bogle's 1991 mild build thread

[Honcho]

Thanks! The seats, lol. They are the same, but I have the drivers seat one hole lower on the rear. The drivers seat is as low as it goes (and still not low enough for me), but it was a lot of work to get it that low and have it not interfere with everything. The passenger seat already interferes with everything and I just haven’t spent the time to make it match the height. It looks goofy, but I would rather spend that day on something else. Maybe someday I’ll get some skinnier seats that fit a little better. If these were 1/2” narrower, they’d be fine

We are living the same nightmare lol. My driver seat is ok, but I need to do something about the passenger seat. And, I feel like both seats need to recline more, but my mounting brackets don't have high enough holes... I wish the seats were 1/2" narrower too.

 

[bogle]

Yeah they are a total pain. You have pole positions, right?

I lust over seats every now and then. The best options for me are probably the Recaro RS-G or maybe the bride zeta 4. Both of them seem skinny enough to get on the floor and not hit the door panels. I just don’t know how I fit in them (tall, wide shoulders, skinny waist). The RS-Gs have really high shoulder harness holes, which is good for me, and there are a couple blingy JDM options based on it (ASM, mugen). The brides are cool too, but maybe a little too boy racer for the car. Also might want to avoid bachelorette party jokes from non car people, you know?

 

[Honcho]

Yeah they are a total pain. You have pole positions, right?

I lust over seats every now and then. The best options for me are probably the Recaro RS-G or maybe the bride zeta 4. Both of them seem skinny enough to get on the floor and not hit the door panels. I just don’t know how I fit in them (tall, wide shoulders, skinny waist). The RS-Gs have really high shoulder harness holes, which is good for me, and there are a couple blingy JDM options based on it (ASM, mugen). The brides are cool too, but maybe a little too boy racer for the car. Also might want to avoid bachelorette party jokes from non car people, you know?

Nope- they are my feaux-S reproductions. Basically a NRG FRP-300 shell (it was the closest match in shape to the Honda Recaro) wrapped in kevlar and re-upholstered with genuine leather and ultrasuede. The seat dimensions are identical to the Recaro ABE. I have so much time, effort and cost into them that I will keep them, but I wish they were overall 10mm narrower everywhere. They are super comfortable though- I'm fat right now (6'1" 220, 36W) and they still fit great.

 

[bogle]

Nice, they look great! For some reason I thought they were a PP frame. The ABE / ABE style seats are the only seats that look totally proper in the car, too bad they're just a bit big. My Evo 2's are also super comfortable, so hesitant to pull the trigger on new seats until i can sit in a few.

 

[bogle]

Film! I got the film pics back and there were a couple good ones. This is Pentax K1000 + 85mm lens with Portra 400. First time with portra 400 and it looks a little more serious than the Kodak 200. Kodak 200 has more of a "your mom took disposable camera pics at your 8th birthday party" vibe. Definitely has a place, but I think this is the go to film from now on

Same same, different angle

: "Ight imma head out"

 

[bogle]

More tuning

Well instead of faffing around with cameras, here's a proper tinkering update. If you've been following along, earlier this year I got the SoS Link installed, running, and pretty drivable by tuning from the o2 correction values. The next step was to tune tip in / accel fuel, that is: how quickly does it blend when you stab the throttle?

Generally throttle response was ok, but a little on the doughy side. It was worst when going from vacuum to boost at lowish RPM.

I’m not a super advanced tuner and have usually tuned tip in by feel. The basic gist being: if it bogs, too rich; if it hesitates / skips, it’s too lean; if it feels good, it’s probably fine and I should spend time on something else.

The car bogged, so it was a little too rich. The wideband would show a brief lean spike, go way rich (high 9s - low 10s), then even out to target AFRs (11.5 in boost). This little half throttle stab does a pretty good job illustrating:



Based on experience with other ECUs, this would tell me the tip in fueling was correcting too much and / or too late. The weird thing, though, was that out of the box, tip in fueling was basically off. It hardly ever added any correction to the final fuel value, even with very large TPS movements. WTF?

