Sunday, December 31, 2017

Interior Modernization Project at WORX... Random Photos and My Honest Thoughts


(the below I wrote BEFORE I discovered many of the problems I discovered as I describe in the post linked above).

So I'm done writing the next Project 33 post for Speedhunters, where I talk about picking up my car from Worx where I had the dashboard installed.  And I explain, in a nice way, why the work took so long.  But due to the year end rush there are apparently a couple dozen posts ahead of mine, and since some of you can't wait until next week, I've decided to, for my last blog post of the year, go ahead and publish here some of the photos which didn't make it into the Speedhunters story.

Even though I wanted to publish some of these photos, in the end I decided not to either because they did not match the story, or more likely the quality of the photos was extremely low. Most photos in fact were sent to me by Nakamura-san at Worx AutoAlarm.

I'm grouping then in different themes and not necessarily the order they were sent to me, to make this all easier to understand. I think you will see that the mess Nakamura-san had to fix, was quite extensive. Although, I am not convinced that it all NEEDED to be fixed, except as noted below.

Photo of the leather covered dash
Can't believe how good this looks!
The rear seat insulation was apparently degraded too much for his liking
Looked fine to me, but...
new custom rear seat insulation - both for heat and sound
Made from this stuff, which appears to be a closed cell polyethylene foam product. Perhaps from the same StP company that did the door panel dampening material
Showing progress in taking the interior apart
Yikes! See that rust on the steel support bar? Should I be worried?


The mess from the old Navi
Showing how it's done
And he uses this special shrink wrap covering
more shrink wrapped wiring
This is how it looked before
all cleaned up
DTMII Wiring
Cleaned up the DTMII wiring
An example of my horrible DIY work.
Some more he found. Some of this is for the motorized exhaust valve, the large black on the left is the OEM harness

OK yes not very neat. 
Pretty sure this is something I did as well, in an effort to try to tidy up.

Custom made bracket

Wrapped in Alcantara

For the old Blitz SBC boost controller.
The custom bracket for the SBC boost controller was a good idea, EXCEPT he decided to bolt it to the inside of the glovebox. Which resulted in two holes in the Alcantara lining, AND two visible bumps on the outside of the glovebox.  NOT HAPPY. I'll post about this soon in a forthcoming post.

So basically replaced the snap-locks for proper male/female connectors
Custom fuse box arrangement for new stereo and navi
Mounted on this metal plate
Right next to the battery in the trunk area
A new battery. 
I was not happy with this. He threw out my old yellow top Optima, claiming it wasn't very good and replacing with this battery which he claims is the cold climate spec one for the BNR34.  WITHOUT asking me. I guess I will just have to see if this holds up...

Ok so I'm an amateur at this too. Thought it did a decent job actually though.

Problem was, the servo motor used to remote lock this side was broken. So it had to all come off anyway.

Removing the insulation revealed more sloppy DIY. 

Which he decided to fix. (I say, if it ain't broke...)
New servo installed

and my interior courtesy light LED wiring was cleaned up!
On this side as well!

And then he laid on the StP and some foam, and rehooked up the LED
Have to admit this was AWESOME. By using the OEM door/frame connectors, the wiring between the body and doors is now 

I now have a remote trunk opener!
And can recharge my battery without opening the trunk lid!

Oh, and here are parts I absolutely dislike:
Why this color? Doesn't match the OEM piece, which matches the B and C pillars which are BLACK
Also, to my ear, the tweeters appear to be aimed improperly. At least the angle. This is a topic for another post but I've spent time trying to adjust the delay and such but my conclusion is that the tweeters are simply aimed improperly, in FRONT of the head of the driver. I don't understand how that builds a proper soundstage.
My old gauge surround panel. 
I'm glad I rescued this when I picked up my car. Again another topic for another post but let's just say it was in better shape than the secondhand one he installed in my car.

And there are other photos of interesting things, one which in particular I ended up rejecting but I will discuss in a following post.

I guess, I am grateful to Nakamura-san for all the rewiring he did, but I am not happy with his arbitrary decisions which resulted in a non-matching A-pillar, tweeters that don't seem to be aimed properly, a damaged glovebox door which I will have to get redone in both leather and Alcantara, the car having lost the Optima for a battery which I know nothing about, and a gauge surround panel which as it is old and scratched up clashes with the newly leather lined dashboard.

