Screens here

Okay, I got the screen from e-ville.com yesterday, hooked it up to my DC adapter to make sure it's working, and hell yeah it is! Superdope. It's actually quite big as well, the frame is 2 DIN sized, so that's nice. The contrast of the screen doesn't work when you look at it a big angle, and the resolution could be better, but for the price (35€) it's magnificent. I don't need any better than that with my XBMC XBox.

So looks like I'm getting my to my goals here; all my music (over 10 GB), whole seasons of series and movies, hundreds of games and all that for the price of less than a regular Pioneer deck. Successs!

I was bored one day so I drew in some 3d plans on how to hide this baby from the thieves. ;) Unfortunately the frame is rather good option as well, it fits in the hole in my dash just perfect... Will have to consider these.

So check out later this winter when I install it!
 

Also, I've been superbusy changing engine to my winter/daily driver Fiat, bought it with a tiny leak in the head and it just grew bigger quite quickly, so I got my hands on a used engine for quite a bargain, 190€.

Brothers from another mother, left one is the supposedly properly working engine.

Fingers crossed it works, I'm on day 5 and it should be ready tomorrow. Very educating experience, never took an engine out of the bay, or worked with clutches, driveshafts and clutches. Also a super pain in the ass.

Season 3

Right'o. The winter's knocking on the door again. That means its a new season of make it happen.. I feel positive that this year will be more eventful at the garage point of view because unlike last year, this time the garage is only a 20 minute drive away.

On the other hand, I'm back to school for this year so my incomes are a bit lower than what they used to be. And right now my life is very good, there was a time when it was too much trouble to bother going to garage at the end of the day. Not anymore though :)

So, I expect things to happen. I'm not looking to sell the Probe, I will keep building it to the next level. We've only just begun. ;> I'll do whatever it takes to learn to drive it like an extension of hands and feet.

 Right now the Probe is sleeping under a blanket, in our garage but I will probably have to wake her up for this Saturday, as I said I'd attend a car meet with Probe if the weather permits. Seems like it will, no freezing temps yet!



This year, my aim is to do whatever I want. I wasn't very happy driving the Probe this Fall, I missed my subwoofer and some of the appearance issues were really a sore in my eye.

Power Acoustik RCA Pre-Amp Equalizer (taajuuskorjain)

So...

I'm going to start by taking things apart a bit, and install the audio system. You probably know by now that I love me some gizmos, and I decided not to simply go and get a Pioneer player. That's too boring, and this new more exciting plan is actually gonna end up a lot cheaper!

7" Cheap-O screen (read a lot of positive reviews)

Right now I'm tyring to decide between two;

I have an old softmodded XBox, I ordered a 250GB harddrive for it, and running XBMC it makes the perfect media center. 

Pros are, it uses RCA connectors for video/audio so I would have ready connections for the amps in the back and the screen in the front.

Cons are that I would have to get an inverter, and the cheap ones don't really work that well (30-50€). I could buy a more expensive inverter which produces so called True Sine Wave to eliminate the problem, or I could buy a vehicle intended computer power supply and an adapter to eliminate the need for an inverter altogether. Problem, that route costs about 100-150€, which is way more than what I'm hoping for initial investment. Also, the XBMC dashboard/gui for the XBox, while amazingly good product, doesn't have the cool stuff that the option #2 has...

My dusty Softmod XBox

Option #2;

Raspberry Pi, the 50 euro miracle

 There's this new somewhat exciting product I heard about from my teacher, it's called the Raspberry Pi. Maybe you've heard of it! It's essentially a credit card sized computer, only for the price of ~50€. It has a HDMI, WiFi, 2 USBs, 512MB RAM, it powers with 5V USB (smartphone charger, super easy to set up in car). It has an ARM processor so it can't take a Windows OS, but there's a few Linux distros, Android systems and whats exciting for me, the very new XBMC. It's the offspring of the one my console has, but it's gone lightyears ahead. There's stuff like Spotify, Youtube, Internet browsing, very good looking user interface, equalizer... Sounds good right? Especially since my smartphone can share its 3G connection over Wifi.

A blade has two edges, and on a cheap blade at least one of them SUCKS. Unfortunately the RasbPi has a horrible audio 3,5mm connection with terrible sound quality, I hear. Through the HDMI you could get a better audio, but I would have it convert from digital to analog for my amps, and cheap convertors are not that great I hear.