Turns out the Link ECU has a “wall wetting” feature. When set correctly, you may not need any / much tip in correction. It’s only a single parameter: percent 0-100. The SoS basemap had it set to 10%, and tip-in correction turned way down. Cool, but the lack of wall wetting timing control made me nervous: if I turn it down, will the lean spike be worse? Why can’t I just have it wet those walls earlier?

I decided to experiment with it. What happens if I do turn it down?

But before messing with it, I figured I’d turn off O2 correction. Up until this point I’d been tuning with O2 correction ON (closed loop). O2 correction values in boost were showing that it was pulling about 1% fuel, indicating the fuel tables were pretty close.

I did a little driving and a few pulls at different boost levels with the O2 correction off. Fuel in vacuum was good enough, yay:



Fuel in boost was rich, though, especially at lower RPM. Maybe tuning from O2 correction values in boost isnt so accurate...



And, strangely, the rear bank was even richer in boost (it’s leaner in vacuum):



After several passes pulling fuel and messing with the VTEC crossover to smooth things out (the Link uses 2 fuel tables), I got it to a pretty good place. A chart of a couple quick stabs, it’s a lot better:



And here are the logged AFRs cautiously working up from partial throttle 4psi to full boost (~8.6). There are some weird cells in there caused by transitions (e.g. letting off the throttle between shifts). But other than that, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than this, as far as hitting AFR targets goes:



Guess what? Tip-in feels really good now, legit throttle response is back. I didn’t even change the wall wetting, it was probably doing its job. What was happening? O2 correction disables on large TPS changes, so it’d run open loop for a bit, go rich because of the tables, then the O2 correction would catch up and lean it out to the target.

There is still sometimes a small lean spike, but it’s not consistent enough to mess with, and not causing a skip, so all good. Maybe I’ll play with the wall wetting in the future out of curiosity, but it feels real good now.

Next stuff

I’ve been moving pretty slow on car projects this year. The next logical step is to take it for a proper dyno session. I have some new bad ideas, though, they will need to happen before the dyno. It’s looking like end of the year or early next before it goes to the dyno.

In the meantime, I got a brand new OEM carpet from Mita, and a few new interior bits to go along with it. Those should go in over the next couple months.

 

[RYU]

it's probably way too hot for a dyno session anyway. love your progress. your process is very familiar to mine but even more methodological which i guess tells volumes LOL

 

[bogle]

it's probably way too hot for a dyno session anyway. love your progress. your process is very familiar to mine but even more methodological which i guess tells volumes LOL

Yeah it’s true, I’d take it to driving ambition and he’s in Sacramento. I’m sure it’s been like 110F there the last few weeks. Your new motor looks and sounds awesome!

 

[bogle]

It’s been a little bit, I didn’t get a whole lot of car time in 2024. The car has been repping Jackstands Crew for the last ~4 months for reasons I'll get into in another post.

Due to some life changes, though, I've have had a lot of time to tinker on it over the last few weeks. There are ~3 Big jobs that are 90-95% finished, then a bunch of smaller bits, plus related offshoots, and while-im-in-there projects. It's been good to knock so much off the list. Hopefully that means I can drive the car more and work on it less in 2025. I realized I've driven the car less than 4k miles in the almost 5 years I've owned it. Gotta get those numbers up!

There is a lot of stuff to write about. I've been working on everything in parallel, I'll try to tease projects apart into pretty cohesive chunks.

Dipping a toe in, here are a couple small, actually finished projects, then we’ll slowly ramp to bigger stuff.

Shifter rebuild

The shifter box has been rebuilt with all new bits. I had replaced a couple parts in the past, but didn't have the full parts list. I came across @RYU's video here that listed all the part numbers. One Amayama order later and I was ready for a whole-hog attempt

The parts:

54110-SF1-003 x1
54210-SM4-000 x1
54113-SM4-000 x2
54114-SM4-003 x2
54340-SC2-000 x1
91301-SD9-000 x4
54109-SC2-003 x2
54211-SD9-010 x1



And I even had the same grease he used floating around



It was a super gooey job, so I only took one progress pic. Note that it also has the zanardi shift lever which I don’t think I wrote about…



And done!



