it, and it's the same exact holder. It has a fantastic suction cup mount, but I didn't want to mount it on the left side of the wheel and that seemed to be the only good place, and I like as little stuck to the windshield as possible. Then I remembered I cut a slit in the dash between the stereo surround and the soft part so I could mount the Power FC Commander and it looked like it was floating. I was very happy with how that turned out, so I decided to mount the phone holder there now, and it came out pretty well. Not perfect, but good enough. I haven't fit the panels back yet to make sure I can run the wire through there, but it's small enough I think it should work.
20210221_220032 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
It's pushing the plastic panel over a little far, but I don't think it will be too noticeable. I'll shave it down some if need be, but I think that might make it too loose and floppy in there. Right now it's a pretty solid mount.
20210217_181506 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
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Eric Jausel, on Flickr
I thought about cutting the knob off the back to make it a nice, flat install again, but I decided to use that as the way to mount it and also this way I can still use it on the regular mount in a different car if I choose to. They're only $30 so I should have just cut it off, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. It feels wasteful to me. I gave it some clearance so it wouldn't rest against the soft part of the dash, but I added some foam just in case. I had other phone mounts from years past that I probably could have used and cut up, but I liked that this one is a wireless charger too, and I don't know where I put the old ones anyway haha. The big washer is there as a shim to give the mount enough depth for the nut to tighten down.
20210217_181431 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
This is the power adapter I got off Amazon to feed the charger/holder. It came with a micro USB end so it hooks up directly to the charger. The cord is a little short, I would have preferred to mount it further back on the tunnel a bit, but it'll work. I had bought another one of these off Amazon (you'll see in a later photo) to power the two USB ports in the shifter panel and that one came with two USB cables coming out of it, so it worked out great. That one is no longer available on Amazon, but there are a ton of them on there that are exactly alike. I have all of these running straight off the battery so they are always getting power, even if I have the CB for the battery popped.
20210221_215842 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
Another project I've been wanting to do for a while was wire in a relay so that my fog lights will turn on independent of the headlights, but with the parking lights so there will still be a warning if they're left on. I'm doing this for when I eventually install the FEED combo lights. I got some connectors from Corsa-Technic and made adapter harnesses so it can all be reversed easily. Using this write-up
http://www.fd3s.net/fog_light_rewiring.html I pulled the power wire from the foglight connector and used the ashtray light connector (I don't need the light anymore anyway since the JDM ashtray doesn't have a port for it) so it's getting power directly from that instead of the headlight circuit. And it worked great.
20210221_215716 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
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Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20210221_215814 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
I swapped all the bulbs to LED, but I might swap the orange ones back to halogen because they blink fast now when the blinker is on (but not when using hazards), and I'm not sure if I want to keep it like that.
20210221_214316 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
When Chris installed the ECU and all that, he used the exhaust overheat light on the shifter panel as an alert when there has been an error in the ECU. Basically, it flashes ALL THE TIME because every time I drive it there is an error in the ECU and it corrects itself. So I decided to put a switch on it so I can leave it off most of the time but be able to turn it on if I want to see if there was an error. I got connectors from Corsa for this too. I love making these little harnesses and I love soldering now, so I look for any reason to solder something or make a harness lol.
20210221_215951 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
I've never liked how far my stereo sticks out, and someone on facebook mentioned that it should fit far enough back in the pocket to be flush. I've looked into this before and never could get it to go far enough back in there so I just accepted it, but I had never measured the depth of the pocket and the depth of the stereo and it got me thinking again. After some digging and moving things around, I realized the foam-wrapped, stock harnesses in the upper left corner of the pocket were in the way. After I moved all that out of the way, it goes all the way back in there. When I installed the stereo, I just bought a cheap install kit off Amazon or eBay and I've realized that if I want to get the stereo flush, the trim ring won't go on, so I bought the legit Pioneer install kit and it should be here in a couple days.
20210221_220041 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
I used my label maker to label most of the extra wiring I installed, but I never liked how I did it. I had to put them on like little flags and they weren't very durable either. We've been labeling a bunch of cables at work and I figured out how to do the wrap, so I made some and installed those last night. I have a few more to do also.
2021-02-25_08-57-56 by
Eric Jausel, on Flickr
And speaking of wiring, I realized that I never installed a fuse on wires I installed unless they came with whatever product I installed, and I decided to change that. I don't care for the single, in-line fuse blocks, but that's what I've normally used. But this time I decided to make it a little cleaner and do a block of fuses. I bought a couple of these 6 fuse blocks
https://ceautoelectricsupply.com/produc ... tribution/ (one for constant 12v and one for 12v through the CB), but they're too big to both fit in the battery compartment, so I bought a couple of these but on Amazon
https://www.delcity.net/store/ATO/ATC-C ... HEEALw_wcB.
I changed out the ebrake sensor too, since I broke the old one and got a good one off Bobby's car. I figured I might as well while I'm in there.
Oh, and the doors were creaking like crazy opening and closing, so I sprayed some WD40 on the hinges and door handles. WHAT A DIFFERENCE. I can't believe I've never done that before. The doors used to be fairly difficult to open and close, now I think a slight breeze would move them. And I'm planning on conditioning the leather shift boot and ebrake boot while they're out since the steering wheel is so nice. I've also been thinking about just putting a stock leather shift knob back in and wrapping the ebrake in leather again.