Koji Project 1: Death to Smurfy

[koji]

8:15PM: I start by painting the deadliner and the back mat. Typically you want to clean off things like this with a vaccume first, then use a lint roller (which i have done).

Unfortunately these two bits need a lot more paint to look uniform than I had planned on. It basically took four coats of duplicolor vinyl and fabric paint to get them looking right. That's two coats more than it took when I did the same thing on my Subaru.



8:40PM: I'm finally done with the headliner and back mat. I start cleaning the carpets.

9PM: The carpets are clean and I literally nail them to the wall and start painting.



9:40PM: God this blue crap takes a lot of paint to cover up. It took both of the cans of fabric paint I had left to cover them up and I still need to respray about 1/4 of the passengers side carpet.



It turned out well though - the color is right. Keep in mind I used a flash on the next photo.



I'm going to buy two more cans of paint tonight and finish the carpet, then get to these pieces:



10PM: Alex and Roy both took off a few minutes ago. I want to do one more thing before I call it quits so I clean up the metal mounting bracket of the center column piece. It was rusted. This probably isn't necessary to fix, but there isn't going to be a better time than the present.

10:15PM: I have the piece cleaned up with a wire brush and some rust solvent and sprayed with some heavy duty rustoleum protection paint. I call it a night and crash.

[Maruki-kun]

you should have bleached the carpet first, lol

[koji]

Quick non-timed update. I was in a crappy mood yesterday for a number of reasons and I didn't keep track of my time. I did get a couple of things finished/started however.

1. Painted a bunch of the interior plastics. The ones seen in this picture will require one more coat.



2. Organized everything that's ready for installation.



3. Made some spacers/brackets for the rear speakers. I'm putting a couple of Kenwood 4" in these spaces and the magnets were hitting a small portion of the outer skin of the car.

Basically I made a template out of carboard and checked the fitment, then cut out these (larger than required) out of a piece of MDF I had laying around (which used to be my college dining room table). To be clear I'm not sure if this stuff is truely MDF, but it's solid as hell and very heavy for it's size unlike the crap that Ikea furniture is made out of.



I then cutout the hole for the speaker, and drilled the holes for the bolts. I recessed the bolt holes because the piece is about 3/4" thick.



I then re-checked for fitment and cut them to size. I'll work at actually installing the speakers at some point later on today.



More to come!

[sabing]

Thats definitely not MDF haha, thats some kind of wood. keep the updates coming, gives me ideas for interior mods, great thread

[Rexify]

Cool. I've seen you on nasioc. I've owned my WRX for 5 years and it is still my daily. I had a project 240sx that I finished after 7 years and dumped 13k into and traded for an sw20. Sw20 is a great project car. Have fun and cant wait to see some more diy.

[koji]

Quick update. Last night I had to help Alex and my dad with their cars so I didn't get a ton of MR2 time. I did get a few things knocked out though:

The new deck is wired in and works:


The rear speakers are in:


The door skins are off. I've got to say, these were pretty easy relative to other cars that I've worked on because there are only a couple of screws and other than that it all pops off as one piece.



The OEM speakers are out. Once again I'll need a spacer because the speaker is hitting the outer door skin.



I also cut out the stupid looking OEM speaker holes. I'm going to use the covers for the speaker and fab up something because these just looked terrible. I'm going to do the same thing on the doors too.



Other than that Alex was good enough to respray all the interior bits. They look much better. The kid is t3H M@$tA of rattle cans. I suck with them and have no desire to spend time getting better.

Today I'm going to try and install the front speakers and finish painting the rest of the interior plastics. Maybe pull the dash and steering wheel too. Not sure yet - we'll see how things go once I get started.

More to come!

[koji]

The wife and son took a nap, and the Seahawks sucked yet again so I finished the installing the speakers today. It sounds awesome. I was sitting the car with the t-tops off contemplating rolling around on a hot summers day and decided I should reconsider not using a sub. I'm going to look through threads here and hit crutchfield and see what I could get.

[mr2v63vz]

Subscribed
great work i love how tedious everything is and absolutley love the shift boot/knob!