It feels a lot more solid, and all movement is transferred into the cables. Not sure exactly what parts were a bit sloppy. My best guess is the cage around the ball in the center of the lever. Or maybe the o-rings in there? Not sure.

It went fast and there were minimal hiccups. I did break the new slider thing that goes over the ball end on the side of the shifter (54210-SM4-000). Oops. Note to self: pressing it on with a wood clamp did the trick without breaking



Fluid change

I changed the transmission fluid and the engine oil too, yay. The previous owner changed the tranny oil as part of the sale, but that was 4.5 years ago. I went with Torco MTF and got a new drain plug, fill plug, and OEM washers.



Shiny new plugs



For the oil, I decided to follow in Honcho's footsteps and go for the Mobil 1 0-40. Up til now I've been using Mobil 1 10-30



Bigger stuff to come...

 

[bogle]

Carpet

Big item checked off the list: a brand new OEM “real black”carpet has been installed. The carpet now matches the drapes something something. Feels good, man. Feels even better because the new carpet pieces had been in a massive box in the middle of the garage for over 6 months. That’s all gone, it’s nice to have some space back.

The car originally had an ivory interior, and the last owner did a hasty job converting it to black. I think it was actually “converted” for the sale, probably because the original ivory bits were super dirty. Along with the beautiful painted pillars and side sill garnishes, all of which has been properly replaced now, they installed a brand new nsxcarpet.com black carpet.

It was a pretty good carpet, but it didn’t fit quite right in a couple areas: the footwell by the throttle, the fusebox, and around the seats. Re: footwell, the car has aftermarket, grip-tape-covered pedal covers on the pedals, which I love, but they move the pedals so close together that I have had to wear very specific, skinny pairs of shoes since I’ve owned it. Anything else would hang up on the brake pedal, hang up on the carpet, or bunch up the carpet in the footwell.

The side carpets pieces were glued on to the original white ivory sides, which was fine, except it made the side pieces bulky. They interfered with the seats and made installing the seats extra hard mode.

I’m sure a competent interior guy could fix all this, but I just wanted it to be stock.

Mita had a sale on LHD carpet bits last year which was awesome. It came with these 4 part numbers

88302-SL0-T00ZA
88303-SL0-T00ZA
88307-SL0-A02ZA
88308-SL0-A01ZA



And I also got the driver side sill / fusebox thing. They were out of the passenger side at the time, so just this:

83162-SL0-A00ZA



Install went a little easier than expected. The hardest part was reinstalling the seats because they are just a smidge too big for the car

Begin. Seats out, the old carpet was pretty clean



Carpet out and vacuumed



Drivers side



And in



It’s a lot better around the fusebox



The way the pieces fit together is pretty cool. This is what it looks like when installing, eww seams:



Then you press the seam into the side carpet piece and it disappears. Pretty cool



The footwell was a bit of a saga. There is a hardline on the drivers side and I wasn’t sure how the carpet went around it. After some fiddling, it worked out and I have a whole lot more shoe space back there



Looks like I don’t have a dead pedal or whatever goes under the throttle, but now there are provisions for those things.



Carpet_final-final.jpg



One last note: the real black carpet is pretty grey. Here’s the nsxcarpet one on the left and the OEM real black one on the right

 

[bogle]

Clutch master and slave cylinder

All done with a gooey job I've been putting off for a while: clutch master and slave replacement. There were no real signs that either needed to be changed, but it felt like they would go at some point, so I got all the parts in some amayama order months ago. As with most things on the car, I tried to replace as much as possible, included here are a new reservoir, cap, bracket, bolts, reservoir line, and line clamps:



Also a speed bleeder for the slave. It's an M8x1.25 PN SB8125LL-SS



One thing I missed in the amayma order was the o-ring for the slave line (PN 91352-SD4-000). My local Acura dealer came in ... clutch with a couple new ones. It’s an 8.8x1.9mm viton o-ring, but finding one of those was harder than having Acura mail me a couple…



Removal

Removal ended up being less gooey as expected, which was nice. I opened the reservoir cap and bleeder with a line into a jar and the system unloaded itself into the jar. No turkey-bastering or anything required.