As the plan is to actually SAVE money making something cool (as opposed to just going to the shop and buying a ready Pioneer unit), it's pretty much a blind shot. May be, that the HDMI adapter audio out is good enough, or maybe not.

---------------



Which one I'll choose? Probably the Xbox, since I already ordered a harddrive to it. But the Pi makes for a nice plan B, and perhaps an upgrade in the future. Xbox has games and better performance, fits nicer to a small screen and has a remote controller than can control the entire system, already have it.


So, next step is ordering the screen and installing it. Then comes the amps and the wiring, after which the systems can be tested. Then I can do more decisions, whether I need the RCA equalizer or not, to buy the inverter or try the Pi, and what not. And at some point I'll try to get a new set of speakers before next summer.

Oh, my good friend and confessed reader of the blog gave me a Xmas present early;

It's one of the best brands available, so that'll definately take the place of the cheap ass filter the previous owner has left me with. It's used and little ugly (dents and bends) but it's a definate upgrade to right now! Thanks Toni!

I might do an update after the car meet. Might be next month though, it'll be still a few weeks before I get the dough to do anything with my plans.

Yo

So, it's been a while. I moved to the new garage a while back, except I've been pretty busy and it wasn't until two days I got everything in order there. There's quite a lot of people in the garage, and fitting my junk next to their 7 years collection on the shelves and all that is a bit hassle. Well, now it's behind, let's hope everything will work, truth is we aren't quite on the same planet as hobbyists but I hope we'll get along.

The new place is nice though, especially if we cleaned all the crap out so we'd have more space. That place is full of junk like TVs and scooters and a shitload of old car parts, most of them useless by the looks of them. Besides that, there's every tool available you can think of, so that's good.

So far, I've only drove my winter Mazda there, it's waiting for me to get motivated, the winter is coming and I need to put the Probe to sleep. I also repaired the front brake again cos' it started dragging again, disassembled it this time, now it works good, and did a wax job on the Probe.

I'm planning to go Sunday as there's some air in the rear brake now it seems, one of the calipers doesn't engage that well and it's making a weird noise in the corners. Also, the next month or two will pass by fixing the Mazda and I promised to repair a friends Toyota for some bucks. That's good, since I'm now unemployed, on a course to become an electricity mechanic (or whatever it's in english). I should get pretty good money from the Union once it starts running though, so it's not the end of days.

Anyhow, I'll hit back if something exciting happens. I've been a bit lazy on the blog for a while now, somehow while I'm working on the car I forget to take pictures in the heat of things, and thats the foundation of my blog so I guess thats why.

Still not winter! :))

Stakes

Well, I've been considering and weighting the sides of the scales. I haven't reached a conclusion. I just wish I could learn to like the Probe more in the time we have left this year.

Mainly one of my big issues is the difficulty on controlling the throttle. It's so hard not to hit full boost, but if you don't go in the boost zone you're going slug speed. I found out that the boost pressure is actually raised by a solenoid in the stock system, it is now about 0.55 bar and the lowest boost the wastegate spring activates at is something like 0.4 bar.  That sounds great for daily driving in the rush hours. But what if I want to go faster than that?


Then I came out a way to utilize the switch in the interior and some information over the internet.

(RIDE ADJUST; SOFT NORM SPORT)

 (not my car and not my picture)
 
Turns out I'm not the first one to not like driving with constantly high boost. Some people buy Electronic Boost Controllers but thats way off my budget and interest. I then researched more how the pressure adjusting system works, and came up with this;

Here is the link to full pic if unreadable. Link to full pic

Anyhow, if this works (I'm now trying to get it proof read by the wise ol' in the Probetalk forums) I would have a switch inside to switch between 0.4 bar (lowest possible), 0.55 bar (stock system), and whatever I set the Manual Boost Controller (MBC) to (probably 0.7 bar). Now that would be awesome.

I've also been learning to control my accelerating foot to control the pressure of the turbo and it's very hard to do but it makes the driving more to my taste. I found myself heel toeing without even thinking it in this car as well, so thats a good sign of adaptation as well. Maybe I'll grow to like it, I sure hope I do.. So much money and time has been spent, that it'd be quite crazy to turn around at this point. Well unless I really don't like the car, then it's just very unfortunate.

Anyhow, I'm going to move to a new garage more near me in Thursday, pics from there!

It's a devil

WARNING: If you don't generally have interest in reading my thoughts and writings, there's basicly nothing new here. Driving the Probe has simply got me thinking, and this long ass story is the result. So skip this post, if you will. :)



Well, the summers practicly over and I just couldn't get sleep tonight. So I decided to write up on what it's been like to be a Probe driver so far.

