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Amather's "I've never done any work on cars before" '07 NBP Progress Thread!
Hello, and welcome...
to my build thread.
As stated in the title, I've never done any car-related work in my life. Never changed oil. Never modded, installed, painted, insulated, unscrewed, unbolted, forced, jimmied, shimmied, or bimmied anything.
My first car was a 2001 Subaru Outback that never needed maintenance.
My previous car was a 1989 Dodge Lancer that I intentionally never worked on.
And then... the TL.
This glorious hunk of machinery from 2007 entered my life a month ago. In this thread, I'll chronicle the amateur, bootleg, cut-corner things I do to this car in order to try and call myself a "modder". I think it will end up looking pretty good. All of my projects will be undertaken with research here on acurazine.
Now for a few follow up posts with the mods that I've completed already. Stay tuned.
Now, after I purchased the TL, I did a little bit of homework here on the forums. Mainly, I was still reeling from the initial purchase (I paid 10,700 for the car with 92,000 miles, great deal where I'm at but still a lot), but I still wanted to throw some cheap mods in to claim my territory, so to speak.
The general feeling seemed to be Maintenance > Mods. PSHAW! I exclaimed. I proposed a new balance. Maintenance = Cheap Aesthetic Mods > Big Mods. These mental gymnastics have helped me thoroughly to get through the hard times or something.
In any case, I figured the first place to start was to do some minor fixes and such to the aspects of the car that allowed me to lower the price when I bought it. Here's a list of its 'emotional baggage'
- Power Steering Pump was shot
- "Tighten Gas Cap" light constant
- Chip in Windshield
- Slight ATF Burn
- Needs 105k maintenance
Right on. So, more homework - The easiest fix seemed to be the Tighten Gas Cap light. From what I could tell, I just might be able to do this.
I didn't get pictures, but I sure as hell did it. I got in under that hood with conviction, and ripped that shitty old EVAP canister Purge Control Valve out like Indiana Jones' heart. The telltale sign on the part told me I had been correct - "Made In Mexico"
I spent $121.86 on a new PCV from the dealership. Took an hour and a half to get it in there. But the confidence was worth it. "I can do anything!" I said. So naiive. Green but willing.
In apology for the lack of pictures, here's a picture of the part
The Next Day, I was riding high from replacing that valve (you know, the most easily accessible part in the engine bay, seriously its RIGHT ON TOP)
Why not do a little research into this power steering pump problem? The shop quoted me like $500. Fuck that. So I did. And what do I find but a whole plethora of information about Power Steering Pump Rebuilds.
$22 for seals? And just take the thing apart, re seal it, and throw it back on? takes a couple of hours? I'm in. It's friday, and I ain't got shit to do. Let's go for it.
now, normally, I would have gotten antsy at the thought of messing with the serpentine belt. This is why replacing the purge control valve was so important.
So I use my lunchbreak and go buy the seals from the nearby honda dealership. Using the DIYs I found, I marked each seal according to where it was going to go in the pump.
Get home, Pull into my apt. complex garage, and grab my new 14in breaker bar, and crank the shit out of that tensioner. I've got my macbook planted on the roof of the car with all of the DIY pages up on there, just follow the steps. This shit's like LEGOs.
Got that sucker off, and brought it up to my porch workspace. Damn, that pulley bolt sucked. so I took the pump down to auto zone, and they impacted it off for me. Do I need my own tools? guess not. So here's what I'm looking at after the 2 hours of work
In we go. Took that sucker apart
Re-sealed it. As I pulled the old O-rings out, I found this bad boy in there. Seems like that'd do it
Then, I just put it back together. Seriously, I just followed the instructions in reverse and it was back together as normal. Now, you may laugh about this. But to somebody who never checked a dipstick before this, I was stunned.
Once I put it back together, I stopped taking pictures because my hands were covered in power steering fluid. But, it looked something like this
Once it was rebuilt, me and a friend put it back on and bled the air out of the PS system. Power steering back in full force. Wicked sick. Problem was, the tensioner pulley started to give me a lot of belt squeak. What to do?
The next day I took it to auto zone. One clerk said "Oh yeah man, Mechanic for 12 years, your belt is totally shot, prolly contaminated". Another clerk said "Oooh yup bro, been workin a wrench for 15 years, your idler pulley is prolly shot". Screw it, I took it up to the Acura dealer (Acura of Lynwood, shout out to 'em).
Just a side note, when I first pulled up to the service department I talked to the teenage greeter there and said something like "yeah, so I replaced my power steering pump last night and I think that I damaged my tensioner pulley, or there is an alignment issue. I used the spray bottle test and it's definitely reducing noise over the tensioner/idler, any idea what's up"
He said "Oh, so you're like a mechanic? let me go get our guys". I just said "nah, I just researched this stuff online". But damn, it was an ego boost
The tech there heard the noise for just a second, went in and grabbed some crazy acura pulley lube or something, and dabbed a bit on the belt. The squeak immediately went away and hasn't been back since.
Total cost: $22.86
Total savings from shop estimate: $532
So here I am. A guy who, within a week, went from no experience to installing new parts in my exhaust system & rebuilding a precisely machined power steering pump. Top of the world, friends, I tell ya.
I went and got an oil change and a good touchless wash for my new partner
Pretty. Anyway, so at this point the pressing maintenance required seemed to be out of my hands. The tranny fluid is still OK for now, the 105K maintenance has about 13k miles yet, and the windshield isn't really a DIY thing.
What else can I do to this car? Well, let's start by getting some lights.
I knew I wanted blue footwell LEDs. What I didn't know was how I wanted to wire them, and also how to even wire them in the first place. So I went and bought a kit at auto zone for around 40 bucks.