I didn't really have any issues unbolting either the master or slave. The master nuts weren't bad, I didn't take the seat out or anything, just contorted. Here was my master nut setup: 1/4 drive ratchet with a wobble extension on the end



Old parts out. I have a receipt from the previous owner for a slave replacement not that long ago, but that thang looks pretty nasty...



Looks like the master was starting to leak too:



Install

Ok, new slave with new bits and proper o-ring. The flange was a huge pain to get out of the old slave cause whoever replaced it previously used an oversized o-ring. But all good now:



And in. It was a bit of a pita to get the slave ball on the release lever and then mount it up. But it worked out:



First wrinkle: I, ugh, bought the wrong master cylinder. The one on the right is RHD, derp. I guess I bought it from looking at the parts catalog and not by PN. One week later, I had both:



If you have a RHD car and need a clutch master cylinder, let me know, it’s for sale…

Ok ready. All the new master bits connected together



Second wrinkle: the clutch pedal pin. F that thing. It took me over an hour to get it in there. I tried 10 different things: my dumb hand, needle nose pliers, pointy vice grips, tape, etc. There were 2 problems, 1: the clutch pedal spring is very in the way, 2: the master plunger connector needs to be moved to line up with the hole in the pedal while placing the pin.

The thing that finally worked was taping the pin to my right ring finger. That let me reach around the pedal spring, then freed up my other fingers to line the holes up



And in, what a jerk



Bleeding

Ok, time to bleed. I used a vacuum bleeder for most of it



Then did some pumping at the end. With one person it’s hard to do the pumping method and see if there bubbles are coming out. I ended up using a lot of fluid in an attempt to make sure there were no bubbles

Fin

All done with that new new:



I haven't driven the car yet, so not sure how it really feels, but the clutch seems like it might engage a little lower than it used to. After doing some reading, it still may need some bleeding. I also read the clutch system is kind of self-bleeding, so I can just do a whole bunch of pumping (or eventual driving) and it'll bleed itself. In any case, it's nice to have this off the list

 

[Honcho]

Nice work @Bogle. Agree 100% - F that pin! I use a push clip instead of the cotter pin on both the clutch and brake pins. I'm curious to see how you like the speed bleeders- I installed them on my 91 and could not get them to seal- they passed air no matter what I did. I find the clutch to be fairly easy without bubbles- I usually vacuum bleed it and then do 2 or 3 pumps as a final purge. Never had an issue.

 

[bogle]

Thanks! I love the speed bleeders on the brakes, but it didn’t really offer much advantage here. And, yeah, I wonder if some of the air on vacuum was coming in from around the bleeder threads. Are you saying that it wouldn’t even seal when the speed bleeder was tightened? Now that it’s tight, this one seems to be sealing

 

[Honcho]

Thanks! I love the speed bleeders on the brakes, but it didn’t really offer much advantage here. And, yeah, I wonder if some of the air on vacuum was coming in from around the bleeder threads. Are you saying that it wouldn’t even seal when the speed bleeder was tightened? Now that it’s tight, this one seems to be sealing

It sealed when tight, but no matter how slightly I loosened them, they would pass air into the hose and it looked like the brakes were full of air. I finally gave up and installed the OEM bleeders and recruited Mrs. Honcho to be the pedal pusher LOL.

 

[TANTO]

Been using the large model "Drainman" vacuum bleeder for many years. I've come to believe the bubbles are just the nature of that method. Some folks use heavy grease around the nipple to seal that better and some even put teflon tape on the threads (which likely does work) - but I don't bother with that. I just bleed about 2-3 times what is likely needed and find it always works very well and works super fast. Of course this really goes against the traditional "till the bubbles go"approach. It bothered me at first, but now i really like it. Absolutely love the drainman bottle that automatically keeps the reservior full. If you happen to buy a drainman, get the smaller version as the large is crazy huge. Even with the nice tool, i still have to call the Mrs now and then for pedal duty, there are some things are better with a participant, right?

