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

[Bitter]

Those do look nice.

[Box]

W68 was the option code and from what I've found it started in 1997, W68 for '98-02 is easier to find of course but the sideskirts and rear splitters are the same so those might not be too hard to find but finding the '97 front splitters will be ungodly difficult. Guess one of those keep an eye out and wait programs.

[Bitter]

Sounds like most of my Celica 'rare and unique' parts. Either an off the wall idea that I made real or an uncommon, old, or discontinued part that I scooped for a good deal. Still love the story of my rear TRD tower brace. Seller on newcelica was insulted by my lowball offer, then I found one listed on ebay, sniped the auction and won for what I offered the guy on the forum. TURNS OUT IT WAS THE SAME GUY LOL. I bet he was pissed.

[Box]

That's just funny, he probably wasn't anywhere near as happy as you were.

[Bitter]

I said screw it, just tossed the projector in the one housing I had on hand, extruded the butyl into the headlight channel, heated it in the oven, put it on the car, need to go test drive. (Ok, so I did test fit and make sure the thing was pretty level I hope I think but I bet it moved or some ****). I was going to make a foreground limiter but forget it, once I put the old and new headlights side by side the comparison is just laughable, I need the new stuff to see, I don't know how I saw before, just goes to show how terrible headlights can be and you can still see mostly well enough to drive at night. The new projectors have some foreground but it's not as bad as the old ones and there's a big wide hot spot so I can see down range, which the old ones never ever have had. Also a heck of a high beam too!

I might tinker with the other projector during the week while I wait for the other housing to come in but I think I'll just run them as is without any foreground limiters, it'll be fine probably. Honestly they're probably bright enough with 35W....

And I've got 5000K, 4500K, 6500K, and a pair of used 85122+ 4300K bulbs to play with to see what color I like the best, right now I'm running the 5000K in both cause it settles down to a nice 4500Kish color, the 4300K Philips come down to 3800ish which is almost halogen and that's pretty neat actually. I might go back to that with the 4500K bulbs. The 6500K stay pretty cold even at 50W, but now that I have a hot spot and stuff I might find them usable.

[Bitter]

Wow so if my driver side headlight were to go out tomorrow I wouldn't even notice it.
I wish I had bothered to make the foreground limiter.
I wish I had ordered them with fresnel lenses.
With just ONE installed on the passenger side I can see better than with both old lights.
Not as wide as the Celica, that's for sure, but plenty bright at 45W, might drop to 35W with my Denso ballasts actually!


My other headlight comes in around Friday, good TYC housings are seeming to be in shorter supply now for the Mazda, the cheap ones have poor lenses and poor adjusters on them. I'm kind of sad I wrecked the one trying all that time to get the Mini D2S 3.0 to fit.

[Box]

Unless you're me and even decent headlights aren't good enough to really see with, I need stadium lights in order to see ok. Since you can see better downrange now you may not need to add more lights perhaps.

I like colour temperatures around 3,800-5,000K myself, if I ever did HIDs something like the Philips 4300K or OSRAM 4200K would probably be perfect for me. It seems like if the the light is too white/bluish I don't see well with it at all for some reason. I'm actually really happy with the colour of the 100/80W halogen, I'd say it's somewhere in the 3,500-3,800K range without actually sitting down and trying to scale it.

[Box]

So because I like to think about things like this a Buick/Rover V8 only weighs a little over 300 pounds. Which the standard is 4 litres but I know TVR had versions that were 5 litres and pushed 340 horsepower and 350 ft lbs of torque, pretty impressive really. Backed by a T-5 you'd have an entire drivetrain under 400 pounds, take and put that into a FC RX-7 now that'd be a hell of a car. Honestly that gets me more excited than a LS swap, the Rover V8 actually weighs a little less than even the non turbo rotary and transmissions are pretty equal as well so there'd be no weight gain. Probably about as close to an ideal car as it gets for me; small and light with good balance, RWD with a V8 and manual, and double wishbone suspension front and rear. This is partially why I never get sleep, I lay down and then I start thinking about crap like this for no reason.

[Bitter]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTddu0rE6gs

[Box]

Guess that's the old vs the new? A lot better.

Vinyl arrived today, so will take care of the dash ASAP as I'm beyond tired of looking at it. At this rate it'll look like "because racecar/no fks given" with the black microsuede but I really don't care, tired of the cracking and the glare. What's sad is the bottom and sides of the dash are still really nice and soft, so you can tell at point it was fairly nice but it's gone from nice soft vinyl to hard brittle plastic.