[Butters]

look great! im using a 8 inch sub behind the drivers seat that sounds pretty good

[Maruki-kun]

Originally Posted by koji

The wife and son took a nap, and the Seahawks sucked yet again so I finished the installing the speakers today. It sounds awesome. I was sitting the car with the t-tops off contemplating rolling around on a hot summers day and decided I should reconsider not using a sub. I'm going to look through threads here and hit crutchfield and see what I could get.

if you want help with sub choices, sub placement, box design, and or tuning:

Yours truly:

[koji]

Yeah that'd be appreciated actually. Like I said, I'm no audiophile and I know jack about car stereo's other than how to do the wiring. Basically I just want cheap with more sound. The deck I bought is a JVC KD-S100 Bongiovi and the speakers are Kendwood 3 ways. Together everything cost $225 shipped so use that as a guide when recommending components.

I was thinking a sub box in place of or inside of the compartment behind the passengers seat would be pretty cool.

I've got the fiberglass skills to pull off basically any shape sub box you could come up with. I'm more worried about not taking up too much space or adding a ton of weight than having massive chest pounding thump.

[Maruki-kun]

do you have any form of IM?

[IDon'tKnow]

Welcome indeed Koji. I've got a blue headliner pulled from my parts car which is replacing the gray headliner on my good car (AW11). I don't much care for the dark blue color, I just want something darker. I had considered painting it black but was hesitant - not sure about what the coverage would look like ect.... Seeing it look so plush on your headliner has eliminated my reservations against it.

Thanks for the detailed write up. I'm sure having you around is going to be a great motivator to those of us around here who have goals similar to yours.

[koji]

Originally Posted by Ku-sama

do you have any form of IM?

Yeah, I'll shoot you a PM with the email address/format.

[koji]

Got the dash pulled (Alex did most of the work). The interior is basically just an empty shell at this point.



Awesome.

I spent most of my time tonight getting the basement organized. We've got the cool/popular kids on the right side (stuff that's ready to go back in):



And the ugly/geeky kids on the left (stuff that still needs to get worked on):



Basically every night till I'm done I'm going to try and move at least one thing over from the left side to the right.

To that end I started on the center console bits. I filled in the hole from the LED on the shifter surround bit. on the vent bit, there was a recessed piece that I assume was for a sticker or an option I don't have. Since there didn't appear to be any point to it I filled it in as well:



If you're curious, the right way to do this is with bumper repair filler. Regular body filler won't stick to plastic permanently.

That's it for tonight. Now that the entire interior is out I should be able to concentrate more on actually making things which is the part of this process that I enjoy most.

More to come!

P.S. I can't leave well enough alone, so I pulled the emblems off the front/back of the car and the rear wing. Looks like I'll be doing the exterior for my next project.

[mr2magic]

Originally Posted by koji

Yeah, I'll shoot you a PM with the email address/format.

Hey guys, please don't start taking things off forum The info about what subs etc. could be useful for everyone and would be an integral part of the write-up!

[koji]

Good point. We didn't finish our IM conversation anyway as my boss called and then I had to go pick up my kid.

The following is in no way a cap on Ku-sama. This is me just explaining me since you guys haven't seen enough of my threads to know how I work.

There is a fundamental problem with trying to give me advice about car audio and setup an optimal system: I don't care. I also don't care that I don't care. I decided about 15 years ago (remember, I'm over 30) that car audio, and actually audio setups in general, was something I didn't give a crap about learning more about. If there ever comes a time when I want a theatre quality in-home setup I'll hire someone else to do it for me.

Here is the advice I actually want:

1. What brands of amps/subs are cheap and decent? Keep in mind that by cheap I spent $225 on a deck and speakers so far so I'm not spending $200 on an amp. I want no larger than a 8-10" sub.

2. What size amp do I really need to power a speaker that size? Does it depend on size only or are there other variables? Underpowering a sub is a bad idea I know, but I'm absolutely not getting an amp the size of a cookie sheet. I want the smallest setup I can get as I'm obsessed with weight.

Beyond "buy this brand amp/sub as they're cheap and decent" and "build a sub with this shape to fit into the storage box" there isn't a point to trying trying to get me to do something in this particular area.

[sabing]

MTX has some cheap and decent stuff

MTX - 200W Class AB Bridgeable 2-Channel Amplifier with Variable Crossovers - TC2002

MTX - Terminator 10" Single-Voice-Coil 4-Ohm Subwoofer with Enclosure - TN10-04

As far as the sub box goes, you seem handy enough so if you want you could build a box fairly easily to fit into the storage box, or you could buy a slim truck box to just set in there

[Maruki-kun]

oh my jesus, please don't buy those.

[sabing]

Originally Posted by Ku-sama

oh my jesus, please don't buy those.

He said in his last post how he "wasn't going to spend 200 on an amp" he doesnt need something super expensive.. they arent great but at least they arent no name