 

[bogle]

Good to know on the drain man bleeder. I’ve never heard of it. It def would have been easier with the girl’s help for a bit, but it’s tough to get her out to the garage ha

 

[TANTO]

Looks like my "Drainman" tool is long gone for purchase. There is a MKING product that looks similar and i see Summit Racing has lots of products also. Way back in the seventies as i bike mechanic we had a very spiffy all SST pressure bleeder and it WAS needed occasionally, but it really scared me. It looked too much like those old kitchen pressure cookers that could and would blow up now and then!

 

[bogle]

Console final boss

Enough with the straightforward maintenance-y stuff, yeah? This is the first project of several that required a bunch of problem solving: wiring, making parts, asking other people to make parts, filing on brand new parts, etc.

My center console has been a work in progress since I got the car. It's been through a bunch of iterations with different gauges, wiring, and stuff in the stereo pocket. I've never really been sure exactly what I wanted the final form to be, but I knew I wanted it to be gauge-free, look pretty oem, and have some room for changes. In the last few weeks, I took some time to figure out that (probably) final form.

A bit of history. The car came with a carbon console housing a coupe gauges. Here's the console when I first got it. Note the shiny thing behind the shifter in this pic, it's the steering wheel lock and it's on a mount that's double-sided-sticky taped to the console. It has annoyed me forever as it is right in the way of my forearm



A little progress in this one, the navpod and a CAN gauge. That derpy steering wheel lock mount is still there tho



And the latest, with sweet switches and an OBDII port. At this point, I had all the data I needed from the navpod and the can bus, so only this one gauge. The remaining gauge is just there for diagnosing a voltage drop



Bonus shot to see the whole thing in context



The new new

So what is the final form? I wanted stuff to be mostly hidden unless I needed it.

• Any switches should be in the OEM switch panel
• Any ancillary buttons or lights should be under the ashtray flap
• The stereo pocket should look good

Part of me wanted a carbon console, then eventually replace my chipped door switch panels with carbon pieces as well. If I went carbon, I wanted a nice one. I looked at eurobotoque, but they didn’t have one with both an ashtray opening and a double din config.

Turns out Muse JP makes one in the right config, and though it's not carbon, it does look super OEM. They make one in both an NA1-R and NA2-R finish. I got the NA1-R version, and it looks great, the finish is really cool, matte and sparkly





Since it's the early R finish, I figured I could get early OEM R ashtray flap and radio block off plate. Amayama to the rescue

Ashtray flap 77732-SL0-Z10ZA
Radio block off 77230-SL0-Z10ZA



And moment of truth, does the finish match?



I mean yeah, pretty much. "Good enough for farm use" as a friend used to say

I didn't have any of the ashtray bits. I got all new oem parts including the frame (77731-SL0-A02) the cigarette lighter ring, and the brackets.



And all mounted up



The fitment of the Muse console? Not very good. I was initially pretty bummed, thinking that there was no way the thing was going to fit.

First problem: it seemed too long. Both the top, at the vents, and the bottom, near the console armrest, didn't line up. Here's the top, the bottom had a similar gap



Turns out the radius is too large. Kinda forcing it into place at the ashtray pocket got everything to mostly line up.

Second problem, the top is like 4-5mm too wide, but only from the middle of the radio up to the top. Maybe just my dash, but it was way off.



It also needed to accommodate a 1mm thick phone mount. After a ton of careful filing and checking, it fit and still looked ok



To be continued...

 

[BBVNSX]

"Turns out Muse JP makes one in the right config, and though it's not carbon, it does look super OEM. They make one in both an NA1-R and NA2-R finish. I got the NA1-R version, and it looks great, the finish is really cool, matte and sparkly...."

Great work! thanks for sharing!

Do you know if they make LHD door trims to match the console? (RHD Gen 1 R do not fit LHD cars)

 

[bogle]

Great work! thanks for sharing!