The kit I bought came with a couple of leads for hardwiring, and a couple of leads that were connected to a switch in the cigarette lighter. Not wanting to waste my lighter, I decided to hard wire it in.
I put together my full wire setup according to the DIY guide for wiring them into the Dome Light Master here on Azine. I got in the car, and got my panels off. I took off the underdash and had access to the wiring above the fuse box. As soon as I looked inside at the wires connected above the fuse box..... I paniced. Holy crap. So many frickin wires, and I'm a big guy so I had terrible access to all of it. To make matters worse, I didn't have proper gauge T-taps and couldn't seem to figure out what to do.
So I balked. Defeated, I simply wired the footwells into the switch in the cigarette lighter. They ended up looking pretty good, but one day soon I'll have to get them hard wired in correctly.
Not ideal, but whatever. I definitely want them in either the door switches or the dome master so that they only come on when the doors are open, as it is definitely distracting to drive with them on at night.
Well, the Footwell job didn't go perfectly, but that was just the beginning of the lighting I was interested in doing.
I was looking at others' builds and I learned of Supercomputers sills. I think it was Swoosh's pics that motivated me to do more with my interior lighting. In any case, I started stalking the black market looking for an opportunity to pick up some (apparently very rare) supercomputer overlays.
My birthday rolled around last week, and there it was. A seller (awesome guy btw) had a set of blue sills up for sale for the original selling price, shipped to my door. I jumped on it. Adrenaline rush.
So, on Friday, my sills arrived. Because of the catastrophe with the footwells, I decided to call around to my local car audio shops to see if I could get somebody professional to install them. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any estimates lower than about $200 to install them. Keep reading.. must search more topics. I read enough, and that price tag was just barely enough to push me into giving the hardwiring installation another go. So I did.
(note the mac, you can probably guess what page my browser was on)
Oh, and I also installed blue LED bulbs in my door lights
Victory! So now I guess wiring things isn't a problem..
This was last friday, so now we are almost up to date with what I've done. I did the rest of my interior lights, license plate lights, and HID Fog lights this past weekend, I'll post pics of them in a little while.
Here's a picture of the LED Foglights I installed on Sunday. It was pretty simple. I went in through the wheel well lining. Didn't want to take off the bumper.
Also, I had ordered a few square feet of Di-Noc wrap that I intended to use on the sills if they ended up looking crappy. But, once I got them installed, they looked so damn nice that I now have a bunch of extra Di-Noc. So I threw some on my fob for shits and giggles
I think I'm going to take the rest and wrap my Grill center bar this week.
dam nice car over all but why your front seat looks nasty? I suggest that you clean them up and recondition them with nonpetroleum base product. BTW how many miles on the car?
dam nice car over all but why your front seat looks nasty? I suggest that you clean them up and recondition them with nonpetroleum base product. BTW how many miles on the car?
They aren't terrible, the photos don't do them justice, but they certainly can use a little bit of work. I don't think the previous owner did anything besides the pre-sale detail job he got
Bought the car at 91,300mi, now there is 92,500 on it (yeah, i had a crazy honeymoon period where I drove it night and day)
Its black that why you can't see all the dirty but the seat look glossy black and that from sweat and grease. I just cleaned the black interior in my brother LS460 and the white tower turn into black. I recondition the seat after clean and the black looks matte semi gloss. BTW congrat on your newly wed.
I went in and used a leather cleaner/conditioner last night, it came out pretty well. I only did a quick job, so I want to go back and do it more thoroughly at a later date.
I plan to Plasti-Dip & paint my center grill bar & rims today, expect some pics later on!
So I got a wash today, and I had already decided to do a project. So first, I found Guitarplayer's little thread about using Barkeep's Friend on the exhaust tips. Mine were pretty bad.
I tried the first coat on my lunch break with BKF & A shop towel, didn't do the trick. So, I headed back to work. On my way home I stopped at auto zone (was going to pick up wheel paint anyway) and got some fine Steel Wool. Ran over the tips with BKF again this time scrubbing away and...
While I was waiting for paint to dry, I put some of my Di-Noc on the rear trim
Donezo. I also added Di-Noc to the bottom bumper trim.
You can see a couple of spots where the Di-Noc didn't really behave. I tried to heat gun it as much as I could. Not really too noticeable.
Anyway, totally done - I put Di-Noc on the hood lip trim as well. You can see a pretty bad fuck up in the Di-Noc. Not insanely noticeable but definitely there. I am out of wrap, so I have to order more. In the mean time, I'm OK with leaving it on.
All in all, definitely an EASY job, but time consuming as hell. I fucked it up in a couple of places - I give myself a 7/10 job for this. Still, it looks OK, so I'll leave it for a while and come back to it later.
nice pics BTW your car is filled with swirl under that gas station lighting. I like the way you set up PC and you still have that big ass xbox360? don't get me wrong I still have the original 20gb white one WITHOUT HDMI port LOL.
Not sure how you did yours but.... When I did mine the first try I did a few heavy coats, when it dried it came out uneven like yours. Tried it a second time and did lights passes followed by only a few heavy coats at the end. It took a lot longer but I don't have any really uneven coloring now.
TV bugs me that it's not completely aligned under the monitor but i'm sure there's a method to your madness.
My 2 part Desk has the drawers on the right, so there'd be nowhere to put my legs if the monitor was in the center. TV is centered relative to my bed, not my PC chair
Hey GP, I tried to wire my footwell LEDs into the supercomputer sills and had trouble with it so I abandoned it. The LEDs didn't want to come on even when the sills were lit up. Any ideas?
I'll probably just get them wired in directly eventually..
04-29-2015, 05:00 PM
