Speakers
I removed the speaker covers by the two philips head screws hidden at the bottom of the cover. The top of the cover is held in place by two clips that hook behind a bracket that also mount the top part of the speakers to the dashboard. The speakers are just paper ones, 100mm standard model with 4 mounting tabs. Although the magnet size is quite good for the size of the speaker, meaning it can handle a bit of oomph, it does not have a tweeter and is just old.
So ordered from eBay a set of Nakamichi (Japanese and famous in the 80's for their tape decks, now-a-days supplying the premium sound package for Lexus cars). This eBay shop was clearing out their stock of 4 Inch 2 way speakers for $30. A bargain... The grill will be discarded, and they should fit nicely behind the existing dashboard grills.Seats
Underneath the covers the front seats were actually in good shape, but the rear seat had extensive sun damage on the top as you can see on the photo below (which looks disgusting, and uncleaned after removing the old sheepskin covers).
Although I was very tempted to get a nice new leather interior in a cream leather (the current seats are blue), I decided that this is not practical.
We'll be driving this car mainly with the top down in the weekends visiting wineries or nice towns in the hills. When we'll get back to the car after a nice lunch, the leather seats could be too hot to sit on... Nice new sheepskin covers will still be hot, but at least would not burn the legs. So send out emails to 4 suppliers, and settled on one that stated that they have the right patterns. Of course after providing my credit card details, he could not find the patterns and wanted to have a look at the car when he is in South Australia at Xmas time !!! Unbelievable...
Anyway, will decide the next couple of days if its worth to keeping dealing with those guys or get my money back.
Garage floor
Replacing the oils, I decided that I really should have painted the floor with a good 2 pack epoxy paint instead of leaving the floor unfinished. As I'm waiting for the suspension parts (that should get here next week), I decided to crack that job... Bought 60 Litres of paint and started clearing the shed. As I gathered already quite some stuff, I'll be doing this with help from a mate in two go's. First one side then the other. Today we did the etching. Tomorrow we might be able to put the first coat on... Will put some pictures up.
Transmission oil
The forums told me that it was basically a waste of time, only draining oil from the transmission, skipping the torque converter. So I'll be redoing this next week. I bought a 32mm socket so I can manually rotate the engine to get access to the torque converter drain plug. I'll sort out if it need a washer or not (on the forum the members are divided on this issue), warm up the car, drop the lot again including the torque converter, and refill this time very carefully and make sure I do not overfill.
Next week
- Install the new speakers if they come in
- Sort out what to do with the ordered sheepshin covers
- Finish the floor painting
- Make a plan for the suspension replacement
- Put an order together for the time chain replacement.
Cheers and until next week,
Marco
