Posts tagged interior

opelstick2

Astra: Opel dash

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10 months ago
by Mike Oldfield in

Over the weekend, the car had a little accident with a fence.. I won’t go into the details, but the ESP light kept coming on, going crazy and then staying on permanently. Took it to a mate Dan who checked the codes and reset the light using OPCOM and all seemed well, apart from the angle of one of the wheels was showing as being slightly off so needed the tracking to be done.

Took it into a garage to get the tracking looked at… and in the exact words of the mechanic, “Your front tyres are shagged and the anti-roll bar links are fucked… so there’s no point in me doing the tracking…” So £300 later, all sorted and that annoying rattling noise I’ve had for a while is gone :D

But anyway… Minor mod today. I ordered myself from eBay a few Opel bits to start my collection ready for when I get started on my Opel conversion… First bit arrived today, which was a set of 2 Opel decals to go on the bottom of the front door B-pillars. These will wait until I sort out at least the front grille, and I’m also considering carbon wrapping the door pillars as the current matt black vinyl could do with replacing… So I’ll wait unitl I do that as well…

Nicely though, they sent me 3 instead of 2… :D

So I thought I’d use the third one for my dash. Annoyingly though, I lined up the paper and made sure it was all straight, then stuck it down. I didn’t notice that the sticker wasn’t straight on the paper, so it’s not quite straight :lol:

So it might stay, it might not. Depends how much the lopsidedness annoys me :lol:

pbs3

Astra: Piano Black Steering Wheel complete

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11 months ago
by Mike Oldfield in

I’ve finally got around to finishing off the piano black conversion on the steering wheel :) Nothing major, but I’ve had the steering wheel controls fitted for a while, but still had the silver blank at the bottom:

Bought the steering wheel spoke from another member on Astra Owners Network :) And here is the two bits side by side for a comparison:

And then fitted :)

If you’re quite eagle-eyed though, you might noticed that it isn’t quite straight…

The geniuses that work at GM designing things like the steering wheel clearly had nothing better to do one day, so they decided to change the back of it. There was nothing wrong that I can see with the way the original one fitted, but for some reason they’ve turned one of the lugs upside-down and just got rid of the other lug completely :sus:

I’ve had a bit of a hack at the foam behind it to try and get it to fit though, and it seemed to start going the other way… but I’ve left it overnight as I got pissed off and gave up trying, and it appears to have settled and is now perfectly straight… so I’m not touching it :lol:

Now all that is left to do is the piano black heater controls (Y)

usbsocket3

Astra: Coin tray USB socket fitted

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11 months ago
by Mike Oldfield in

I’ve been thinking for a while about fitting a USB socket into the coin tray of the Astra for a while, as at the moment, I’ve just got a USB extension cable coming out the back of my Eonon head unit and going into the glovebox… This is all good and well, but it’s just a pain to go into the glovebox every time I want to plug-in or un-plug something…

I popped into Maplins on the way home from work and picked up one of these: http://www.maplin.co.uk/usb-panel-mount-socket-219901

Once I unpacked it though, I realised it was too big to fit. Underneath the rubber mat in the coin tray are two pre-cut holes. I assume they were for some option that was not fitted as standard. Smokers pack ash tray, maybe? Either way, it was far too fat to fit… so I had to have a play to work out the best way of fitting it. After a while, I realised the mountable outer casing unscrewed and it was reversible… so I had a bit more of a play around and managed to file some small indents into the tray that allowed the screws to fit through, and mount the tray with the mountable casing underneath:

I then, badly, took the rubber mat and cut a hole in it that was roughly the same size as the USB socket so that you can just see the USB socket poking through. I opted to use a pair of scissors to do this as it was the nearest “suitable” thing near by and it didn’t quite go to plan, but to be honest, you don’t really see it when it’s in the car :)

tfsclean7

Clean for The Fast Show 2011

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1 year ago
by Mike Oldfield in

Well, with TFS on Sunday, I thought it was about time I gave the car a clean… so I popped over to Halfords to get some supplies…

So this was the state of the car at 11am this morning:

Hoovered the interior and cleaned all the dash and plastics with some Autoglym Vinyl & Rubber Care:

I then stopped taking photos and got to work. I also did my Mum’s car at the same time…

First up, rinsed it all down with a pressure washer.
Then cleaned the wheels with some Wonder Wheels (It’s all I had, and couldn’t justify buying some new wheel cleaner when I already had some :lol: )
Washed the car with some Autoglym Bodywork Shampoo Conditioner, two bucket method.
Dried using a waffle weave towel and some Demon Shine as a drying agent.
Cleaned the glass using some generic supermarket glass cleaner.
Polished the glass with some Autoglym Car Glass Polish.
Sealed the wheels using some Autoglym Alloy Wheel Seal.
Dressed the tyres with some Meguiars Gold Class Endurance Tyre Gel.
Dressed the plastics and vinyl B-pillars with Autoglym Vinyl & Rubber Care.
Polished using a machine buffer and Autoglym Ultra Deep Shine.