A lot of people call their red cars the Red Devils, even if its a fuckin red Nissan Micra, which has always seemed utterly stupid to me. But for me, my only red devil is this Probe. I've sacrificed so much money and time to this devil in order to get to this point where she's running, and she only wants more parts, more gasoline, more throttle and speed, and ultimately she will burn my driving license for sure.

Initially, upon my first few drives I had some huge problems to adjust to driving the Probe. I didn't enjoy it that much, thinking back, the handling in corners and the clutch is quite strange, it's a damn big and pretty heavy car so it's a bit hard to maneuver in tight spaces. I don't have the hifi system in Probe which I have in Mazda so I don't get my daily dose of loud music anymore. In fact, the only thing that felt worth it all was the acceleration. 

When you press the throttle, and turbo kicks in, it is a feeling that is very hard to describe and unlike any other car I've driven before. The horsepower number in the technical sheet doesn't give any justice to what it feels like to accelerate this beast. I'm thinking there must be some tuning done to the car which I haven't noticed, but the boost is stock 0.5 bars, and unless its a bigger turbo or an altered engine, I don't know what it could be.

What I do know is, having drived 325 BMW, 2.7 V6 H-Coupe, 2.0 T5 Volvo V40, Audi A4 1.8T, and many others, this car is way beyond them, in terms of raw power, no matter what the papers say. And I'm not saying this to provoke debate or to praise my car; in fact, I've come to the realization that powerful cars aren't really my cup of tea. They say with power you get more hungry the more you eat, that just doesn't seem to apply for me. I'm a little scared of the thing as of it is, to be honest.. With all the wheelspin, understeer, pulling etc, and I have the balls to admit, as of now I couldn't nearly have 99% control over the damn thing like I think I do with my ever-so-faithful Mazda.

Because, in the end, it's all so very pointless. If you mean to follow the Law, that is, and which I do. I do admit sometimes going to the gray area where I might get a small fine, and sometimes in the countryside where it's safer, might go a step further than that. But a car like my Probe just doesn't have much to give within those boundaries. She only wants more and more throttle and speed, empty corner in the traffic lights turning to green; in a blink of an eye you've reached 60mph, you know the limit is 40mph and you just wanna go faster and faster, and it's almost like the Probe wants you to do just that. And in the end, what seperates my Probe from all the cars I've driven is solely the acceleration.

And I know very well how it's gonna end, I'm gonna end up losing my driving license and paying thousands of Euros for my moment of absolute freedom. I was quite close to doing that earlier today.

 And to sum it all up, I'm not very satisfied. I've come to realize, the love I have for cars and the hobby is, and has always been, because of the people involved. I miss those days when we would drive around, goof on the local gas station until the morning dawned. We would make our cars "better" when not doing that, installing better audio systems, exterior or interior eyetreats or just fixing them to keep them on the road. We would sometimes help each other and do things together, and when someone had something new in their car, it was all very exciting.

During these 3 years I've had this project, we have all grown and scattered. I could pick up my phone and call those people, but those meetings would be awkward in a way or another, and to be honest my life is super busy with work, relationship and garage, so it would probably lead to nothing good. As do they.

 All in all, it makes me think what really matters. And with this new light I can't anyhow justify buying a 800 euros coilover set to my car. Which is just a quarter of the full money I need to somehow finish the project in my mind. The car needs a new paint, front end is still the same old (brakes, discs, suspension links). The interior is not close to being ready, the audio system would cost me about 500. I want a different front bumper and the windows tinted.

And frankly, this car could never be a car I'd simply drive. The pleasure of owning is a lot more in working on it and creating something perfect.


So. I'm at a crossroad here. I'll either finish the paint scheme in the interior and do a make over for the car this winter, in order to sell it in the spring, or then I will keep working on it. I will try to drive it as much as possible now, so I could find out which is the better way for me.

I do love cars though, so I would probably buy a small sporty car, a newer one that doesn't need a complete overhaul and could be used around the year. I'm thinking Top Gear Car of the Year, Ford Puma (laugh ahead) or similar. And maybe buy a gokart when the Laws of the Street are choking me. Cos' honestly, for me it brings more enjoyment to push a small agile car near to its limits, than flirt around with a small fraction of capabilities of a larger, more powerful sports car. I guess I always knew that of myself, but thinking back I probably thought having a turbo sportster would somehow get myself more involved in the community.


