Teh Official "Dude Where's My Forum?" Thread, Brought to you by the minds of Box, and her fiancée, Lorelei Options

[Box]

German cars. The cam follower had been replaced at one point since it wasn't a shattered mess but the coating was worn through and was dented in fairly badly. Thought that was the worst of it but I spun the motor a few times while he looked and the lobe is gouged some so the cam needs replaced. The fuel pump looks new though and from talking to one of the techs still at VW/Audi the cam is only $100 something their cost, so financially it's the cheapest fix but the biggest pain to replace. For now he's just throwing in the follower he bought and will replace it again and the cam when he does the timing. German engineering at its finest.

If the bulbs are a few years old and if you do a lot of night driving they're probably due for changing. I've noticed my brother's aren't as bright as they used to be after a few years, but they're cheap OPT7 stuff.

[Bitter]

Haha, the money pit begins!

Yea the bulbs are about a year old, 45W burns them up faster for sure, it could be bulbs but also I've been running the projectors at 45W for almost 3 years so I'm 90% sure the bowls are burning.

[Box]

Which I guess it could be worse had the follower shattered or the pump also needed replaced, so there's that I guess. I still want to know what the engineers were thinking on that one.

Hmmm, new bowls and bulbs and good as new eh? When I was looking I noticed there are 75W ballasts now and I'm like, I don't even...

[Bitter]

The chinese ballasts are rated on input, figure 80% efficiency, 75W is about 60W output which is just a bowl killer in a head light but can be used in a large bowl like a search light, flood or spot beam, etc. My F5 "50W" put out roughly 45W which is still a nice boost over 35W since the light output of a HID bulb ramps up on a curve with input power, 10W more is closer to a 50% increase in light output than the 30% power increase. So roughly 4500 lumen from a bulb vs roughly 3000 lumen, it's not a small bump and it's really noticable, downside is the decrease in bulb life and increased chance of burning the bowl, that can be mitigated with larger projectors that sink away more heat or even just adding heat sinks to the bowl itself, something I only speculate about and have yet to try but I think I will. Affix some copper or aluminum sinks on the top of the projector by filing down some flat spots and using something thermally conductive, I don't think the reflective bowl coating would tolerate aluminum brazing, to adhere them to it, that should keep the most likely areas to get heat damage cooler and prolong the bowl life. UV output also increases with visible light output and that too can damage the bowl over time, nothing much to do about that.

[Box]

Yeah I was like who the hell needs 75W for the street. I toyed with the idea of 50W had I gone with some HID setup but 100/80W of halogen seems to do the trick and I have no plans of doing any more.

[Box]

So I trimmed the dash cover to shape of just the dash pad, turned out fairly decent and looks the best it has since I decided it was a good idea to mess with the dash in the first place. I would leave it be but the grey reflects too much light and causes a glare, then again so did the factory grey which was a second reason in removing it and causing this whole mess. Since you can't dye polyester based materials like microsuede or microfiber without special dyes and boiling I had a thought, what if what I used to change the colour wasn't a dye or paint but a coating. So I grabbed a can of black Plasti-Dip and experimented with a scrap piece leftover from trimming and lo and behold if you do it just light enough it does a great job of changing the colour without making the microsuede feel hard and yucky, yes it feels different but unless you did a side by side none will be the wiser. Next time there's a clear and not windy day I'll do the actual piece and then I'll call it real until I have money and time to replace the entire dash. I'll have to get pictures once done.

[Bitter]

That sounds pretty cool.


Still waiting on my other shrouds from China, as eager as I am to get new projectors and headlights on the car I want to see what different shrouds look like on the car.

[Box]

I'm still surprised it worked as well as it did, came out to a nice charcoal/dark grey instead of black so that's an added bonus. I have that black flocked velvet but all the sewing stuff has been packed up and it was pitch black, at least this should match the rest of the interiour pretty well and still not throw glare. It doesn't look perfect like a new plastic piece would but it's better than nothing and was a fraction of the cost so meh...

More shrouds from Wang Gang?

[Bitter]

Might be from his cousin, Penis Party.

Tiguan shrouds and some aluminum ones with a rough finish.

Projectors
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Car-Styling...0608.0.0.xqxN99

Shrouds
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Tinguan-A-s...0608.0.0.xqxN99
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Aluminum-A-...0608.0.0.xqxN99
Duplicates of what I have now that I'm eh about, use them flipped upside down from how they go in a BMW.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2X-Small-ZK...0608.0.0.xqxN99

[Box]

I like how we have the same tastes in projector shrouds, I like the really basic and smooth kind too. To me the really busy looking ones are kind of gaudy.

