Vtecmec's 4th Gen

[h10ndr]

[bb1boy]

Ridiculous. I love it

[prahunt]

That's impressive work.

You had a chance to test those brakes out yet? I was looking at the same set for mine. Seem like a good balance on price/quality.

[Vtecmec]

The brakes are working well, I have no complaints. Better than the Mintex that they replaced.

[Drax]

top work on those seats matey!! fair play to you

[Vtecmec]

Onto the more pleasurable side of things on the car.

Firstly I gave it a mini service, after 4k on the road I though it time for an oil change, but have decided to go with a heavier oil than usual, the weather is getting warmer anyway and I’ve been going through a litre/1000 miles, not sure if it is rings or PCV related but we’ll see what this does.



I also swapped out the spark plugs for the recommended.



Rather than what was in there (although they appear to be in a healthy condition).



My spark plug cover had a little paint bubbling thing going on, so I flatted it back and painted it black (because it was all I had to hand).



Now that’s done I turned my attention to the audio.

So I bought some decent component front speakers, nowhere near top of the line but good enough for me in a car.



Speaker rings were required for the larger mid bass speakers in the doors, but they were easy enough to mockup.



I then removed the amplifier from the boot of the car and relocated it to under the drivers seat (it’s not like any rear passengers are going to be wanting to stick their feet under there).

Whilst doing this I wired new power lines and good quality speaker wire.

So now I have decent speakers I wanted a decent headunit to power it all. I’ve always wanted a touch screen device with SatNav and other bells and whistles, but the decent branded units are always more money than I would like to spend on such an item.

So looking around on the bay I had spotted many unbranded (Chinese/polish) units for less than 100 notes, but quickly dismissed this route as the last unbranded unit I bought sounded like a bag of cats being tortured. So I started looking at second hand known brand stuff. Being a guy who loved fixing broken things I then turned to units in need of repair. It could save me some money as well as satisfying my need to tinker with something. Then I came across a Kenwood DXX-4023BT double-din touch screen unit, advertised as a ‘customer return’ but unknown if working as they had no way to test it (yeah right!). Anyway I took a punt and £62 later won the auction.

I was attracted to this unit as it has 6 RCA outs (2 of subs), Bluetooth hands free and SatNav (sort of anyway).

So it arrived in near mint condition, and I plugged it in, and to my joy the splash logo appeared, so in with a CD and out blasted the music, sweet. Then I went to eject the CD and nothing, tried changing the volume and nothing, in fact none of the front buttons worked at all. OK, so that’s the fault. So I removed four screws and took the front panel off, and low and behold there was an obvious ribbon cable unplugged, so I put it back and stuck it back into the car and huzzah, it was fully functional.



The only problem now was that the Bluetooth needs a Kenwood dongle to be functional, someone had swiped the one that came with this, I could not understand why until I went to get a replacement, they go for £40+ second hand, or £70 new. drokk that. Unfortunately, other info on the net had shown that 3rd party dongles had been tried and do not work. So I did some googleing and on a random Ubuntu dongle compatibility site discovered that the dongle reads as manufactured by CSR. So I took a punt and bought a CSR dongle for 4 pounds, plugged it in and again, huzzah it worked. A bit of research can go a long way sometimes.

Last bit of it now was the SatNav, which is really like a (controllable) pass through system for iPhone 4’s with Garmin’s software installed. Of course I don’t own an iPhone 4; that would be too simple. That is until I bid £25 for a broken one on ebay (again, I like to fiddle), which had a faulty screen and was smashed to glory. So I ordered some replacement bits for a grand total of £20 and spent 3 hours messing around with the impossibly intricate innards of the phone. Fortunately I managed to get it into one piece again and fully working. A bit of jailbreaking and torrent downloading later and I’m all SatNav’d up.

I’ve also picked up a second amplifier for the rear of the car (but not fitted), which I intend to drive sub frequencies with, though I don’t have any subs yet so probably use it to drive the rear speakers and see how that goes.



I’ve also decided that the ride is a little too harsh for me, so I have ordered some replacement springs that are a little higher and softer that the current ones, but they have yet to arrive…….

[Gayno]

spent 3 hours messing around with the impossibly intricate innards of the phone

the iPhone4 was awful.

the 5 was redesigned and only takes 5 screws to swap the screen panel

[wurlycorner]

Focal components ftw
where did you get them from btw?

[simonc]

I have just spent a good hour and a half reading through this. Abso-bloody-lutely brilliant. Bloody hell @Vtechmec I wish I had 2% of your talent then I could do some of the dirty stuff on my car. It's been a fascinating and educational read. Good for you matey.
ps, fancy a trip out East to weave some of your mechanical magic on the Blue Beauty?

[Vtecmec]

Thanks for the comments.

where did you get them from btw?

Amazon.