Fixing the Interior, Part 4 (DEFI Heads Up Display)

So one unique item I've had on my car for many years is a Heads Up Display (HUD) unit made by DEFI called the VSD Basis (no longer in production but here is the English instruction manual!) that displays speed or engine revs (it's a primitive system) on the lower right side of the windshield.  I got this because for the longest time I did not want to change the OEM speedometer, which only displays up to 180kph, but of course the car is capable of much more (especially after installation of the Mine's built engine) and I needed a way to figure out how fast I was going on the track. Since unlike some other GT-R owners here in Japan (especially a certain rich millennial BNR34 owner), I actually track my car. (or used to, anyway - and will again soon - that's what the car is designed for!).

Control unit on left, display unit on right.
From: https://minkara.carview.co.jp/userid/131534/car/41102/41491/note.aspx

The control unit for the Defi had previously been attached by double stick tape to the fuse box cover - right above my right knee and readily accessible so I could change not only between speed and engine revs, but also brightness depending on time of day.

So of course when I got my car back from Nakamura of WORX, I was SUPER PISSED OFF to find out that the control unit had disappeared. When I asked where it was, he told me he had placed it BEHIND the driver's side kick panel - out of sight, out of mind.  WTF?? UNACCEPTABLE!

Now, I understand he didn't want to tape or glue it to the leather covered fuse box cover (and THANK GOD he didn't - or worse BOLT it on...), but could he have not made a bracket? He had shown such creativity with the additional fuses in the trunk, and the bracket in the glove box which he had even covered in matching Alcantara (but then proceeded to ruin it by drilling two screws into the leather... sigh...)

Custom fuse box for audio items in trunk by Nakamura. Nice, right? Except now that I've uncovered his errors, I'm worried about this. Will have to go and double check there aren't any problems...

At least he didn't damage anything this time. I should be grateful, but now it was up to me to figure out how and where to place the control unit.

So I decided to take a look. When I removed the cover, I discovered that he had used various zip ties to secure the unit, and at the same time, had used shrink tubing to shorten the length the wiring going into the unit. This meant that I would not be able to relocate to the left side of the dash nor next to my left leg - the control unit would have to stay relatively close to its original location.

After re-routing the wiring to its maximum length, I found and bent a piece of thin aluminum in an effort to make a bracket.  My idea was to use one of the bolts securing the dashboard as the base to which the bracket would attach.

Unfortunately, after a few tries I discovered that my solo DIY efforts were not going to work. And, unless I was willing to be very patient and have a very special bracket made, a quick solution was not going to present itself.

In the end, I decided that the original fuse box cover was indeed the correct location, not only because I was used to it but ergonomically it works very well. So, the next step is then to decide how to affix the control unit.  Clearly, I do not want to use glue or super strong double stick tape, which would likely damage the leather.

So, the only solution I could come up with was to use rubber bands to literally strap the unit to the cover. But, that is ugly and ghetto (excuse the term).  Time to get creative.


What I ended up doing was to finding a small black rubber work glove at the local hardware store, and cutting off the fingers and using the rest of it (essentially the wrist portion). Luckily, that wrist portion fits snugly around both the cover and the control unit. Once the control unit is inserted, just need to make the wiring is zip-tied out of the way.

Being black, from a distance the black rubber looks like it's supposed to be there. Not the ideal and most permanent solution but since it cost me less than 300 yen, it will do for now until I can figure out how to mount the control unit without damaging the leather.

Incidentally, the green arrows point to the 1) alarm LED (blue) and the microphone (un-needed) for the Navi unit.

Ok so a couple of more posts left on stuff I had to fix due to damage done or illogical placement by Nakamura at WORX during the alarm and stereo install.  As you can tell from this post, these aren't necessary permanent fixes, but simply enough to get by without annoying the heck out of me everytime I get in my car.  One of these days I will find a proper shop and get everything properly sorted, but until then my fixes will work.

Fixing the Interior, Part 3 (Glove Box Door and Handbrake Boot)

So the mistake by Nakamura which upset me the most, was the damage to the leather interior that Cesar had worked on, taking several months to do so.  I mean, my car would be the first R33 GTR in the world to have a hand built, bespoke interior, and I was really looking forward to getting the car back and showing it off in its full glory.

Unfortunately, because Nakamura KEPT THE CAR 6 MONTHS!!! by the time I got it back, at least one tuner here in Japan had started offering a full leather interior as an option.

While I've previously shown the two bumps on the front, and explained why, I found these pictures on my phone which show you how those bumps came to be.



See those two small screws?  I took them out to find:


So you can see that these screws were actually cut SHORTER than they originally were.  In other words, Nakamura KNEW that they were too long, and instead of leaving the bracket loose or come up with some other way, went ahead and drilled away. Never mind that the screw tips were cut unevenly, thus resulting in a knifelike edge.

In any case, these two screws caused the glovebox front to gain these two dimples, likely due to plastic from the glovebox door being forced into the leather.

Anyway, once I had discovered these two screws to be the cause of the two dimples, I emailed Cesar (the guy who did the bespoke leather work for me, just in case you didn't follow the project earlier) for advice on what I should do, hoping maybe the application of a heat gun might be enough to fix the problem.

Cesar, however, immediately wrote back and offered to fix the glovebox door. One issue, however, was that he was worried that he might not have enough of the original "Cardinal" leather we had obtained from Wildman & Busby left. But, since we had not used the Bentley OEM leather due to imperfections, and we have two hides of material, we decided that might be an acceptable alternative. Being the perfectionist he is, he sent me the two follow photos showing the difference in leather, for my approval (left is the Bentley, right is the Cardinal):

And here is a close up of the texture:

CLOSE ENOUGH? I sure hope so...

But unfortunately, the glovebox door wasn't the only item that needed to be redone. As I mentioned here in my blog, while Cesar had initially used red stitching on the handbrake boot, after we consulted we decided to switch back to a boot using black stitching, in order to match the OEM look. In any case, Cesar had included both the red stitch and black stitch versions of the handbrake boot, just in case I later changed my mind.

Looks super OEM! But all REAL Leather... (OEM the boot is pleather)

Unfortunately, while Nakamura had my car in his custody, he THREW OUT this custom black stitch boot, presumably thinking that the above black one was the OEM one... AGAIN WITHOUT TELLING ME. FUCKER. So when I got the car back, it had the red stitch but no sign of the black stitch boot (I even looked in his pile of junk but couldn't find it).

Left side green arrow points to the red stitch handbrake boot. Right side shows unfinished key surround.

So, Cesar also kindly offered to redo the handbrake boot, using the Bentley leather, with black stitching.  Further, he offered BOTH A REDONE GLOVEBOX DOOR and HANDBRAKE BOOT at NO CHARGE.  CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW NICE HE IS?? Of course I wasn't going to allow that...(so yeah of course I paid him - totally worth it).

In any case, I sent him the damaged glove box door and the red stitched boot, a few short weeks went by and voila! A box from Mexico appeared at my front door.  Of course I had to wait for the weekend to open it up and enjoy perfection, but I was not disappointed.

And when I opened it:

Not only did he send back the Alcantara I had sent over in order to redo the glovebox interior...

The two handbrake boots! The red stitch one I had removed and sent over as a template, and a brand new black stitch one!



And of course, the redone glovebox.  Isn't it beautiful?

No more divots!

So of course, I jumped to fix as much as I could. First, I installed the black stitched parking brake boot.  Unfortunately no pictures of the install, but here is a better photo of the tab that I discovered had been snapped off when I removed the red stitched boot.

I used some plastic epoxy type glue, hope it holds but even if it doesn't the leather keeps things together... for now.

The bigger problem, at least for me, was how the glovebox door had become deformed due to the wiring needed for the ETC reader and the boost controller, that Nakamura had routed in the back.  As a reminder, previously the ETC reader had been in the center console, and further the wiring for the boost controller did not have heat shrink wrap around it - meaning that those cables could be passed through into the glovebox in a fairly flat way. But Nakamura's method of bundling cables for both devices now caused the front right side to sag.

How to fix this...

Given the newly repaired glovebox door, I wasn't going to rush trying to figure out how to fix this panel gap.  Initially, I tried to be very gentle.

It worked, kind of...

First, I used some spare weights to hold up the sides while putting pressure on the middle section, where the latch mechanism is.  I left this in a sunny room, hoping that the warmth would gently allow the weights to deform the glove box back into the proper shape. I figured if the latch mechanism was pushed outwards, the ends would be pushed upwards. In other words, I wanted to purposely have the ends too "tight" so that the latch would how the door closed snugly.

Unfortunately, after about a week, when I tried out on the car I did not see much progress. There appeared to still be about a millimeter of give on the right side where the gap was.


So, I decided to use a heat gun. Being VERY careful not to melt anything. I would heat up, and at the risk of burning of my fingers, try to bend the sides back up. I repeated this, sometimes even removing the glove box door in order to put more pressure on the sides.

Eventually, I got this:


Ok I took the photo at night - actually just a few minutes ago - sorry about the resolution but I was too excited not to share this with everyone. Finally looks flush, and there are no rattles either !

So am I done with fixing the damage done by Nakamura at WORX? Not quite, and I have a few more posts coming up soon to explain.

Thanks for the patience and understanding, everyone. I am finally starting to feel a bit better about the whole thing, in that there are fewer and fewer reminders about the problems each time I get in the car... 

Breathing Better, Revisited

So let's take a break from the repairs to the interior of my car.

A few weeks ago, fellow R33 GT-R owner, OCD clean freak and buddy Tom Smith messaged me to let me know that, not only had he been inspired to do a mod for his car from something he had seen on this blog, but he had actually taken measurements to prove that, indeed the mod had beneficial results!

Tom's gorgeous 33!

