- Joined
- Jul 4, 2005
- Messages
- 2,057
- Location
- Germany, 44.7km from The Ring
- Car(s)
- Model Y, VW Bora Wagon, NA MX-5, Zastava
That is just awesome! Once again, doing a better job than me
. And yeah, like Thomas says, that makes me want a 3D printer!

After all that More problems!![]()
A couple of weeks on from getting the replacement washer jets for the bumper, I finally found the time to take it off. Getting it off wasn't too difficult apart from yet another stripped screw head that I had to drill out. Why they didn't use Torx I have no idea. With the bumper off I could repair some of the cracks on the bottom and replace a chunk of plastic that came off when I removed the inner shields using the same method as posted above. All of the black plastic was then cleaned and coated with Gtechniq C4. It's not bad if you ask me.
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Having done all this and the back end of Mina the Smart I had used this much C4 coating:
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I need some hose clip pliers and then I can fit the new washer jets before putting it back together. The jets may actually need a coating of C4 themselves as they now look a bit lighter than the bumper...
Excellent work, slightly more elegant than me fitting a random brandless cassette player to the Acclaim and relying on the interference fit between the surround and the fascia to wedge it in place...
Does the bumper still look good after half a year? Also, is that a 15ml or 30ml bottle? I bought some with intention of bringing Panda's faded plastic back to life... but there's an awful lot of plastic on the Panda, and C4 is stupidly expensive![]()
Looks better than OEM! Now I want to do something similar to the Xterra, but I don't have the talent - so I'm just going to slap a tablet on a RAM mount and call it a day.
Tonight, it was time for a longer test-run. With 4 screws holding the dash on and the cables spilling out of the front so I had access to check the temp of the voltage divider boards (and put them out if the burst into flames) I went off to get the cheapest petrol around. It seemed like a good excuse as the V8 had guzzled almost everything in the tank. It's about an hour round trip.
After some fiddling with the volume settings everything was perfect, absolutely no faults to report. Music sounded great (despite a whine on the amp that's still hanging around from before the head unit swap, I'll work on that), navigation worked perfectly and nothing exploded. The divider boards were only warm due to the air coming out of the dash vents, no hot spots or signs of them being overloaded. That's great news as I can finally get everything buttoned up and shoved back in the dash.
Turns out that CarPlay, or the Waze app at least, is lacking one thing. Auto night mode. Seems crazy but it's based on an ambient light sensor or 'headlight on' feed that most head units don't have. Why can't it be based on the time? Even my smart watch tells me when the times of sunset and sunrise.
That might be just Waze; Apple Maps changes automatically for me. But that might be based on the phone's ambient light sensor. My mom uses Google Maps in CarPlay; I think that one taps into her headlights. I'm shocked that your head unit didn't come with a headlight wire to dim the entire screen brightness when you turn the lights on. Both my and my mom's head units (two different brands) use those.
Anyway, I'm a bit of a fan of the intro sequence of the game Observer (don't know why, just like it) so was watching it again and the dash on Daniel's car reminded me of something...
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Haha, is this an FSO Polonez?
Tonight, it was time for a longer test-run. With 4 screws holding the dash on and the cables spilling out of the front