Bilbo's Scrapeyard Spec Eunos

and that

Rich.

Haha, I was thinking that the other day actually! But I will hold back on a name change until it doesn't feel deadly to drive anymore!


It's actually the biggest point for me I think!


Haha, to be honest it's not very often we make noise so it's all good. But yeah it was pretty loud haha.

Well fingers crossed for you. If it hasn't been bodged in the past hopefully it won't be as bad as mine has been.

Been a little while as always, been busy! The unit is a go, and it's coming together nicely! I've got most of my stuff in there now that I need (apart from a few bits that are at my parent's that I'll get after Lockdown 2: Electric Avenue has finished) and I haven't wasted any time getting the 5 apart and prepared for what has now become a lengthy refurb/rebuild.

So here it is:



2 floors, the bottom can fit 5-6 cars, and the top is a mezzanine with space for all of our parts and tools. There's 6 of us and we have divided the space up nicely, it's turning into a proper cool little workshop!

I now have quite a bit more stuff than this, and will be getting some racking for extra storage:



We have put the 5 in sideways to maximise space:



For anyone into proper cool classic cars, yes the yellow car is a Toyota Celica, I believe a '77 plate. It belongs to my mate, and it has been off the road dry stored since 1986! It still has the tax disc from '86 in the window. A little tatty, and in need of some major recommissioning, but pretty damn clean underneath. We have sort of penciled it to hopefully be somewhat ready by later on next year, would be awesome to see it on the road. Very cool cars, and you see very few of these in the UK that aren't the Fastback versions.


I started off on the 5 by stripping the wings and bumpers off, this maximised front and back space for a start! Plenty to do for the respray, but it is getting closer now, the body prep will begin soon:



I decided it was time to rip the centre console out and properly sort out the wiring, get my switches wired in etc.



I have made the decision to relocate the radio and heater controls, getting rid of certain things that weren't needed in the process. I have gutted the inners of the glovebox so it is now just a cover that opens, to reveal the radio and a small cubby box which was previously part of the tombstone console:



I also looked at the various parts of the heater controls, and have binned off the bits I don't need. I always have my heater on Windscreen setting, and I never have it on recirculate, so both those sliders were redundant to me. I cut the heater control panel down to just a small square, retaining the fan speed setting, and A/C (now just a second fan) button. As for the heat control slider, as this works on a push/pull cable mechanism, I am going to fit it into the dash next to the driver, sort of like a weird Choke type cable that can be pushed and pulled to adjust the heat setting.



As you can see, chopping down the heater panel has saved a load of space wherever I decided to put it, it goes nicely down next to my left knee now, and I have tested it out and it is mounted far away enough to not be an issue for leg room. I have tested and it all works.


With my interior LEDs, exterior neons, and 1-into-2 cigarette lighter attachment, wires were just everywhere. It was a mess, and I got sick of it. So I decided to pop the cig lighter out, hide it behind the dash, and I Dremeled out the hole where it was so that my double cig lighter unit fits snugly:



I usually keep both sets of lights plugged in, but 2 USBs are also available for charging.

I've sorted some wiring out, and it is ready to be wired onto my switches for the switch panel. I've cut templates out to redo the metal backing panel for the tombstone, which I'm going to have on both the large lower hole and smaller upper hole where the heater controls were. The upper hole will be my switch panel, and the lower hole I am planning to run a Nexus tablet, and hopefully get the bluetooth add-on for my ECU so that I can run Shadowdash and display multiple gauges right in front of me without the need for the laptop!


All in all good progress! A second 5 belonging to a mate has joined mine now, albeit a rather rusty breaker mk2.5. It is/was an Arizona edition, but it had been bodged/neglected rust wise, and the parts far far outweighed the value of the complete car. Lovely colour in the right light though, it has the same tone to it as those yellow Renault Spiders.

That unit looks absolutely perfect, wish I'd invested in commercial property few years back lol! Would love to see the progress on the Celica build when you get round to it, its such a iconic boso car and has that original mustang vibe from the rear. Once of those or a Kenmeri Skyline would be on my bucket list, shame about the prices of these now but at least the Celica is a little more attainable.

Good progress on the car, but with a workshop like that I'd be spending a lot of time there so should get plenty done, wiring can be a pain though, I'm putting off pulling things apart to source some very minor gremlins as I'll probably make it worse .

I can see the 5 is fairly low so you'll probably know, when you go over a massive, obnoxiously large, thicc speedhump (at an angle of course, not head on splitter destruction), what is usually the first thing that clunks underneath, is it the frame rail or the sill/sideskirt area? I can see theres a few more things that hit before the oil pan so just curious. I think I'm 305-310mm at the front at the moment (centre of wheel to ground) so nothing drastic.

 I have to agree with this! But full respect for trying something different 

Terrible photo, but this is the aircon I yeeted out:



It was dead and I removed the aircon box inside months ago, so this was just a job I was putting off. Saved a load of weight and took the bracket off as well, which is a bit tricky to get to, but weighs quite a lot. The front facing bolt on the bracket I re-fitted, but used a spacer on the bolt so it would thread in the same as before. This is also an oil pump bolt I believe, so needs to be re-fitted to prevent oil seeping.

I wired up my second fan (the wire between the loom plug and fan plug was missing, so I just soldered a wire in instead). I then took the 2 wires that went into the interior aircon box originally and soldered those up to bridge the connection. The AC button now functions purely as a secondary fan, handy if I ever get any cooling issues!


So I wanted to make a switch panel up that could be mounted under the center tombstone, but also not be attached to the tombstone so that I could just leave it in place and not disturb any wiring if I ever needed to remove the tombstone. To do this I need a spacer of some kind to mount the switch panel to, and also to butt it up tight to the tombstone itself. I was looking around for just anything, didn't need to be pretty. Then I saw a fusebox lying around from the mk2.5 my mate has broken for parts. I took it, pulled the lid off, cut the ends off of the lid, and used the original HVAC screw holes, and made this:



Ugly! But sturdy, and also hidden. I made up a new switch panel that was wide enough for this area, drilled the holes out for the switches, sanded it with 2000 grit to get a brushed look, and have now mounted it to the spacer:



It fits perfectly, tombstone clips in as it did OE, nothing in the way. Lovely. I also spliced into my wideband live wire and ran it to a switch so I can leave it off if I sit with ignition on but engine not running (as I sometimes do), and spliced into my clutch switch and have wired this up to the Top Gun style super race red switch. This will turn Launch Control on and off. Middle switch is currently non-functional, but I will find something for this.



Looks pretty good. I have also cut out a metal plate for the double din hole below and sprayed it black. I will be mounting some strong magnets to this in order to mount a Nexus tablet.

I contacted James from DIY EFI enquiring about his soon to be available bluetooth adapter for the Speeduino. He asked me to check my ECU had the bluetooth module installed, which it does:



So he is making me a bluetooth dongle up so I can link to the Nexus tablet. I have also seen the thread by JoeyTalent in 2016, and will be planning on setting up the Nexus tablet to switch on and off on ignition power. The plan being that it will run seamlessly when I get into the car, and I can display a customised set of gauges without needing to use the laptop, ideal!