Do you know if they make LHD door trims to match the console? (RHD Gen 1 R do not fit LHD cars)

I’m not sure they do. I think the closest match would be euro door panels, which are matte black according to Christian at ATR. My plan was to see if the local upholstery place could match the finish, if not, source some euro LHD switch panels

 

[bogle]

Console: Stereo hole

Next step, what to do about the double-din stereo space? I did buy the R radio block-off plate, but I initially thought that I probably wouldn't use it. AFAIK, in an OEM config, the block off plate is bolted to the console plastic. I didn't love totally losing that space. What if I needed more switches, or lights, or whatever in the future? I also have a CAN bus OBDII port I use every now and then, it's already mounted to a single-din pocket in there and I couldn't think of a different, nice-ish place to put it.

Well, what about magnets? Could I somehow make mount the radio block off plate with magnets? Then I could take it off anytime I needed to use the OBDII port, or whatever future exception case I come up with.

After a bunch of trial and error, buying stuff that didn't work, etc., I got these 20mm "pot" magnets with an M4 hole from Amazon. Again, with a lot of trial and error as to mounting location, I fashioned a plate out of aluminum to hold the magnets. This way, the stereo frame and the block-off plate could sandwitch the console plastic for a pretty strudy mount.



And the rear



There is a 3/16 piece of flatbar on there cause my little bracket is 1mm aluminum, which is too thin. The magnets hold 25lbs each, which is way more than necessary, so the frame needed to be pretty solid otherwise it'd bend when taking the radio panel off

On the panel side, I made some flat brackets out of 2mm aluminum. The magnets came with countersunk washers, and I found some tiny bolts at the hardware store (M4s stuck out too far).



The cage in the dash. It was a production getting this to fit with the ashtray pocket frame. Originally there was an L bracket that mounted to the bottom of the frame, then to the back of the dash. The screw you see on the bottom right of the frame was the solution, no more L brackets. Not ideal screwing new holes into the dash, but it worked out.



And here it is with the console plastic. Not pretty, but it'll almost always be hidden



And on! Oooh yeah



The double-din hole is exactly the same height as the plate, so there is a tiny gap, but it's fine.



The gap actually helps with the mounting and dismounting. Something I was worried about was misalignment when mounting. But it actually works really well. Between the double-din hole bottom edge, the dash sides, and the magnet locations, it pretty much pops into exactly the right place. The magnets could be half-power, though, it takes a bit of force to pop off

Next up: deeper into the console...

 

[bogle]

Console: Ashtray pocket

Next step in the console journey was figuring out how to put things in the ashtray area. In my previous console configuration, I had a few bits on the switch panel that needed to go somewhere in the new console: alarm buttons + LED, water / meth LED, USB port to the head unit, and it would be nice to keep the volt meter.

Here's the old config, everything listed is occupying the right-most four switch spots:



Ideally all those things would be accessible but mostly hidden, thus the ashtray. I really wanted a little panel covering the ashtray hole here:



You can see I already had a solution for the USB port situation. That little unit fit perfectly in place of the cigarette lighter. It has one charging port connected directly to power (top USB-C) and a passthrough USB port to the headunit (bottom USB-A) for data I/O.

In @Chris_Lum's air cup install video, he made a panel for his air cup switches and it seemed reasonably sturdy:



I gave it a shot with 3mm plastic panel:



And in the ashtray frame:



But mine sucked. I thought I could make it kinda friction fit, but it turned out to be pretty floppy.

What I really needed was something that slid into the ashtray pocket just like the OEM ashtray. I even bought the OEM ashtray thinking I could modify it to add a panel to the front. After getting it, it seemed like a lot of work for a crappy outcome, though.

I came across @Wild Turkey's ashtray pocket cubby and it was perfect, just missing the panel. I don't have CAD skills or a 3D printer, though, so I would need help. Could I get one printed and add a panel? Or would he be down to modify it for a panel?

I PM'd him and asked ... he said yes! Shortly after the ask, I had everything I needed, including a panel printed specifically for my stuff and a blank panel for future changes:



Thanks so much @Wild Turkey! He also made a thread about this panel with the 3D print files. If you want one and have a 3D printer, you can go HAM.

Here is the pocket in the ashtray frame:



It's handy that the rear is cut out as it means I can access the mounting screws. Because of my wire routing situation, it would be a real pain to install the screws then the pocket without that cutout.

