Edsers 1996 GT Project, Car still in hibernation years later! Options

[Edser]

My names Ed, and I live in Barcelona, Spain. I am from the Republic of Ireland. I've been living here for 13 years. In that time I've had a number of cars.

First one I got a year after arrival was a '93 Prelude 2.2 vtec. After that I got a '00 BMW 318ci. I sold that to get back into university.
So now I've got this 1996 GT. Its covered in dents and scrapes. Pretty tired looking. I want to make it look like new, improve it where I can and try to keep it as standard as possible. I'll be painting it black, and keeping the wheels as they are, just tarting them up a bit.
All of this depends on my finances of course, so it'll be a slow process. Patience will be required. Lots of patience.



















This post has been edited by Edser: Jul 21, 2022 - 5:58 PM

[Edser]

To make the center of your steering wheel less shiny, hit it with dishwashing soap and water in a spray bottle about 5 times and dry with a paper towel between each wash, it'll dry it out the leather a lot (if it is leather... I'm not too sure, but its worked on other leather products I've done before. I did it to dull out leather of different ages and wear, and then you condition afterward at one time so the finish color, texture, and sheen is all the same If the center isn't leather, I'm not sure if it'll work

No it's plastic, thanks anyway. I'm not sure if they cover those things with leather. I may try sanding the airbag with some micro fine sand paper sponge stuff, I think it's like a 1200 grade or so. That should make the plastic more matt. I'll test it on the old wheel as that's going in the bin anyway.

The tweeters can be spliced into your door speakers.

Hurrah!! This is great news!!! Thanks for that! Do you connect them directly into the + and - of the door speaker right? This will be very easy to do. I will be changing the speakers too at some stage. I discovered that one has been replaced already. Some time ago by the look of it too (its cheap looking and filthy).



Some more stuff arrived by post today. A nice chromed keyring and some carpet logos. The logos seem to be an aluminium alloy, so and quite soft and prone to scratches, so I dunno how long they'll last. I guess a careful sanding with make them look new again when they become old and tarnished. I don't have any carpets yet, so that's a future problem. My girlfriend refused to drive the car with the old ones in, so I had to remove them.


So today the news is that I fitted the 7th gen wheel.


I had a few problems installing it, amateurish stuff really. Couldn't get one of the airbag screws out of the old wheel. One came out fine with a flat screwdriver, the other bent the head of the screw driver. So I "borrowed" some heads from work. Those odd star shaped ones. Yeh, the medium sized one fitted and with a bit of elbow grease that stubborn screw came out. Then the airbag still didn't want to come off, until I completely removed the screws from the wheel.

The wheel came off easily using a tire iron and then a wheel puller I got from Ebay. I knew the size was a metric 19 or something (and there was no way a spanner could get the angle to get purchase on the nut) so I got a tire iron and it fitted the wheel nut. JOY! Off came the nut. The puller I had got was good too, it got tight and then just went "glock" and the wheel popped off. Nice.

The colour of the wires on the new airbag and the column matched (yellow and blue) so I soldered in the new connector to the old column wires and insulated the wires carefully. I then hooked up the horn connector too.
Once the battery was re-connected there was no explosion (I started the engine too) or SRS light (fortunately).



The photos are a bit crap to be honest, 'cos my car is underground and they don't believe in electricity there. So I tried different ways of lighting to get some photos. I'll try and get some in daylight, 'cos who doesn't enjoy a good photo right? The cars a mess inside I know, I'll be doing a bit of a tidy tomorrow as I still have to install the 2DIN. I have already made some brackets, just gotta make them fit right.