Took the time on Saturday to check the air pressure on the XFire and my other vehicles. As expected, all were low; some considerably low. Fired up the compressor and corrected all the tires. Went to within a couple of pounds on all tires, as it is expected to return to the mid-to-upper 50s late next week. All the tires should be okay then. This is routine maintenance I perform every 45 days on all my vehicles.

 

Picked up a fixed wing for my roadster
The sale images showed it in pristine condition (I suppose images always do) upon inspection I noticed that both uprights have cracks.

I have formulated a repair plan.

If anyone had successfully completed a repair, I would luv to hear about it and see pics.

I will be documenting the repair and post once completed

 

Today I started converting my fog lights to LED. I did not want to do it in a way that would blind others (like what I see most people on the road do) so I decided to add projector lights. I was able to find a pair of projector lenses that fit almost fit perfectly into the original fog light frame with little modification. I am only waiting on two brackets to finish printing for the horizontal adjustment and a 4 inch diameter piece of heat shrink (of amazon) to help keep the weather away from between the lens and the LED light. The two extra wires are for a solenoid that opens up and allows more light to pass through, I am still debating if I want to hook this up or not.




Although it sticks out a lot further than the original light, it is still small enough to fit without any issues. The heatsink with the fan on the back is for the LED. The metal projector lense also helps with the heat.



The above picture is with the solenoid closed (its default state)



This picture is with the solenoid open to allow more light out.

This pictures may appear slightly blurry because the light is so bright.
I will be sure to take pictures after they are installed and aligned so you can see the difference

 

That has been mentioned before, only on the roadsters.

 

Spent parts of the last three days replacing the heater blower motor on my S-10 pickemup and replacing the crankshaft and cam position sensors on both the SRT and the N/A roadster. May not be a huge accomplishment for most of you wrenches but it is for me. Info gleaned from this forum was invaluable (well....not for the S-10)! Thanks all!!

 

I didn't realize that LED's need heat sinks. I have them in a lot of stuff with no heat sinks involved. Now if these are halogen that is another thing?

 

I do not look upon those sensors as wear items and when replacing them you might put in a part that fails earlier than the one you took out would have. The connectors getting dirty may be a possible cause of failure, so a cleaning might be in order.
Replacing them with parts that are not Bosch parts often leads to early failure and not recommended as the terminals are thinner it seems and do not make good contact with the harness socket.
I think I am repeating the general opinion on these parts.

 

I did use Bosch (learned that here) all around with a lifetime guarantee from FCP Euro. May not make a difference....they may even fail, but I'll worry less out on long roadies with new parts than wondering if I'm going to be stuck on the side of the road out in the sticks somewhere working on it. I did save the old parts just in case of new part failure....but can't imagine just doing a roadside repair. So my happy orb is still intact.

 

I am plugging away doing a test install of my new 2xDIN radio. It has been cold here and the temperature in my garage is just above freezing so I am doing it in small steps.Laziness is also a contributing factor to the slow speed. I am putting in the extended wires at the moment. It is a bit warmer today so I can do a little more than usual.

 

Slow & Steady typically gives the best results. I'm looking forward to see the final result of your effort.

 

I should have a picture of it in a few days without it all being repainted.
The paint will be the final step in the process.

 

What about assembly/installation? Won't that be the final step?

 

The default halogen lights do not need a heatsink because of the way they are designed. A high amount of current is fed through a tiny filament. As a result, light and heat are created as a byproduct. The hotter it gets, the brighter the filament will get.
When led's are driven hard, they can also build up a decent amount of heat. This heat is detrimental to the diode and will cause it to break down. In the end of the heatsink under the cap, there is actually a cooling fan so it doesn't overheat. These fog lights are 4000 lumens each and are about 32 watts.

My headlights and high beams are the same way. They are 4800 lumens each (4 total) and they have cooling fans as well. Because of this, I have to keep the rubber caps off the back of the headlight housings right now.
To fix this, I have considered making my headlights liquid cooled. I have a spare set of headlights I am currently redesigning. My current headlights have COB Halo led's and they are very bright. My new headlights will also have these but they will have many more features that I will not get into right now. The new ones have an arduino in each headlight housing to control all of the functions they will have. The ardruino will communicate with the tablet in my dash and read the current states of the headlights and blinkers to determine what "mode" to be in. It may be a little overkill for headlights but its fun to me Long story short, I want to make it have a special "Christmas show mode" next holiday that may or may not go to music To do this, I need to have all of the lights be able on and off instantly without the "fade" that halogen lights give

Below what my current driving lights look like (with original fog lights). The headlights are not on in this picture. I will be posing pictures in the summertime when my headlights are 100%. I dont want to post them unit I am satisfied with them.

 

Neat job! Looks great.

 

..F.Y.I. National Parts Depot has a line of CLOSEOUT S-10 stuff...CHEAP. I dressed my 82 up with new turn signal bezels and chrome wheel well trim, hood(35.00) bumper(33.00)for waaayyy cheap..
...CROSSFIRE-SSB SRT- Fresh oil and air cleaner filters, tightened a leaking power steering hose clamp and filled to the line with Petrosyn11s..
Think I have a bad upper control arm bushing or ball joint thumping in and out on slow parking lot turns causing intermittent steering vibrations on the Black SRT...gotta check it out next....Peace

 

Thanks for the info!

 

Sticky key fix ( thanks to all) and put in new headliner. what a bloody job getting all the glue off but for 90 bucks oz it was worth it. looks good too. Now to take the coupe over the pits tomorrow after a bit of a detail.

 

I finished my projector led fog light conversion last night. I just have to do the alignment for the projector lenses. Below is a comparison of the OEM halogen light (warmer color light) versus the LED light (cooler color light). As you can see between the two pictures, there is a great amount of light produced but it is low enough to where it will not blind oncoming drivers.


The LED is on tie right. The picture doesn't do justice for the beam pattern. I will post more pictures after I align them.



This is a couple of inches off the ground. You can see how much the projector focuses the light at the lower level.


I have also decided to stop all crossfire projects for now and focus on just this one below. I found a extra wide 12.3 inch LCD display online and some open source software and decided to bring my gauge cluster up to date. This will take some time to get it just the way I want it but I am confident I can make it work. I purchased a spare gauge cluster and have been messing around with it in my free time. I was able to emulate most of the signals that make the gauge cluster work and test them with the software as well. I tapped into the CAN bus at the gear shiftier and was able to get an abundant amount of info as well. Some of the data included was

Current gear the car is in (im both auto and manual shift modes)
The gear the transmission control unit is requesting the transmission to go into
RPM's (which as you can see, I will have to change the gauge redline range)
Speed
Throttle
Door open/closed
ESP Enabled/Disabled
and Summer/Winter mode

I also plan to add other information such as Radar Detector status (since I like to turn the screen off at night), rear view camera and possibly video playback from my dash cam (im not sure about this one yet but it would be nice since the actual controller is buried in the dash)

The two biggest things I am trying to work out before I proceed is the gas gauge signal (which I think shouldnt be a problem) and the odometer. I am thinking of leaving the original gauge cluster circuitry behind the LCD so I can pull the LCD out to verify the odometer if needed. If I take the needles and gears out, I think I can make it fit.

 

 

Fantastic workmanship and imagination. What next!!!