Tweeter/pillar installation

Didn't feel like trying to come up with any creative titles today, lol.  Anyway, got up this morning and decided that I'd get the new pillars installed so that the tweeters wouldn't be just sitting loose on the dash anymore.  I had looked at this before and decided it was going to be a fair amount of work so put it off for later.  So I looked at the new pillars and did a test fit, and it was immediately evident that there was going to have to be some serious cutting.  I wanted to avoid modifying the pillars if possible, so the first thing I did was tear the tweeter grilles off.

It was closer, but I still needed to lose another 1/4" or so of depth.  Behind the pillar grilles was some plastic framing.  I'm not really sure what it's purpose was, and it didn't look like it was critical to holding the grilles in so I cut that away.

the back side of the pillar post-cutting

After that the tweeter would just almost fit flush inside the opening in the pillar.  I stuck the tweeter in there and did a test fit.  I literally don't think you could get it closer.  It's touching both the grille on the pillar and the metal of the cab, but works.  Still sounds great too.  I can tell a big difference having them actually angled properly instead of just lying about.

The way the sunlight is it's kinda hard to see much detail, but you can tell the pillars are in and look pretty flipping sweet.  While working on this I went ahead and put the defrost vents back in.  I actually did the driver's pillar first, then these vents, then the passenger pillar, so the pictures are a little out of order.  Dad suggested leaving them blue might add some accent and kinda pull the colors of the pillars together, I actually like it a lot.  Unfortunately the dash is a little warped so they don't fit flush, but I think I can fix that with a little epoxy.

Notice the waves in the dash cap along the left side wiper

It's getting there :)  I'm really happy with how it's turned out so far.  Few setbacks here and there, but that's to be expected.  Overall I'm pleased.  I'm planning to replace the oil pan gasket and change the oil on Monday.  After that the next step will be the passenger door lock.  I'm tired of the doors being all naked :P

FFFFUUUUUUU!!! Factory speaker wiring SUCKS

I was all happy a week or so ago that I'd be able to use the factory speaker wiring to go to the doors.  Then it quit working on the driver's side >:(  So I got to re-run it to that door anyway.  It took about 45 minutes to get this done.  Those grommets are stupid thick and the one behind the dash is down in a hole in the side, requiring me to bend a hanger into a really weird shape to fish down behind the dash, through the opening in the cab, through another hole that's in another piece of metal because trolling, then through the opening where the grommet is.  This better work when I actually get it connected...

The lower grommet going into the door

The upper grommet going into the cab, this is the one that required the mystic hangar voodoo

Flipping proper amirite?  At least it will have moar legit wiring than the factory stuff when it's actually connected.  I'm hoping to do that today.  I did this on my lunch break yesterday and didn't have time to come back and finish it up.

4x4 Fender installation

This weekend I really wanted to get that fender completed, so I got with my buddy Dennis to see if he could meet up to paint it.  I got the paint matched on Friday and then met up with him Saturday.  We didn't have a paint booth or anything, so just set it outside on a table and went at it.

I let Dennis do most of the painting since I wasn't familiar with paint guns.  I've always just rattle canned anything that I painted.  I did put the last coat on though so I could say I contributed, lol.

It would have been an awesome idea to have masks

Since we were outside some freaking bugs and whatnot kept getting on it.  It ended up with a smattering of grit and other crap in it, but I'm planning to wet sand the bigger stuff down and then will just leave the rest.  As long as it's the same color I'm not really worried about it being super pro.  We put about 4 coats on it.  I left it at Dennis's house to dry, then he dropped it by my house Sunday morning.


I  went out and bought some new bolts to install it with (the OEM ones were very rusty and I sheared one of them).  Then set the fender up temporarily just to see what it looked like.

New paint is quite a bit shinier than the old, but a good color match

I didn't get to do much else with it Sunday (busy day), but after work Monday I got to bolt it in place.  The bottom edge of the fender near the door didn't quite want to line up right.  I decided I'd worry with that later.  I got the rest of the fender lined up (though it was a big of a pain, I think it got slightly warped during storage) and tightened in place.  One of the new bolts I bought was defective and sheared off, but I was able to get hold of it from the bottom side and remove it.  I bought 5 extra bolts/washers just in case something stupid like that happened.


Installed the blinker, the bumper endcap, windshield cowl, wipers, and cowl vents, then went for the fender flare.  Since this fender didn't include the clip things that fit over the screwholes (and the old one didn't have them either) I had to use screws/nuts to hold it on, but it turned out well enough.  The mud flap was a huge PITA on this side just from all the jankiness of the wreck the truck had been in previously, but overall turned out well.

WTF[ender]

Yesterday my plan was to drill out that bolt on the gas tank skid plate and replace it.  After several minutes of drilling with barely any identifiable progress, I bailed on that.  A job for another day when I can get it on a lift or something.  I decided to go ahead and work on the fender.


Before getting the paint matched and whatnot, I wanted to do a test fit on the new fender. Removing the old one revealed some interesting things about the rusty parts under the hood... Some of those metal panels are rusted so bad they are zip tied on, lol.  I'm just going to leave it that way until it necessitates replacing.  Anyway, fender removal wasn't too hard.  All the bolts need replacing.  One of them sheared, but it's the easiest one out of all of them to get to, so I'm not real worried about it.  Dad helped with the removal so I wouldn't accidentally the fender or something.

Remove all the things

The upper portion doesn't look bad, but that part behind the bumper is what's zip tied on.

I'll take this to get the paint matched

Once that one was off, I took the new one out of the packaging.  We did a quick test fit to make sure it wasn't going to need modification.

