Carpets and Heater

Hi

Got home Tuesday evening, I was due home on Wednesday but the ship was sailing for port that day so the relieving crew came a day early and we were boated of to Ostend Belgium then Eurostar to London. 

While away I have made a few purchases, the radio I bought looks great and is what I wanted fitted in the dash, unfortunately the sound quality isn't great due to it being mono. To fix this I have bought a stereo amplifier and a new set of stereo speakers.

It was a relatively cheap amplifier at £15 from China and came with a small set of speakers that I shall fit somewhere under the dash and plug either my mp3 player into it or buy another Pure Highway DAB radio and fit that. I had another look on eBay for stereo speakers and found a slim set that would (I thought) fit great in the back of the car. 

I tried everything on Wednesday and the sound quality is great, I made up a bracket arrangement that allowed the speakers to fit right at the rear of the car and fit them in place.

All of the wiring was already in position so it was just a matter of connecting, I shall fit the amplifier under the shelf in the passenger section and will find somewhere for the small set of speakers.

I have also painted the luggage rack and spare wheel brackets and fitted these.

The main part I have been waiting for arrived last night and that was the center carpet section, Ray made a great job of the alteration and has put the altered section under the center console so you won't ever know it had been altered.

As the side sections were already in place I started by fitting the rear carpet, Because this area will take a lot of hammering from luggage I had another go at the carpet hidden stud fixings and after stabbing myself another half dozen times I got them to work. I also used some impact adhesive along the dropped edge and clamped into position.

I also added a little glue to the side sections and clamped them up.

The center carpet fit perfectly and I fitted more of the hidden stud fixings down the side of the tunnel to connect to.

I stretched the carpet centrally over the tunnel as much as I could then clamped into place to hold it there.

The seat belt anchors where perfectly positioned to clamp the bottom of the carpet into position so these went on next.

I worked my way along one side fitting the carpet to the stud fasteners until one side was fully fastened and the excess on the side trimmed.

I was now able fit the stud fixings to the other side and stretch the carpet into position. Still having difficulty with some of the fasteners but practice is all I need.

It did not take long to finish and mostly the studs are on.

The gear stick cover took a little time, mostly as I knew that any mistakes and I would be calling Ray for another center section.

I want the rubber part of the cover to be in contact with the metal of the tunnel and not sitting on the carpet so as to wick up any water, so I fitted the rubber first and marked the holes and cut out little sections of the carpet and screwed the rubber in position. Once it was aligned by the screws I cut around it so as the rubber sits neatly in the hole.

The chrome section of the cover plate is larger than the rubber and will fit cleanly on the carpet and clamp it down.

And thankfully that is what happened.

Now time for the heater.

The bracket that the heater sits on had to be exposed, so a few careful cuts.

The heater bottom sits on the bracket and the top section is bolted onto the 2 bolts attached to the crossbar, the hoses have to be connected as the heater is raised into position on the bracket and this proved to be a bit of a problem but I managed it after a few attempts. The wiring plugged straight in and I gave it a test and it worked straight of on both speeds.

After fitting this I gave the foot well carpets a try out.

The last piece of carpet to go in was the cover for the fuel pipe, I have tie wrapped this in position for the moment and will figure out how it fits properly later.
Tomorrows job is to sort out all of the wiring for the center console and get that fitted, one problem I found when locating the console holes when fitting the carpet is that one of the threaded riv nuts is turning, not much I can do about it so I shall squirt some silicone in the hole and drill and tap another.

Another problem I realised I had caused was with the start button wiring, I had wired it to the Yellow/Black and Red which worked great except it should have been Yellow/black and Black. The problem was that the first way it was wired by-passed the start switch so in effect you did not need the key, you would not have any indicators but you would have a running engine, all changed now and you need two clicks to allow it to activate.

see ya Paul