If you read the Speedhunters article, you will see that the car also now has a 2-DIN stereo/Navi unit, and to be honest I'm a bit split on that as well. I'll discuss the audio set up in a follow on post as well, but suffice to say the new Morel speakers DO sound warmer but they are clearly not as sensitive as the Pioneer separate I had before.

Anyway, stay tuned for a full review of the stereo as well as a discussion on what I rejected, as well as what I had to fix. Promise it will be interesting!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh dear, not wanting to generalise, but i would have thought it would be courteous for one to ask the customer whether they wanted something done prior to executing.

Anonymous said...

Oh no, thats not right, toss away the Optima without even asking. Pretty sure a shop like that would know what an Optima would cost.

Aki said...

Yep. On the other hand, all these issues give me something to do for 2018...

Anonymous said...

Regarding the rust on the steel support bar, that's all surface rust. You can easily remove it with some Flitz polish. If you want to make sure it doesn't rust again you can use some rust converter primer with a brush to carefully cover the bar and paint it black.

I am curious as to why the use of a double DIN stereo + navigation unit. In my experience a lot of those systems are just never as good as Google maps on a phone but the US probably has simpler roads. If you have some insight to provide here I'd be curious to know more.

Anonymous said...

those A pillar tweeters doesn't look OEM. when you want OEM look, then a component with separate tweeter isn't right option. I think a coax with separate crossover (Morel MAXIMO/TEMPO coax or Helix E6X.2) was better choice.
btw , I'm waiting to see what's your plan for sub-woofer.

Aki said...

To both, thanks for your comments!

First guy - yes well I don't think that was done but will have to look into it the next time I have the dashboard out, thank you! And as for the 2DIN - well, I am going to start researching for a blog post on this overly complicated Navi, and it has some amazing features not available on the iPhone. Like car anti-theft features, on board video, etc. Pretty slick. As for Google maps, yes of course I use both, but the problem is that with Google Maps, it often shows streets here in Japan that are too narrow for the car, or once even a set of concrete stairs! So not as accurate as it could be. Useful for long distances but fails big time for the tiny Japanese neighborhoods. Navi you can set the dimensions of your vehicle and it will guide correspondingly.

Second guy - actually Nissan did offer a tweeter option for the R33. But it wasn't as large for sure. I should do a post of the sub-woofer that got thrown out, you can see what it was all about...

Mot said...

@Aki: First of all, nice interior all in all.
Shame that after all the work (and labour cost), you still have some things to fix by yourself.

For a shop to treat a customer car like a car that they themself own, can be a good thing (regarding OCD for example). But them making decisions on your car that were not discussed before is a big no-go. No idea why Nakamura-san thought that would be a good idea? May be he just wanted the car gone after the amount of time it was in his shop. For what I understand, that was kinda also his fault, for doing/fixing things you didn't ask for.

Also no idea how you he would calculate the bill for the work you didn't ask for?!

Hope you can figure things out together and in the end it will be worth it!

Aki said...

Mot, thanks for the comment! I have no idea either as to why such decisions were made, but think that he honestly thought they were in my best interest? In any case the car is back with me now and I'm doing what I can in my spare time to fix any problems I come across. I also am researching car audio shops in the area, maybe they can help as well...

Anonymous said...

LOL. Overzealous or treating a customer's car like his own is good, just pleassssse inform the owner first before deciding on changing something that's not been discussed! I have had an almost similar situation before, the shop feels they now better. Haha! It's my car and my life d___ it! xD
Anyways, one theory about the batt. change is that maybe... just maybe, he drained the yellow top on his shop and cannot bring it back to life. Haha! It happens man.
For the rust, I agree with the guy above, you don't need to worry. Those are solid thick bars, rust are just surface ones.
One thing I don't like about this is, the car is a bit going away from OEM now, even the wirings! Hehe. It'll be hard to pattern things now with what Nissan did. And if ever you gonna sell it in the future, well, good luck to the poor owner. Maybe he gonna ask you every now and then, "Hey Aki, where's the x and y wirings?", "Hey Aki, what the heck is this for?", "I cannot find this pillar from Nissan Aki.". xD
But still!! The trade off looks very good! I can't wait to see it finished. :)

Aki said...

Thanks man! The lesson learned is, always be in control. So yeah, I've been working on fixing various things, just a few more things and I can publish an update...

Anonymous said...

why is it lonely?