I've started so many mini projects on my s14 it's hard to keep count. I figured they would all make for great blog posts, youtube videos, etc. I just recently had my adobe creative cloud license revoked for the time being so I can't really edit any video footage.
Not that I had anything crazy in store, along with parts for projects I've bought tools, storage for those tools, and materials to use those tools on.
It all started with me buying a double din headunit...
The headunit was fairly cheap, I also ended up getting a stealth am/fm antenna for the car which I shoved up by the roofskin in between the headliner. Works awesome, I don't even remember having am/fm radio in the car previously. It also came with a little backup camera (which is kind of ugly, I may get a different one) and I thought that would be cool to hook it up. Not that I need it, but putting a front and rear camera on the car to see how close I am to curbing my front lip or exhaust would be rad.
Only one problem, the reverse cam is activated by the reverse light in the car. Which for years has never worked, swapped my engine and changed the sensor pigtails to match my lower harness. To no avail, reverse light didn't work. I swapped the reverse light switch in the transmission when I installed this radio. Confirmed it should be triggering the reverse lights to come on, still no reverse lights.
I ended up pulling the dashboard off. That's when the rabbit hole of hell started.
I figured while the dash is off let me go around and see how much it would cost to have it refinished... cheapest I was quoted was 2500 dollars and a 4 month lead time. The other shop I spoke to the owner and he straight up said, just buy a new one, it would be cheaper than having me work on this.
Found this video from polyvance on restoring a dashboard, I've seen many other people attempt to do this on zilvia and other places, using baking soda, bondo, and a host of other items. The worst is most of those people when they're done, they just "flock" the dash. Flocking or wrapping in suede and not re-doing every other panel is just off putting to me. To each his own. I bought everything to restore my dash and had started that project. I'm in no rush to get the car back together. I also saw another cool video from Kalvin Malli which was quite the tease, around 6:14 they talk about restoring a dashboard and 2 seconds later it's magically repaired and they don't ever revisit it lmao. I just dm'ed him on IG and he said it looks great, but it's sticky as hell and hard to clean. They raffled the car off so not his problem anymore lol.
My dash is sitting on my balcony basking in the sun as I continue to grind out all of the cracks on it, while also re-wiring my entire digital climate control setup so I could refresh the how-to for that. The DCC project lasted a lot longer than I anticipated because I deep dove on that and if you can see I am currently in the middle of another fabrication project. Oh the joys of having high functioning ADHD.
In the middle of the dash restore project, this popped up. Sigh, I had to text Johnny directly instead of waiting for him to check his IG DM's to snatch this up. He posted the interior of this car for sale and every single piece sold the same day. I honestly wouldn't of minded the door panels as well but I wasn't trying to push my financial luck given all of the other random things I've purchased.
So yeah dcc install, I finally got a new in-cabin temp sensor, and then on a whim bought a rhd s14 cluster surround from a car that had dcc so I could retrofit the vent into my s14 cluster surround as seen in the first dashboard photo!
While I had the dash out to troubleshoot the reverse light not working in my car I discovered that my car was missing the pin in the super multiple junction that comes back from the lower harness to the smj that closes the circuit to trigger the reverse lights. Needless to say it took me about 1-2 weeks about an hour a day to pinpoint what the issue was. The whole DCC debacle came after. While all of this shit was apart I figured it was a good opportunity to replace my haggard fusebox since I'm not going to be in the realm of PDM anytime soon. And everyone who has installed one refuses to even talk about putting air conditioning on one LOL.
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Fun Fact I haven't labled a damn thing on my previous fusebox relocation. Other than ignition relay, headlight relay, and air conditioning relays I dunno whats going to that box. So I got this 12 position box to replace the one in my car. It didn't really come with any instructions, just these cool stickers. I don't think I'll have to wire up that negative terminal, but we shall see. Also contemplating leaving this where my passenger side airbag was or shoving it in my glovebox so I don't have to agitate my dashboard to access it.
Lets see what else did poppa spend money on. Oh that's right. I had been looking into aircups for I dunno like 3-4 years. I saw fortune auto had a nice set, not sure if they were also utilizing the stanceparts aircups. All I know is their setup was about 4 grand and magically sold out during the pandemic.
Driftworks however had a full coilover set, aircups front and rear controller for 2100 shipped to me. I've had JIC FLT-A2's on the car the entire time I've owned it. One of the upper pillow mounts on the driver side shit the bed quite some time ago and I don't know what size part I need to replace the upper pillow ball mount. Either way JIC doesn't respond to their emails unless you drive a Porsche.
Anyway super stoked to begin getting this installed, and guess what, since the dashboard is apart I can install the tank and do all of the wiring before actually installing the suspension.
Got a z32 rear brake conversion, ordered new shoes and hardware from Z1 peformance, brake master and new lines and e-brake conversion lines from GKTech as well as air diverters for the top of my kouki headlights. And some dope ass rotors from Disk Brakes Australia.
I purchased the two following items,
a potentiometer and a chevy equinox electric steering motor, ecu and plugs. Part number 991-22303-1
I have a friend who has his own metal works company so I'll most likely reach out to him for the fabrication work. I want to make the steering shaft match oem as much as possible. I am also going to try and relocate the steering control box just to give a little more clearance by my pedals. The other guy who put this in an s14 said he didn't even notice. I just want the option to clock this in a manner that makes sense for me and if I ever need to service it, I can simply swap the motor on the left rather than re-fabricate an entire column again. The electric aspect of things seems to of not been mentioned in the install I saw, but countless others have apparently been utilizing this setup and it's great.
This means I get to eliminate the power steering pump, power steering cooler, I get to depower the rack and just eliminate all fluids in it and just fill it with grease. Should be fun!
Also picked up a replacement steering cover for the s15 wheel, so I'll be sewing that on. Doesn't seem too hard. I just really don't like any aftermarket steering wheels besides the classic nardi wheels.
Anyway there are a lot of tools and a lot of random things I've purchased to work on all of these little projects, and the costs are constantly adding up. I try not to pay too much attention to it but I don't want to end up with a huge credit note either. I've been relatively purchasing things that are cheap.
The s15 steering wheel, column, etc was about 298 shipped, the potentiometer was 68 shipped and the power steering unit above was 145. The deals are there you just gotta look for them.
I like cheap with a side of elbow grease.
Oh yeah, I got a roof wing, that's cool. Apparently it's cheaper to buy certain aero parts from japan instead of from the states. Capitalism baby! Origin Lab V2 carbon roof wing for 205 bucks, was about 130 shipping, but it also showed up in 5 days.
Anyway I'll continue chipping away at my projects and will provide some updated blog posts as we go through all of it. Maybe or maybe not there will be some accompanying youtube content to go with it or even some twitch streams.
My digital climate control install 12 years later revisited just kind of ignited me to not do things half assed anymore. I'm still laughing that after writing that holier than thou how to, that I misread my own pinout and that's why my mode door motor was always operating backwards.
There's a lot of people doing cool stuff in the s-chassis space. I obviously am leaving out so many other random things I've added to my project list, probably should make a whiteboard lmao.
Anyway thanks for reading. ttys - Wayne