And now it won't cease to amaze me how much we car-bug bitten men use money and time on our cars. Who of us has ever came with a good answer to the most obvious question, "Why?"

Conclusions

So, back from work. Anyhow, I got it all together, but it was a Sunday, so I had no biz to the inspectors as they were closed. I'd come back in two weeks.

The next day I couldn't hold it so I drove that hundred kilometres again to get it inspected. I had 1 hour until the inspection. After such a long time I took the Probe to the sunlight and headed towards the station.. And thats when the ANTI LOCK came on! The ABS was working very bizarrly, I think there's air in the pump or something. Anyhow, I mended it.. in a way, in a record time of 30 mins I managed to get the brakes working normally and the locklight to co-operate with me. With shaking hands I drove that car to the nearest station, and only a few minutes until they closed managed to get my car in the inspection queue.

Failed. The damn front brake was dragging just a little bit, didn't notice it, and it's one of those drags that would've begone'd after a lil bit of pumping the brakes. Furious, I drove back to the garage and opened the brake caliper, flushed the piston with oil by pressing it in and out and wiping everytime and finally greased that and the guide pins. Turns out, there's no dustboot in the caliper, either it's missing or doesn't belong there, but that pretty much explains why it dragged. Time to buy them Subary 2 piston calipers next year I guess.

Well, by the time it was fixed, all the inspection stations were closed obviously, so I headed back home, and prepared for some torture, knowing the car would be ready to go but not having any cash at all to go to the city my garage is at to get it inspected and on the road.

Luckily, my good friend Toni decided to help me out, two days after we journeyd together in his Omega to the Garage City again and went for inspection... But the brakes were un even in the front now.

Luckily, I don't know why really, maybe it was within the tolerance, I got the damn stamp! Finally, after 2 years. We fueled her up and gave her some new wiper blades, washed in a machine (sorry buddy) and by then I was halfway late from work.

So there it is, sitting in my parking lot, working.. pretty good.

Whats bothering me is a stupid clicking noise coming from the dash, it varies by speed so I think its the speedo cable. Also one of the LEDs I soldered started flickering, and the steering wheel is one notch to the side. The front suspension is ready for retirement and the attachment of the exhaust still worries me. Overall, I don't trust the car much yet, but it feels good to drive it, finally.. After two years, so many hours and euros later, it's finally in this condition. :)

The paper says "Inspection result : ACCEPTED"

Also it's way too quiet in there without a stereo, but like I said, I'm completely broke right now, I will probably fix my USB powered speakers in there for the rest of this year.. :D So far the dump valve has been my audio. ;) Then it needs a proper wax and I will get the window tints later on.

Anyhow, I'm probably gonna write a little bit about driving the car later on and conclude this year somehow. I'm gonna be a bit busy with my girlfriends Nissan and my daily/winter ride Mazda the upcoming months.

Oh and I found a garage in the city I live in, if it all works out I'll be moving my stuff there in October so I will post about that. You could expect for more stuff to happen next winter. :)

Anyhow, thank you for reading my blog, it's been a pleasure. My summervacation has begun ;> Enjoy it while it still lasts!

The lot

A lot has happened. I haven't been updating the blog despite having spent a lot of time in the garage lately, but thats mainly because I simply haven't had the time, and I tried to rush things after I got the ABS sensors so didn't take time to shoot a lot of pictures or anything.

So last friday I headed to the garage, I had a lot to do until the inspection stage. I soldered the LEDs to the steering column in a zippy, quickly got the interior together;

Unfortunately one of the LEDs stopped working later on. I used the LEDs I previously ordered for T5 socket, they were very easy to remove the pockets, just straighten the legs and pull out. Saves a lot of trouble since I didn't have to solder the resistors. :)

Then I put the ABS sensors in, and changed the oils. Changing the oil is always a confusing task, no matter how good I get at cars it never goes quite like in the movies. I ended up with about half a litre of oil on the floor, cos' I used an old canister which side had been cut open as a draining pan. Then you can easily open the cap and pour it through there to the waste oil container. Unless you have 5L of oil in the can and a way too small funnel. :D

Lucky I wore my paps jacket ;D Also I didn't have any new copper gaskets unlike I thought I would, but then I remembered an old folks trick; if you heat the copper ring to a red glow you can use it perfectly again;

Well I almost got it red with that "lighter" :D But it worked.

Anyhow, I need to rush to work now so..

To be continued. :)