That got me to this stage, where I got the wax out :cool:

Once I waxed everything, I re-dressed the plastics and vinyl B-pillars as I got some polish/wax on them which wouldn’t come off… But here’s the file results :)

So 7 and a half hours work, and the results speak for themselves :D  My first time using that Autoglym HD wax… and first time using a non-liquid based wax as well… and I’ve got to say I was impressed. Smelt quite nice, spread really nicely once I got used to it. And the pot looks barely touched after I’d done the whole car, and I think I used it too thickly… so it’ll definitely last a long time :)  I was getting put off by the £45 price tag, but I would say that’s well worth it now I’ve actually used it :)

aux1

I got bored and took a drill to the car…

0
1 year ago
by Mike Oldfield in

:shifty:

It just fell apart on it’s own. Honest :couch:

Not the neatest job I’ve done, but I’m happy with it. A nice home-made aux-in port for my Eonon head unit. Rather than having a cable trailing into the glovebox, I thought I’d have a port like the higher spec facelift models by the handbrake, so I made this :)

eonon14

Some new Eonon pics

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1 year ago
by Mike Oldfield in

Well here are some daylight pictures and a little video I took… and yes, in the video, I did try to demonstrate the AUX-IN feature, forgetting that I don’t have anything plugged into the AUX-IN :lol:

 

eonon5

Fitted by Eonon D5108E headunit

0
1 year ago
by Mike Oldfield in

Thanks very much Eonon :wave:

I bought myself a D5108E in the group buy from Eonon on Friday and it got delivered today  I was so excited that I tried to fit it on my lunch break, so rushed to Halfords and bought some radio removal keys, then went about slicing my finger open on the packaging for the removal keys, getting blood everywhere, breaking what used to be the antenna socket on my CD30 (plug is still OK which is the main thing) and forgetting to take a screwdriver with me to take off the delivery plates… :lol:  So that lunch break was very productive… took the CD30 out, broke it, and put it back in :lol:

At the end of the day, I remembered to pick up the screwdriver off my desk and went straight out to the car to fit it. A colleague timed me as taking onto 28 minutes to fit it completely :D  I just need to drill in my new aux-in port :D

Had a play with it on the way home, and the sat nav isn’t bad, but it could do with a lot of improvement… so I’ve been spending the evening trying to change the sat nav software… TomTom was in Brazilian, so I didn’t know what I was pressing and it closed itself… and iGo gives me a memory error :(  So I’m about to put Sygic back on it for now and I’ll have another play tomorrow…

So, here are some pics :D  I’d heard the colour match on the piano black wasn’t perfect… and I’ll be honest, you can really tell in these pictures… but I only noticed it when I took these pictures, I couldn’t really tell when I fitted it or when I was playing with it. It looks fine to my eyes, and I’ve got pretty good eyes :D

I’m quite happy with it so far :D  I might make a little video of it in action at the weekend :)

Cheers,
Mike :salute:

pb3

Piano Black Dash pt. 3

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1 year ago
by Mike Oldfield in

Ok, I’ve had a bit of fun with the steering wheel controls. I found a nice precision torx driver set in Maplins for a tenner, so I went and bought that, took the silver steering controls off and went inside to try and swap the boards over… and to my luck, guess what?! The silver ones and the piano black ones are completely different! :'(

But you all know me by now. I’m one of the most impatient people around, so regardless of the orange SMDs, I fitted the piano black ones anyway :lol: I’ll just get Adam (Stampede) to re-convert them for me when he’s next down this way. I need to get him to fix my light controls and re-do my window switches anyway, so might as well get it all done together :shrug:

So here’s a nice picture of them fitted. I just need to source a mid-spoke, which I nearly won on eBay, but it sold for more than I wanted to pay :(

On another note, why do I have a sudden obsession with a couple of Katy Perry songs? :yippee:

smd3

Preparing for Trax ’10, pt. 2

0
1 year ago
by Mike Oldfield in

Big thanks to Adam (Stampede) today for sorting out an awesome SMD conversion for me while he was down this way, and a big thanks to Ash (Phatashki) for letting me come over his way to have the conversion done with his (Y)

I’ve seen so many people say that they’ve had an SMD conversion done, taken photos and said the photos don’t do it justice, but I’ve been sat there thinking “That looks great, how can it be any better?”

I now understand how, as what Adam does is truly awesome and completely transforms the interior (Y)

As we all know, this is the lovely dull interior we all know and love…

Here’s Adam hard at work :lol:

And here’s the result :D

This definitely has to be one of the best mods. I love how much better and brighter it is, and I’ve had trouble driving home this evening, as I can’t stop looking at it rather than the road :lol: I’m glad I went for a mixture of blue and white, rather than just blue though. I think all blue would have been a bit much. :)

The pics I’ve got aren’t great, but when it’s more dusk-ish tomorrow, I’ll grab some better, clearer photos (Y)

A great job well done by a top bloke. Cheers Adam (Y)

silver

Interior Modding

0
1 year ago
by Mike Oldfield in

I decided to a little bit more interior modding on the Astra. I started off with the interior door handles. Irmscher do a set of handlesin brushed aluminium, but they’re very expensive for what they are. I also decided to be a bit different…

This is what the door handles looked like before:

So I prised all 4 off:

Lightly sanded & primed:

Then sprayed moonland to match the bodywork:

And fitted back on the door cards:

I thought these would make a nice change from the all so common star silver people spray them, but unfortunately, I didn’t like them. As you can see, they don’t really stand out that much and these pictures make them look better than they actually were… so I jumped on the bandwagon and redid them silver:

They look much better now!

While I was doing all this, I made a start on what I’m going to call, project Piano Black. I’m planning on getting a complete piano black centre console & steering wheel control setup over time & Sam W on Astra Owners Network happened to be selling just that. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford most of it at the same time, but I did buy his gear surround & 12v socket… so I got to work fitting that.

Before:

During:

Fitted:

I’m really happy with it even with the rest of the silver. Adds a really nice touch to the interior. Hoping to get the centre console, heater controls & a new stereo soon :)

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