So I had a bunch of free time on my hands over Spring Break, I was house sitting so I had an extra car and my significant other was on vacation with her friends the whole week.
I've been trying to get this posted for about a week now and have had no time; school and women leave little time.
Through the help of this site and its members I found several inexpensive mods that I saved for the week.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed to the engine cover painting DIY and dash conversion threads, CaliChris517 for his door handle DIY, and Supercomputers for getting me the door sills in time for all of this.

This is my 4th Acura in a row and 2nd TL, but the 1st I've ever done any mods to so I was a little hesitant, but I'm pretty good with electronics and such; plus with all the help here I felt I could do no wrong. I'm also very anal about my car and how it looks so this was a big step; let me put it this way, I could probably get away with cleaning the inside twice a year the way I maintain it.

I started with the door handle LEDs from CaliChris517's DIY, which btw is a fantastic write up if you haven't seen it. This was the 1st mod I saw after joining the site and I still think it's one of the cleanest. Just think about it, in a parking lot of hundreds of cars to have yours being probably the only one with door handle lights is pretty cool, really makes it stand out. So anyway, enough rambling, on to the pics. Oh and if I have posted this in the wrong place or it's too long...my bad.

Sorry if some of the pics are fuzzy...

Door Handle LEDs:



I took ThreePointTwoTeeEl's suggestion and shrink wrapped the wiring between the back door and the frame: Wiring and LED in door handle:


While I was waiting for my door sills to arrive I painted my engine cover. I decided to do a two-tone look which actually turned out pretty nice I think considering I've never painted anything before; the dark areas are painted, not the factory finish. Taping off all the pieces was extremely tedious, especially the letters, thank god for the exacto knife:


Now I just need a chrome oil cap.

The door sills were next, I tapped ino the wires I ran for the door handle LEDs, and used black silicone sealant to secure them; can't take too many chances with the Texas heat. Everything works properly but I get a tiny whinning/feedback noise from the power inverters. Would filters fix this or is it the wiring?




I also converted part of my dash, although I am far from done, and changed the security LED to blue. I also ordered wood trim passenger side vent covers from Acura, the only trim I have added.



A few weeks ago I installed an iPod adapter for my HU, the adapter was easy enough to place, but I thought I would get creative with the iPod placement. The first try didn't work so well, the cord kept getting caught behind the tray. The second time everything was perfect, I ran the cable under the console, past the shifter, through the cup holder and into the top armrest tray; there is a slot on the side of it for a cord. Man I need a new double din dash kit...



And a pic of my car for fun, and the metal Type-S valve stem caps I bought.


All in all I think it turned out pretty well and I had a lot of fun doing it, and I got some new ideas as I went along. As soon as I get a steady cash flow again I will start doing performance mods.

Wow writing this and uploading pics takes a lot of time.
Any comments, questions, thoughts, concerns or considerations?

Why the dancing Alf? I had to.

 

nice mods.. i like that metal Type-S valve stem caps .

 

WOW really nice!!! Did the door handle LED take you long? REALLY NICE and simple mods!!

 

Ohhh yeah, me 2...started looking for them the minute I saw yours..can't find them on e-bay!!

 

nice................

 

Your car look nice, glad I could help out. Thanks for mentioning me.

ohh... i see you did the fog lights and cruise buttons the same as me!

 

Nice! They're looking great!

 

That looks good...How much did all those mod's cost you...
I'm looking into the door sills also. Looks great man

 

Looks nice, time well spent! I think your one of the first to have the stock air box cover painted.

 

Looks nice, now get the spoiler and body kit

 

Your engine cover looks sick, The time spent on cutting to fit the A and the gills on the airbox were well worth it. I want to paint my engine cover and you have given me some good ideas. Keep it up!

 

Thanks all, I appreciate the compliments; these even impressed my girlfriend when she saw them for the first time, and that's saying a lot because she could certainly care less about car stuff. Now she wants me to do stuff to her RX-8...women...

Thanks, the door handles didn't take too long. Taking the car apart, soldering the LEDs and making sure the windows don't close on the wires were the longest parts(I cut one of mine in half with the window). I could probably do it in 2-3 hours after having done it once, maybe less.

Ebay is where I bought them, check seller foxxfile2005, that's who I bought mine from quite a while ago, only place I've ever seen them, he's sold several sets, I think they were like $15 with shipping or something close to that. They've held up very well. Also a very good seller with fast shipping.

In total I think I spent about $300-350, but that includes the Dremel, soldering iron and soldering workstation I bought. The door sills were $149 shipped, the vent covers were $40 shipped. Everything else was the miscellaneous stuff; wire, exacto knife, LEDs, resistors, paint and supplies, silicone, etc.

As soon as I have some $$$, I was thinking about the lip spoiler I kinda like those.
Glad I could help, I actually removed the "A" to paint it and used some JB weld to reattach it, that fucker is going nowhere.

 

Nice mods, If u were closer to Houston I'd pay u to do some of that on mine.

 

On a side note, he also sells caps for the TSX and RSX as well as racing pedals. Maybe we could get a GB from him on some things??? I sent him a message, we'll see what the status is on more caps.

