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Spring time means yearly maintenance wash, left the wheels on over the winter so it was definitely much needed. First I washed the wheels and cleaned the tire rubber
After the tire shine cured I pulled her inside and applied a layer of Hydrosilex spray ceramic for an extra layer of gloss and protection, then I applied Dr. Beasley's Matte wheel sealant to all the wheels as I do every spring
Pulled her out into the sun this morning and damn is she shiny!
Last edited by 97BlackAckCL; 04-14-2023 at 03:18 PM.
Still lookin good.
Crossed over 29500 on the Exploder this morning. She's in need of a wash, but every time I have the time to do it, the weather is rainy.
Still lookin good.
Crossed over 29500 on the Exploder this morning. She's in need of a wash, but every time I have the time to do it, the weather is rainy.
Yeah I hear you, I took advantage of the one warm sunny day in between rain and snow storms
So finally hit 33K on the old girl. To celebrate I took the time to replace the blown 3.5" speaker in the driver's side dash that I blew a few months back that Crutchfield finally sent me a warranty replacement for.
Here's the blown one before I removed it
And side by side of the old and new so I could track the bracket alignment
The old wiring harness that I made from years ago certainly had seen better days and I was not happy with it so I ordered a replacement.
Replacement from Amazon came in and then I was able to finish the project.
New harness all installed, tested out the speaker and it's working perfectly
New speaker all finagled into place. I did tuck the speaker wire down after this picture
And I was never here! But nice to have that part of my sound stage back again.
Small mod/install, but I've been crazy busy with work, family and house projects. I have a huge stack of projects waiting for this thing, hoping to find some time during my upcoming vacation to knock out a few projects.
So several small updates, first and the biggest one yet is I sent in the loan payoff and the truck is officially all mine! I tried paying it off early last year but the bank pulled some shady shit and told me I couldn't pay it off early, long story. But I officially have paid it off and no longer have a car payment!
Now on to the small updates which were long overdue. First up was the mic that I've had since my Alpine HU that I always have to move the visor in order to be heard properly.
I finally found a solution to use the stock mounting location, so I pulled the upper console down
Here's a before of the stock microphone
Stock mic
I recently discovered this company that offers a 3D printed mounting solution that fits in the stock location.
Snaps right in to the stock location.
New mic installed
Fished the wire through the cubby
Fished it over and down the A pillar
And now the real fun begins... Ripped out the Kenwood to reseat it and redo some wiring
I purchased a Kenwood HD camera for the front with the hopes that it would plug into this port for the power source, but of course the plug is proprietary and is doesn't fit the proprietary head unit, go figure....
Then I remembered that the HU has outputs for camera power + and - so figured I would be able to use those to power the camera.....
So I soldered the adapter to those wires. I was meaning to test this before mounting the camera, but a couple days went by and I got antsy and didn't test. Spoiler alert, you need a different proprietary camera that's not as good as the one that I bought and it's the only one that works with these wires :banghead:
I got on a roll while I was cooking in my driveway with the smoker and ended up mounting the camera without testing the wiring, the camera that I had in the lower grille was a cheap pos and the quality was terrible. I also had it wired to my sPod and it only worked when I turned it on, so I wanted a better option.
Camera is seated back against the grille and is barely noticeable.
Then came the fun of fishing the wire through the firewall. The PowerTray location makes it very difficult to access the grommet where I have all my wires run
I ended up using the old RCA wire and zip-tied to it and fished it through with the new wire attached, worked like a charm.
And then came the fun task of removing the old mic wire and camera wires and running the new ones up under the dash
Another part of the changes that I've been planning was remounting the head unit to the actual dash kit and not using the stock mounts any longer as it did not align correctly with the dash and vents. With the stock mounts the screen basically blocked the entire dash vents and drove me nuts, I also couldn't get the dash kit to sit flush because of where the HU sat. So I mounted it to the brackets for the dash kit and got it to sit properly in the double din slot as compared to 2 inches higher where I had it before.
This is how I had it sitting before and it was way too high...
As I noted when I installed that I wasn't happy with the vent blockage...
With the bigger screen I expected this, but I had hoped to have it not block the vents much like I had with the Halo
So mounting it down lower into the dash kit allowed me to lower the screen enough to uncover most of the vents and now it only covers the bottom fin of the vents which is a huge improvement, especially in the summer when the AC is blowing
Another small update was Crutchfield wanted me to return both speakers and not just the blown one, so I pulled the other 3.5" Kappa out of the dash and swapped it with the new one.
All ready to be installed, didn't get any pics of it installed but it's just bolted in and covered with the speaker grill
So definitely some good updates, I still have to sort out and redo the camera wiring as it will not power off the camera power wires like I thought it would, but this was over about a week in 100% humidity and temps in the mid 90's. More to come, this is just a few of the mods that I have planned/coming
Putting the mic in the factory location is awesome. Just put a new head unit in the ISF and need to look into this as the mic is currently where yours was and it is beyond a pain when I folder down the visors for my sun shade.
I will say my only complaint about having the 2k screen is Android Auto is not written yet to make proper use of it and some of the UI might be small for people. That said their own UI is perfect on it with the 2k. I will do more of a writeup when I finish the install but right now the car is still in pieces. I love it so far though.
I will say my only complaint about having the 2k screen is Android Auto is not written yet to make proper use of it and some of the UI might be small for people. That said their own UI is perfect on it with the 2k. I will do more of a writeup when I finish the install but right now the car is still in pieces. I love it so far though.
The whole reason I got this HU is for wireless Android Auto, no interest in changing
So small update, I took the radio back out so that I could rewire the front camera (again) since Kenwood doesn't like to use it's own proprietary wiring and connectors
I removed the cam power wires from the camera power wires and soldered them to the radio's ACC and ground wires
After much struggle getting the radio back in, the front camera works!!!! (please ignore all the crap from my daughter's bday party lol)
I pulled the truck out to put her carseat back in and took a pic of the garage and Ack to better show the HD, this thing is super clear and puts the stock backup camera to shame
It takes some getting used to when it kicks on, but I'm very happy to have it working finally!
Nice work.
I got a letter from Ford last week that they're covering a 1-time replacement of the 360 cameras on my Explorer.
The quality is crap & they're super hazy, which is pretty much what the letter says. Fortunate that the majority of my complaints are things that are now covered outside of warranty, I've got about 4k miles to get the rest addressed. Just need to get the Midget running reliably, since the dealer won't do loaners unless you have ext warranty or bought the car there.
02-23-2023, 09:39 AM
(please ignore all the crap from my daughter's bday party lol)