This post has been edited by Box: Feb 7, 2017 - 12:33 AM

[Bitter]

Scared to sneeze in the car for fear of the dash exploding?


Yea, old and new. How I saw at night I have no idea. I can see better with just the one head light now than I ever did with both, I can't wait for the 2nd housing to come in. If getting rotation right wasn't tricky I'd throw it in the hazed up one till then but I don't want to muck about twice.

[Box]

The dash really is the biggest frustration to the car, there is no perfect or ideal solution unless you can make one from scratch so I try not to let it aggravate me too much. That's ok the 240SX, 944, and RX-7 I was also considering also have crappy dashes so it's not alone, the 300ZX doesn't have problems with the dash but it's even harder to find them without T-tops and finding a SC300 with a manual is almost as hard. So meh, just part of it I guess.

Yeah those old ones do seem pretty dim, especially compared to the new ones.

[Bitter]

I banged out the driver side thursday night, projector rotation is off slightly of course, but I'm not sure which of the two is straight and it's such a slight amount that I'm not going to bother fixing it....until I do bother. What I do need to do is to clean up the mess of wiring and **** and mount the ballasts correctly and all that jazz.

[Box]

That's the part of doing a projector conversion that'd drive me insane, I'd have to get everything perfectly leveled.

My brother is looking to convert the Audi soon, surprise surprise. Trying to talk him into a D2S setup instead of the mini H1.

[Bitter]

Mini H1 suuuuucccckkkkkk and you're stuck with ****-tacular rebased bulbs that never ever sit right and you always gotta spend an hour shimming each one each time you take it out. D2S is much better, the bulbs ALWAYS sit right, OEM bulbs are amazingly good, and you can use super fast off the shelf OEM ballasts like the Hella G3 which can be boosted to a true 55W output for blinding amounts of light. Even my 45W F5 ballasts crank out some impressive light, a solid +50% lumens over a Denso 35W ballast, a good 4500 lumen per bulb, 9000 lumen high beams anyone? Ok probably not 9000 due to losses through lenses and surfaces but it's still really impressive at night on the high beam. I need to adjust my lateral aim on the pass side a little bit and also on the driver side. I wasn't sure I liked the \_/ dip in the cutoff but I do like it now, it lets me run them a little higher without glaring oncoming traffic or mirrors ahead of me. I may need to trim the 98 bumper to let me aim the light laterally more, I've got an 00 bumper to match the rest of the front lights in the basement but its silver at the moment, I think I'll get it painted and put on this year as well as the rust on the leading edge of the hood repaired.

[Box]

That's what I keep trying to tell him, yeah it's more work and a little more money but it's way better in terms of output and quality. Plus you know O.E. stuff will hardly ever give you problems.

Because no fks given/racecar:


I actually had the crack hidden pretty well, but when I went over it all with the heat gun to set the adhesive it relaxed some so you can see it somewhat. Oh well, it all looks like crap anyway. Someday I'll find a replacement dash and modify it extensively so this crap doesn't happen again, but until then this is better I guess. What's sad is it's overcast and you can see how much the freaking dash glares, at least windshield glare is nonexistent now.

[Bitter]

That looks really good.

[Box]

Thanks, yeah it actually turned out pretty ok. Better than I thought it would anyway. Really at this point if I could just find a good replacement cap and then flock it to match I think I'd be happy enough to not want to bother replacing the entire dash. Only problem there is finding a good one, removing it, flocking it, putting it into the car, and doing all that without it cracking... Would do the same vinyl for a perfect match but it only comes in 52" wide sections instead of the usual 60" so it's not wide enough to use, which is why I didn't run a piece of vinyl all the way across and stopped where I did.

This post has been edited by Box: Feb 11, 2017 - 6:48 PM

[Bitter]

Now I kind want to flock the Celica dash and pillars...but I don't want to take the dash out of the car and I don't have any 'defined' areas to stop the flock at like you do. It's all one big continuous chunk of textured gray plastic, if I had a clean line it would be easy, just stop there. I can't just make a line without it looking terrible, you lucky duck.

[Box]

At least your dash isn't notorious for cracking as far as I know. Though they are a fairly shiny grey plastic too, so I could see where glare could be an issue as well. A shiny black dash is bad enough, but a shiny grey or beige/tan is just ungodly. I thought about doing the top of the passenger side as well, in retrospect 52" is more than enough to make it to the airbag where I'd have to trim it anyway and then the airbag and the rest of the dash to the side would be separate pieces. Though I kind of like how it's done at the moment as well.