Well, finally got the car back! Picked it up from SJM on Tuesday - very happy with everything so far! Drives much better than before and it really feels 'alive'. On top of the mapping, it also had PMS solid tops & brace fitted, inner and outer ARB bushes, rack bushes and new wishbones! It really does feel a lot more on point, very keen to turn and really just a lot of fun to drive. One down side of having so much done at once is obviously that it's a little hard to tell what exactly was the most effective part, best bang for buck etc, but I can confidently say that it has made a really nice difference. I went for OE bushes on the advice of Dan@SJM. I know many people go powerflex, but I chose to go with the benefit of his experience and so far I'm really happy with it!
Despite only having had the car back for a few days, I have been busy getting on with things I've had planned. Partly as I've been keen to get on with it and partly because CSOC's first meet is on Sunday and I want to get as much done before then as possible. In the interests of being efficient, I planned to fit a new head unit and finish the dash conversion at the same time which is now complete! Took a long time mind you! So, I started off by removing some of the centre console. I won't go into glorious depth on how to remove absolutely everything as there's plenty of information only a google away for anyone that needs it! Also, I didn't take photos of absolutely everything as I was partly just trying to get it all finished in the time I had. So with that in mind..
Dash/Interior Light Colour Conversion
Before I delve into all this; I am not electrically trained/qualified in any way and the below just a documentation of how I personally have done things in my own car. I'm by no means saying it is the correct or best way to do any of it and don't blame me if you try it for yourself and it goes wrong! If you're not trained/qualified, then I'd recommend you get a professional to do it/seek professional advice!!
Once I'd got the dash off, I started taking out everything that needed bulbs/LEDs/SMDs replacing or re-soldering. Clocks came out first..
Really straight forward, they just pulled out as they're only 'held in' by the two screws hidden by the steering wheel top cover, that also holds the dash on. Next up was the clock/display, really simple to pull out..
Just pushed the tab pictured above down and slid the display out. BE CAREFUL if you're doing it, I was a bit keen and they're not very strong clips so it bent and didn't come back up. Not a biggie as I pushed it back up from the underside but the plastic's weakened there now. Oops. Works fine still!
Crappy picture, but.. I unclipped the connections. Just below the black levers there's a little tab on both of them which you push in and pull the lever at the same time. Rest is self explanatory. Next up was pulling the climate control out. Didn't take the right pictures here, my bad.
Conveniently I'd already pulled the stereo out ready to put my Alpine in, which then exposed two Torx screws which hold the top of the CC panel in. I undid those and pushed it back. The bottom part is held in, in a similar way to the Speedo clocks with two plastic cylinder bits that just slot in place. I just pushed them out and it came free. Getting it out of the gap was a bit like playing Tetris again but I found it was doable by pushing it left into the available gap, twisting a bit and pulling the right hand side through. I then plugged in the CC panel I'd re-soldered with blue SMDs whilst the car was away to give it a test. I broke the screen, so that doesn't work, but I knew that! Was pretty pleased, not much to go back and re-do/look at!
[video]http://vid1378.photobucket.com/albums/ah95/Chaski453/IMG_2391_zpse8df18bb.mp4[/video]
When I swapped the PCB boards inside the CC units over, I took a couple of quick photos..
The above photo shows the unit with the PCB removed. In the centre the square white bit is the screen. filter and housing for all that etc. It clips onto the PCB completely independently to the rest of the black case. When you take the black plastic back off the whole unit, you'll be faced with a PCB board and some little white clips poking through. BEFORE/as part of removing the PCB from the unit unclip the screen & carrier by pushing those white clips through. The reason is because the connection for the screen is pretty f**king flimsy and that's how I buggered the first one. Pictured below is the CC panel PCB. In the middle is four oval-ish shaped holes - that's where the clips for the screen housing all go. This all makes more sense if you have it in front of you as regrettably I didn't take the best pictures.
There's also a picture of the filters for both the CC panel and the clock/display. These filters just slot between the screen and the lights, you have to replace them for translucent ones. You want something as thick as the OE ones - if your filter material is pretty thin then double it up. I found in mine that the material is pretty thing and as a result you don't get an even spread of light which results in 'orbs' of light which you will notice in the 'finished' pictures later on.
Getting it all back in with the filter in place is a massive ball ache if you clip the screen housing back onto the PCB, as either the screen flaps down and the filter falls out or, your buttons all fall out of place if you try and put the housing onto the PCB. Trust me on this one! The best way to do this, is having left the screen housing inside the rest of the unit, gently lift it up a bit, get the old filter out, slide the new one in and then put it back in place. After that just carefully push the PCB into place on top of it.
After that, it was time to do the clocks! My kit came with a different size SMD which I was unsure about first. I rang the guy and he told me it's because different models have different SMDs as standard and the supplied SMDs work with all models. I wasn't too enthused at the prospect of soldering them though as the SMDs are absolutely tiny... considerably smaller than the cube shaped ones I'd had for the CC panel. Stripped the clocks down. There's an excellent guide for doing that on the forum already so I won't go into it. All I WILL say is that using two teaspoons to lever the needles off works a treat!
Once I'd soldered four of the new SMDs on, I went out to the car to give it a test.. you can see the new ones glowing blue (just about) in the bottom corner. Has been sunny so hard to get a photo.
In the end I found it easier with the small SMDs, they are tiny, but they have legs and it's easier to tell you've got a good contact using less solder.
Next up was the switches. Door lock, heated rear window and the window switches. For some reason I thought these would be the easiest but actually I found them probably the most fiddly!
You can see the legs of the LED in the picture above, have to snip those off and resolder a new LED onto them. I had to bend the legs out first to get my snips anywhere even close to the leg to cut it! I used a very small screw driver.
Then bent the other leg out far enough it was easy to snip.
Some of the other switches aren't as simple as the drivers side (pictured above) to get at the legs. Both the door lock and HRWS switches have a little black plastic 'block' covering the legs. It doesn't house any electricals or anything, I think it's just there to help the rocker switch you see in the car, sit nicely and securely on top of the internal switch mechanism. Any way, these 'blocks' can be levered off gently with a tiny screw driver to reveal the legs..
Same as before, snipped the legs and soldered a new LED on.
I found it pretty tricky remembering which leg was the positive and which the negative for the switch. If I was doing this again I'd DEFINITELY mark which was which somehow BEFORE I snipped the legs. The same also goes for the LED it self, except there's a few ways to tell. The picture below is a good one for illustrating which is + and which is negative on an LED. Inside the LED you can see one side has a small piece of metal and one has a much bigger bit. The bigger bit is the negative side of the LED. One side of the plastic/whatever clear material is also flat (hard to see from picture). On top of that, any new LEDs you have should also be supplied with one metal leg shorter than the other - that's the negative leg, but check the other signs as well to be 100%.
So, back to the switches.. I'd done them all bar the passenger window switch which was by far the hardest. I actually found I had to take the plastic housing off the internal switches, to get access to the LED legs.
I gently prised them open with a tiny screw driver. Being gentle is pretty key here as the inside of the switches is fairly fragile as you can see. Also don't lose the little bit of grey plastic 'button'!!! For soldering, I put one of the white plastic housings back on, to rest the LED on. Made it much easier to solder. Then I went and gave them all a test!
The drivers side above didn't work because I'd soldered the +/- the wrong way round. I redid them and they worked fine after!