All buttoned up:



And lit up:



Everything in the panel is now on a 10 pin connector for easyish console removal:



The wiring is not perfect. Everything in the panel is front loaded and has wiring permanently attached to the thing, e.g. the LEDs. Probably the ideal wiring situation would be a small connector for the panel itself inside the pocket, and also this console connector. Then I could remove the panel and disconnect it, unscrew the console without the panel flopping around, then unplug the 10 pin. Or even better: get rid of the dumb WMI LED and control water meth with the ECU, and use a more OEM alarm setup. But fine for now...

 

[Honcho]

That looks really good! I have Tim's ashtray insert and use it for my phone holder- works great!

 

[bogle]

Console switches

In the prior console setup, I had a couple rocker switches: one for the water / methanol controller and one for the navpod headunit. Here is that old setup again for memory jogging purposes:



There probably is a world where long-term I don’t need either of these switches, but for now I do. The water / meth controller has failed once, so it needs a kill switch, and the headunit draws a fair amount of power when the car is off—a common problem with these ATOTO headunits.

Generally my goal is to move to a more OEM vibe in the cabin, I really wanted to use the OEM switch panel behind the shifter for these switches, plus a couple other functions that will be the subject of other posts. Well here it is! Tada:



Now I have the radio (half-mast antenna PN 39158-SL0-003) and WMI controller (fog light PN 35180-SL0-003) on the left, and a couple new functions on the right. Yay win, and they look good!

I won’t go into detail about the switch wiring here. There is an all "about the console switches thread" with the wiring pinouts, plug/connector part numbers, etc.

The wiring turned out to be one of the most time-consuming and fragmented bits of work I did on the car in this pass. I’m a software engineer and in that world there is something called "technical debt." Tech debt is basically the accumulation of quick fixes and hacks because doing it the right way takes more time. Sometimes teams "pay down" tech debt and spend a bunch of time cleaning things up to make them better, but also unlock faster and better future work, even though the end result might not be all that different to the user.

Well, my car has wiring debt, especially in the console. There have been so many systems, sensors, gauges, and other things added over the years that the wiring is pretty crappy. Now was the time to pay down a bunch of that wiring debt. I removed wiring for unused things, rewired a few CAN pathways, consolidated some independent looms, reworked the power distribution plugs in the console, added a relay for the headunit, added wiring for a whole new system plus a new CAN sensor, and finally, obviously, wired up all the switches.

I don't have a great way to illustrate all these little jobs, but here are a couple pics. One of the switches wired up:



Note that the antenna switch is normally closed, so I needed to mod it to be normally open (more details here):



And here is everything finished with the switch loom all ready to go:



The wiring may still look a little crazy, but it’s a lot better than it was. Also, I used split loom anywhere I think I may need to add or change things. The split loom came in pretty handy with my consolidation efforts and running the new WMI fluid level sensor. Then I used Raychem DR-25 shrink tube on areas where I feel things will be pretty stable.

 

[bogle]

Small console things

We're on the console home stretch here! Along with all this console work, I managed to squeeze in a couple small life improvements as well

Phone mount

I have had a PanaVice phone mount bracket with a magnetic phone mount for a while. It's great, but it didn't charge the phone. I'd need to fumble around with an extra cable every time I got in the car:



I got a new one with charging skills (Spiegel magsafe charger) that is intended to double sticky tape to the dash. Double sticky tape is jank, obviously, the goal was to bolt it to the PanaVice bracket. Turns out it has a 15mm ball with an M4 bolt hole. I wasnt able to reuse the original one, but amazon had 15mm SS ball replacements, and I had an M4 standoff, off we go:



Then all mounted up. The wire is a little unsightly, but all good.





Armrest panel

The last owner had drilled a few holes in the armrest for wiring. I've been nervous about putting small things in the armrest for fear they will just roll out into the ether.



I made a little panel out of ABS to cover up the holes and the screw holes. Much better:




Knee bolster

And finally, a fresh knee bolster. While not technically console, it’s close enough to console for this post. In an effort to load up on things when I am paying an assload for shipping from Japan, I got this along with the new carpet from Mita.



And in place: