[big jim]

Mounting plates for the seats have arrived, just waiting on some fused 3.9 ohm resistors for the airbag then weather permitting I may have a look at the passenger seat on Saturday (if it takes too long or I have issues I will still be able to use the car if I do the passenger seat first!), I’ll need to get the standard seat out and strip the runners off it to start with before securing the runners to the mounting plate then the new seat to the runners

Bought myself an angle grinder too with my work Christmas bonus high street vouchers as I will need to remove the seatbelt pretensioner bracket from the seat which is riveted on, that looks to be the most complex part of the job (hopefully)

While I’ve got the seats out I’m hoping to maybe get the rear speakers in and the wires (RCA cable and amp remote) from the dash to the back of the car and try and time permitting refit the door card on the driver side to get the central locking pin to move better

Of course all of the above depends on the weather

The only other little job I have is swapping the silver cooper S writing on the boot for a set of black lettered writing

 

[big jim]

I’ve just bought myself a set of 1/2 leather seats off a 2002 car off eBay for £50 the lot to use the runners and sliders to save me cannibalising the very good condition seats that are in the car now, not getting them until saturday evening so the seat install will most likely be delayed for a week now, saying that I can do all the work away from the car after work then merely do the swap once the new seats and sliders are bolted to the plates

move also bought a Matt black jcw/aero grille for it

I was looking at the brackets I’ve got for the sparco seats which are these.....

I was thinking maybe once fitted I could have a look at clearance between the plate and floor to see if I could cut a hole in the centre of the plate and fit a BMW under seat subwoofer under each seat

 

[big jim]

I wish I could show some pics of various bits of progress with the car but I’ve not had a chance to do a thing

I have however got it in today for 4 wheel laser tracking at ABP in crewe as I’d not had it done bearing in mind Sean fitted coilovers before I collected the car 6 weeks ago

 

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They did the blue car the middle of last year, these are the same coilovers as were in that, be interesting to compare results

 

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Turns out the front was way out (as I suspected), I know very little mechanically but it certainly didn’t feel right before today, lots of pulling to the right under acceleration, not done many miles in it since getting it though as I’ve had lots of hire cars so hopefully the tyres won’t have had a hard 6 weeks!

I think they said something about the front toeing out whereas it should have been in (or vice versa) anyway you can see the difference above

 

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Don’t know why they didn’t touch the rear camber, it does feel better now though

 

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Done a few bits today, first up I made a JCW style airbox top with a 59p drainpipe adapter from Wickes

58mm hole in the back of the box in line with the centre vain on the moulding

nicely lines up with the inner moulding lines, then it was in with the drainpipe adapter and gorilla epoxy’d into place, held in place with a clamp while it cured

then an 89mm hole in the bulkhead

and on with the top, finished

more to follow when I get back from shopping!

 

[big jim]

No, it’s a pipercross panel, and as soon as I read your question I can see my mistake!

the car isn’t being used this week at all so I’ll get myself a cone to go in it, in the meantime I’ll cover up the end!

 

[big jim]

Anyway, away from that, oiled up the drivers lock and refitted the door card, the lock works much better now but still doesn’t lock off the button as I think the actuator has gone

next up I swapped the grille for an aftermarket aero type grille

put some vinyl wrap

I then had to cut a small piece of the vein out for the spotlight brackets

and the finished product

really pleased with it, I may takethe bottom grille off and black out the red body colour though

if the weather is with me tomorrow I’ll make a start on the seats, I can do it all indoors (apart from the angle grinding) then just transfer to the car

 

[big jim]

I’ve had a thought about my airbox cock up, ordered something else of Amazon which may or may not sort it! watch this space

in other news I’ve collected the seats I bought off eBay this evening so I’m now fully prepared to do the sparco seats, got all the parts and tools, sods law the weather will be against me the rest of the weekend now

 

[big jim]

A good afternoons work today, 1st seat in place

a basic pictorial how to........

First up was removing the runners off the donor seat, 8 T25 bolts per seat

also remove the seatbelt pretensioner for reuse, it’s a T50 to get the tensioner off the bracket below

This needed to be ground off, my grinder is a 5 inch disc type which keep getting caught on the edge of the bracket, a 7 inch type would do the job easier but it wasn’t too bad, I had to hit the ground off rivet with a centre pop to release it from the seat

This is the seat base plate from ‘powerful uk’ on eBay (who also supplied the black front grille) £56 a pair which when you consider I can reuse original parts compared to buying separate sparco sliders and brackets is pretty good value for money and time saving not having to fabricate or adapt bits

the runners, without the tilt mechanism/boden cable reel attached, a single T15 bolt holds that in place and you have to remove the ‘ribbon’ bracket from the front of the slider too, the runners will then bolt to the plate, they are universal with grooves to the front for the sliding bar, I believe earlier ones were ‘handed’ with only one groove

in place (awaiting bolts)

in with the bolts, remembering the pretensioner bracket, now with this put in place as removed the bolt holes dont line up properly, I ended up grinding the inner upright off completely meaning it fitted nicely on top of the plate

next up, attach the seat, the holes in the plate line up perfectly with the sparco holes

M8 x 1.25 20MM long hex bolts

the site will only let me upload 10 pics per post so you will have to wait in suspense while I upload the final few pics!