So to review - 9 years ago(!!) in April 2009, inspired by the underside ducting found on the R34 Z-tune's bonnet, I posted this mod on improving airflow into the car's airbox.  Basically, I took a cheap aluminum radiator panel, made some cuts and folded down to create a channel for air to better flow into the OEM airbox.  Here are some photos from that post.

You can see the lines upon where the cuts were made

Added foam to prevent air leakage

You can make out the ducting from behind the grill

At the time of my post, I reported that I had better throttle response, but I had no way of measuring actual engine response.

Tom, on the other hand, runs a Power FC commander which measures intake temperature.  And he made a proper version of this air inlet scoop, as shown below - sides welded shut and the entire thing beautifully powder-coated.

First, as you can see Tom had the sides welded shut

And then powder coated matte black

That looks absolutely FANTASTIC! OEM like!

Likewise you can see the scoop behind the grill.

So, back to the numbers. In ambient temperature of around 16 degrees Celsius, in order to remove any variables Tom drove on a dual carriageway and for about 3 miles at 115kph in 5th gear. He then recorded the temperatures as he passed under the same bridge so as to allow the car to stabilize the temperatures.  First pass, without the panel was 38 degrees C.  Second pass, WITH this modified panel fitted, was 33~34 degrees C.

Doing the math, that's about 10% cooler!!

He also found "what is immediately apparent is how much more crisp it is on throttle response" - and yep this is exactly what I recall too.  It's as if the engine finally has the correct amount of air going into it in the first place.

So I suspect those who remove the stock airbox have similar thoughts - they can sense the instant response - but remember as temperatures rise under the hood, my thinking is that this kind of fresh air scoop is the only way to get the best of both worlds - more air volume but cooler.

Thoughts?

Big thanks to Tom Smith for doing this and providing me with the photos and the numbers. I wonder if there are any other mods I did in the past that others can improve on. If so, PLEASE let me know!!

Fixing the Interior, Part 2 (A Pillar Covers)

So after I cleaned up the shift surround and dashboard panel, I decided to see if I could fix the glovebox as well as the A-pillars.

The glovebox was easy. Once Cesar heard about what had happened, he immediately contacted me and offered to fix it... for FREE! What a TRUE GENTLEMAN. I will have a separate post on these repairs coming up in a follow up post.

This post is about how I tackled the A-pillars.  To review, despite my telling Nakamura-san at WORX Auto Alarm that I did NOT like the whitish/light grey A pillars - because the OEM plastic ones are BLACK and so I knew that anything other than that would clash - he went ahead and ordered A pillar covers in the light grey Alcantara. I get the feeling he had little say in the matter, OR, that I was sold a recycled part.  It doesn't matter at this point anymore...

Here is how the interior looked BEFORE I embarked on the fix.


Actually, here is an even better photo, showing the clash of the white A pillar cover with the black of the B pillar as well as the now leather covered passenger grip handle.

I'm sorry, but that LOOKS LIKE SHIT. Did I mention how much I hate what Nakamura did?

This fix was relatively easy, because I stumbled upon an interesting spray paint that is designed to work on fabrics such as denim and suede, called Somay-Q.  ("Somay" in Japanese means "to dye"). According to the video below, application is easy and straight forward. So of course I had to try it.

First, I removed the A pillar covers being careful not to scratch the Alcantara and damage the speaker wiring while disconnecting.  Note how the light grey is already showing dirt.  Real genius, that guy Nakamura, using such a light color in a place where there is bound to be lots of touching (due to the hand grip there)


Then, following the instructions exactly, I cleaned the A pillar covers and then sprayed them with "Grey Black" Somay-Q spray.  I figured I didn't want the normal "black" which might be too dark. Plus, the black Alcantara cloth I have stocked in order to finish the rest of the interior didn't look solid black.

So I prepped the pillar covers by covering up the speaker grills in masking tape.


I then cleaned the surface and prepared the Somay-Q spray.


Then started spraying.

I think this is when I began to suspect the paint wasn't dark enough...

And even when I finished spraying, I knew something was wrong. The color just didn't seem dark enough.  Here is the Grey Black.


And sure enough, when I compared agains the Alcantara cloth used in the glove box and center console:

Camera flash making both look lighter..

Obviously the pillar needs to be much darker.  So, I ran back to the hardware store but the regular Black colored Somay-Q was sold out.  That, and rainy weather over the following weekend, meant I had to wait two weeks to finish the job.  But eventually there was a sunny day and I finished with the full black spray.

Came out pretty good, don't you think?

Of course, it doesn't feel like the super soft Alcantara as it was originally - to be honest it feels like painted cloth.  But from a distance it looks fine and gives me a preview of what the interior will look like when the B and C pillars are upgraded and covered in proper black Alcantara, this time by a real professional.

For that project, I am currently searching for interior shops in Japan...but meanwhile I still have to fix a few other things... Once I do so then I will put up a photo of the fixed up interior so you can see the difference just a bit of care makes...