That's much better :)

I have the original (wrong) fender in the back of my car to take to get paint matched today, then tomorrow a friend and I are going to spray it with his paint gun.  Should be able to get the proper one installed Sunday or Monday.  After that I'll get to put the final fender flare on :)

Victory over stereo equipment

I was hoping to work on the truck yesterday, but I went to an award ceremony for my sister that ended up lasting 3 hours... so didn't do anything on the truck at all.  Today was another story, I still got off work late so didn't get as much done as I wanted, but I felt like a huge victory was accomplished.  I was afraid, after finding the head unit going to Protect mode, that I would end up having to re-run the speaker wires to the doors because of a short.  It turns out the fix was much easier.  The truck's stereo wiring harness uses the same wire colors over and over (green, brown, black, pink) with a few random ones mixed in.  Apparently, after some time of trial and error, the original owner got frustrated and decided to go a different route.  Rather than actually find which brown/black wires went to the speakers.... he just spliced them all together.


Yeah.


Think about that for a minute.


Yep.


I'd like to think that he at least checked them for voltage first.... but based on what else I've seen in this truck so far, I'm really thinking he just grabbed all the brown wires and mixed them together.  For some reason the Dual head unit that was in it before worked in this manner (that says something about how crappy they are if they don't even check for wiring faults).  Anyway, I used my sophisticated speaker tester array (my Droid X connected to a 1/8mm jack with a 2-way RCA splitter on the end) and tracked down which wires actually went to the speakers.  I cut away all the others, taped it up, and plugged the radio in.  Bam!  It worked.  Victory!  I reconnected the rear speaker wires and tested, still worked :)

So yeah, the Kenwood isn't very 80s, but I like it.

Passenger woofer and temporary tweeter location

Driver woofer and temporary tweeter location

Also, today the speakers I'm going to drop in the rear came in :)  I got some Infinity Reference 6032si (they match the component kit) to go in the rear.  I test fit these and they just baaaaaaaaarely fit in there.  The magnet of the speaker is actually touching the back of the cab, lol.  I haven't decided yet how I'm going to mount them, but it looks like they should fit.  Hopefully Thursday I'll be able to get those installed.


So yeah not much as far as progress, but it feels like a huge victory.  Having a radio is pretty nice :P

The Beast has been awakened

Friday evening I finished up the dash installation by installing the remaining panels.  I wanted to test the speedometer and other gauges, so I connected the battery to crank the truck up. Unfortunately the battery was so weak it would not turn over.  Apparently repeated use of the power locks just ran it down over time.  I went to Target and snagged some jumper cables, then cranked it up off my Yaris battery.  I was excited about it cranking up and the gauges seeming to work, so we took it for a short cruise around the block.  All seemed well until I went to turn the radio on.  "PROTECT" was the only thing across the front of the radio :( Apparently there is a short in some of the factory speaker wiring somewhere.

The dash with panels added in, but the radio bezel removed for testing the wires.

Not sure which wires might be the problem, I went ahead and cut the rear speaker wires away from the harness (as painful as it was) and then re-tested.  Still protect...  The previous owner only had the driver's side speakers connected, so I'm guessing that the short must be somewhere in the passenger side wiring.  Either way, I think I'm just going to replace all of it to be safe.

The rear speaker wiring

I also reinstalled the skid plate that protects the gas tank (this had to be removed to swap the e-brake cable).  Unfortunately during removal I ended up breaking the head off of one of the bolts, so I will have to drill this one out and replace the bolt/nut.  I went ahead and replaced all the other bolts with new ones just in case.  I properly tensioned the e-brake cable and tightened down all the bolts and connecting joints on that.  Went ahead and installed the rear driver's side fender flare also.  I had a spare exhaust tip lying around so I threw that on there for lulz.  It actually looks pretty good on the truck IMO.

I discovered a couple of other problems with it while driving it Sunday.  For one, I forgot to add additional coolant after replacing that part of the AC.  It got pretty hot but I didn't drive it long so it didn't get into the red or anything.  Going to add coolant when I get home.  The headlights don't seem to work on dim, but I'm not sure if the bright setting is actually bright or if it's actually the dim setting.  The headlights were re-wired at some point.  I'm not sure if he added HID or what exactly, but I may just trace the wiring back to the fuse box and redo all of that to be safe.

Droppin' in the dash

Yesterday I got the blog mostly caught up.  After this post, it will reflect exactly the current state of the truck.  Updates will slow a bit (sorry for the flood) but progress should continue moving pretty well.


Yesterday after work I came home excited to see that my side AC vents had been delivered!  Pumped, I grabbed the dashboard from the floor of the garage (with newly installed grey dash cap) and brought it out to the truck.  Opened the door and tried my best to get it in there, but doing anything with the dash is really a 2 man job.  I cleaned the dash up until my dad got there and we began the dash install.  It was not very fun remembering how to route all the wires, but eventually I got it.  With his help I was able to get the dash set back down, then started the fun process of screwing everything back in.  I made the mistake of not marking which screws went where, so it took a bit of trial and error to get right.  Still a fairly long way from having the dash all the way there, but I got the main piece mounted as well as the new head unit installed.

I haven't installed the driver's side AC vent yet (I wanted to be able to get to the fuse box wires from there if necessary), or the side vents, or the top vents.  I haven't yet decided if I want to look for some grey ones or just to try to paint match the blue ones, or just to throw the blue ones in there as is.  For the moment, I'm just going to let it sit like that.  When I get home today I'm going to try to install some more of the dash panels, the instrument panel bezel, the glove box, and the steering column cover.