 

[big jim]

And the seat itself

sparco R100 sky, faux leather

Bolted to the base

and seatbelt pretensioner and clasp refitted

over to the car, first up, disconnect the battery then remove the existing seat which is held in with 4 T25 bolts and unplug the airbag and pretensioner connections

fit the fused 3.9ohm resistor for the airbag light

and in with the seats, Tighten the bolts, reattach the airbag connections, battery reconnected and voila, fire up the car and hope the airbag light stays off (which it did)

just the right size seat, doesn’t catch any of the interior trim anywhere, about 10mm between the head restraint bolster and trim is the closest

first impressions, it’s a bit of a shock to jump into a bucket seat after sitting in a comfy padded standard seat, it’s going to take some getting used to!

height wise it’s just about where I like it, it’s low down but compare it to the passenger seat in the above pics and it’s not too far off that base height, if I wanted to raise it in the future I could add some spacers between the seat and base but it seems ok, the real test is going to be when I have to use it for work which is a 50 mile each way trip on the motorway with a bit of A and B road driving at each end

really pleased with the seat, look superb, seem comfy enough, will be better when I get the other one in, that may not be until next weekend now due to work

 

[big jim]

To busy today and too wet this evening to get the other seat done but had a delivery off amazon

as you know I made a cock up with my airbox lid by putting an extra cold air feed in but didn’t think to add a cone filter so the hole is the clean air side of the panel filter

The original plan was to simply fit a K&N cone filter however I’m going to try something different (and cheaper), ramair do a nice range of foam motorbike filters with various sized necks so I’ve ordered one of those with a 70mm neck and approx 90 mm foam element

the plan is to shorten the pipe I glued into the airbox top and fit the filter to the shortened pipe, the foam element will push through the hole i drilled in the bulkhead poking out into the void below the scuttle vent/wipers with the back rubber flange of the filter sitting flush on the bulkhead plastic from the engine bay side with the whole lot clamped to the airbox lid

if it’s not raining tomorrow when I get in from work I’ll give it a try

 

[big jim]

Couple of other things, looking back at my how to guide with the seats I can see how I can save myself a bit of time and effort when it comes to removing the pretensioner bracket, knowing now the inner upright needs grinding off it’s going to be easier for me to clamp the bracket still while still on the seat (to stop it rotating) and simply grind the upright off in situ rather than grinding the rivet head off then trying to do grind it off away from the seat, basically the rivet and upright will be left on the seat!

then next up, I said I wasn’t going to mess with this car but I’ve bought an adapter off eBay to enable me to fit a double din head unit, as I did with the blue one, in that one I did a diy job with metal brackets whereas this one will have a 3D printed bracket that the heating controls will properly attach to, also comes with a template for the side bars to cut them properly for the lowered controls

the reason I’ve decided to do it is this car has normal heating control dials as opposed to the climate control buttons and dial that was in the blue car and the existing pioneer floating type H/U as much as I love it sits just slightly too low to see the top buttons (air con on button) and it’s bugging me (one of the bulbs is also out in the heating control unit so it will give me a chance to renew it)

this won’t be a straight away project as I will need a new head unit, I’m going to go for a Sony again as they are a shallow single din back with double din front so there is no issue with clearance around the heating unit behind the dash, I had to dremel the bottom left corner of the cage on the old car to fit but it wasn’t an issue when it came to fitting the headunit

this is the adapter

this is how it SHOULD look once fitted, it also comes with a USB socket plate that slots into that strange rectangular hole in the glovebox

planning on getting a Sony ax5550 head unit which is an upgrade from the 3500 I took out of the blue car, it has 2 USB inputs, one for CarPlay and the other for a good old traditional
iPod (which I miss having in the car)

more importantly before that though is a trip to carsorbikes for a supercharger service and pulley swap, the pulley belt is squeaking slightly now and is annoying me somewhat

 

[big jim]

Had a bit of an early finish today so got home before dark so cracked on with the 2nd seat, as mentioned above I removed the pretensioner bracket in situ with the angle grinder

and doing the same as the previous post, runners on the frame, frame on the seat and into the car

rhen as it tends to do most nights it went dark, so on went the head torch to do the airbox

the plan was the ramair filter in the bulkhead hole attached to the airbox, this is the filter in the hole

shortened the pipe on the airbox

and with the filter attached

and back on the car, as the filter is squishy I managed to get it through the hole with a bit of encouragement, I don’t think a solid k&n type filter would work as you need to get the back of the lid to hook onto the bottom section of the airbox, so having a bit of play helped me move the box lid about a bit to get it clipped in

quite pleased with that little fix!

 

[big jim]

yes, a pipercross panel filter

 

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Not taken it out for a test yet but sounds nice when blipping the throttle

 

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Bit of a better daytime picture

 

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Went out in it today, firm certainly is the word I’d use for the seat and suspension combo, if anything I think I’d like the seat to be tilted back ever so slightly maybe only about 10mm, might look at putting a solid metal Packer between the plate and seat to raise the front a bit

new leather gear gaiter and handbrake cover arrived today, I ordered black with white stitching but I’ve been sent black with red stitching and an S logo, actually looks quite good with the car being red but not sure whether to send it back

 

[big jim]

Put the gear gaiter and handbrake cover on, not 100% sure really, the gear knob gaiter needs pulling down a bit at the top but I’m wondering whether the red stitching is ok or would white look better with the seats