 

yup, his write up is excellent, gotta admit but don't forget who brought up the idea on acurazine :P ... in fact.. the day I mentioned this, almost everyone started doing it... even in my neighborhood, 4 other cars have it after seein mine hehe.....

for those who say that i didn't think of the idea... having plain lights on handles is OLD NEWS.. i know.. but i thought of the idea where they are connected to the dome light and dim and turn on according to the opening/locking etc. hey, ye gotta get credited for ur ideas

 

oh btw, you can put that wire through the rear boot, its not as hard as everyone here claims it to be... just take out the middle panel.. run a thin hanger through until u find the hole and drag the wire across... i have mine going through the rear boot...... the reason why i'm stating this is because, a wire being exposed like that is never good, even if u have it completed covered up.... it will eventually wear from the door closing/opening.

and.. UR ENGINE COVER LOOKS HOTTTTTTTTTTTTTT in fact.. its the hottest colour i've seen so far... (2 TONE IS HOT HOT HOT HOT!!!) .. wow.. great job.. plus the door sills look nicee.... i should order mine soon....

p.s: my door handle leds are blue .. since my car's colour scheme is blue/silver

 

I was wondering, why did you make the wire so visible, you could of put it through the boot or under it if you kind of take it off. And thanks for mentioning me, first time Ive been mentioned...EVER! I feel Loved

 

Pure laziness, plus I had a hard time getting the wire al the way through the pillar. Luckily there are little indentions in the metal under the weather stripping so I was able to run it through that.

 

hey, where did u get the 2tone paint? .... i saw a 3 tone paint kit @ walmart..... but it wasn't blue.. some redish/orange crap

 

I actually used two different paints, I went to Pep-Boys and got two colors of the Duplicolor Metalcast and a can of Metalcast primer I used the blue and the can with a dark chrome looking cap. I also painted the bolt heads, plastic and metal ones.

 

Nice but i would have taken the time to run the wire thru the boots. Its not that hard to do

 

When I find the time to take it apart again I'll take care of that, my back doors hardly get opened anyway.

 

Not a good reason not to do it though Plus running them thru the rubber boot can be achieved with out opening the rear door

 

Hey I was looking at your nice car and either your navi or dvd player caught my eye. Can you give more details on the item? I am want to put one like that on my 2001 accord. I am thinking it's not a flip monitor right??

 

Like the mods. Car is coming along clean. props

 

It's a Kenwood DDX 7017 with the NAV unit. It plays DVD's, MP3s, has A/V in and out, it's a double DIN unit but the screen slides down a bit to insert DVD/CDs, the NAV unit is in the trunk. The screen has a tilt feature so you can position it if the sun is causing glare. It has dual zone control so you can listen to music in the front and someone can be in the back watching a movie if you have screens.

It's easy to use, the NAV software is pretty good and has 10 million points of interest in the US and Canada, it uses 2 DVDs, although the new ones use a flash card. I also have several of the add-ons; voice-recognition, rear-view camera, iPod adapter, and retention of the steering wheel controls. The way the steering wheel controls is kept is pretty cool, there is a tiny IR emitter that aims at the IR receiver on the unit, it sits between the headliner and the dome light. I point it out to people and sometimes they still can't see it, it's like the size of a ball-point pen tip.

There is also an optional DTS/surround sound unit, but I've never felt I needed it badly enough, plus I think some of the new ones come with it built-in. I also have a CD changer that became useless once I found I could just load up a DVD with MP3s, then the DVDs became useless once I bought the iPod adapter. Hope this helps.

 

OK, OK, so ya got me, I'll fix it.

 

Good Deal! thats what i like to see, is a job done well!!!

 

not sure if u mentioned it... but whatsup with teh double din kit? is it not finished or somethin?

 

ur car looks awesome dude!!

 

I mentioned needing a new one, but text is hard to see when srolling through pics. Aside from needing a new front bumper from running up on a curb back in November, I was trashed and lost control of the car trying to go around this super wide curve in my neighborhood a little too fast although in my defense I blacked out well before I attempted the turn and came to while the car was spinning(I have since stopped drinking), the dash kit is really the only other imperfection.

I had it all installed right after I bought the car, a little over 2 years ago now, and there was not a double din kit available so they took a dremel and modified a single din one. It's been bugging me, I just never got around to fixing it, but now I'm gonna have to, especially since so many people here have one that matches. The shop did a fantastic job on the overall install, I suppose the fact that I had them do it all on a Saturday afternoon so I could take it on a roadtrip contributed to it not being done properly.

I can't really complain much though, one of the service guys at my dealership got them to give me his discount; $1000 off the total, it's crazy to see someone actually whack $1000 off an invoice. As picky as I am about my car you would think I would have fixed this by now.

 

damn thats a sweet job!!! I'm moving to TX soon [ Arlington/Ft Worth area] and you gotta help me with this

 

Well let me be the first to welcome you to DFW. I'd be glad to help, I love doing this stuff.

 

I would love to get help on electrical stuff too

looking very clean...your mods look awsome

 

I'll let you know when I have some free time.

 

Great job man, it looks nice. I don't have the balls to mess with the electrical system of my car yet but some day I will .

 

any recommendations for a new in dash navi..

 

I personally like Kenwood products, the new Excelon DDX 8015 is pretty nice and the new Nav system is easy to update, it uses SD cards. But from what I hear Alpine and Eclipse make very good Nav products as well.

 

Looks good. Where the hell is southlake?

 

Right in between Dallas and Fort Worth.