[Bitter]

My choice is strictly what will fit. If I could do a busier one with some LED halos I probably would. Have them lit with parking lights and go off with low beams on.

[1994Celica]

Haven't been on here in awhile what have I missed? Also I'm sadly banned from driving again

[Box]

My brother bought an '06 Audi A4 Quattro 2.0T, so that's about it from my side of the woods. Oh and I changed out the speakers in the Firebird and put in Hella headlamps, but that's it off the top of my head. Banned? Medical reasons again?

In happier news the replacement dash pad turned out nicer than I thought it would, updating project thread now.

[1994Celica]

Nice! How are the lights?

And yes, I had another seizure and I'm now banned for another 3 months.

[Bitter]

Can you set the Celica up like a driver Ed car and drive from the rhd side like jdm style with a "driver" in the left seat? :lol:

Not driving my Celica would kill me slowly, it does every winter. I could get along ok not driving in the winter so long as I get to run the stereo.

This post has been edited by Bitter: Jan 25, 2017 - 1:11 PM

[Box]

Nice! How are the lights?

And yes, I had another seizure and I'm now banned for another 3 months.

They're great: http://www.6gc.net/forums/index.php?showto...6748&st=180 Half way down the page are some pictures. I can see really well with them, probably the best optics I've had in a car and better than most I've been in that I can think of. Tremendously better than the stock setup is an understatement, good bit better than the AutoPal lights as well.

That sucks... Three months seems kind of overkill, a month sure I can get that but three months?

Not driving my Celica would kill me slowly, it does every winter. I could get along ok not driving in the winter so long as I get to run the stereo.

The one upside to living in the south is I get to drive the Firebird year round, I feel sorry for those up north for not only that but the rust bull**** you have to contend with.

This post has been edited by Box: Jan 25, 2017 - 1:45 PM

[1994Celica]

It is killing me. I was really hoping to my celica out soon and use the beams more. I'm hoping I can sneak in some drives here in there but with my condition it's risky since I lose control of body and have no recollection of what happened during an episode. During this time though I'm going to try to swap my Subaru to rear discs since down time doesn't really matter.

Those lights look great by the way box! I really like them.

[Box]

That sounds terrible, hopefully they can figure out what's causing them and a put a stop to it. I know cannabinoid oil has helped some children with bad epileptic seizures where nothing else would, so maybe that's something to look into. Rear disc conversion, doesn't really sound fun at all. After I get moved and will have somewhere to do it semi-comfortably I need to put together a C5 Vette front brake kit myself for the Firebird, sure factory setup works on the street but I think at autocross and especially any HPDE they'll want to fail on me.

Thanks! Bitter talked me into getting them over the AutoPals I had or doing a bi-xenon HID conversion, good thing I respect his opinion. Which it's not an entirely fair comparison but honestly I see a lot better with my setup over my brother's Genesis with a H11 retrofit HID in halogen projectors and H1 mini HIDs, and he has it where both are on for low beam with high only triggering the H1 solenoids. Of course I'm also running 100/80W bulbs on a 12 AWG harness, but still that's just two "dinosaur" lamps versus that onslaught. He wants to redo his lights and I'm trying to talk him into doing an o.e.m and/or Morimoto D2S bi-xenon setup on both lights since he's insistent on dual projectors and not having the halogen H1 high beam, personally I'd run a D2S bi-xenon on the outside in conjunction with a relayed harnessed H1 halogen but I'm thrifty like that.

[Box]

I was underneath the car yesterday afternoon to clear out the A/C evaporator core drain and noticed the sway bar bushings had a sheen to them, so I started poking and smooshing them and sure enough they're either poly or a really hard rubber and same with the rear bushings. I also measured the front and rear bars and the front is 32mm and the rear is 21mm(stock Trans Am/Formula is 30mm and 19mm), so I guess when the previous owner changed the shocks out they must've done this as well. I guess that explains why it handles through corners as flat as it does and handles as well it does for otherwise stock suspension, I knew it handled better and felt firmer than my father's '96 Z28 for some reason(I knew shocks were part of it since his had DeCarbons, but surely that wasn't all of the equation) but now I know why.

[Bitter]

Bonus find!