First photo of the wheels on the car when it's clean. First chance I've had to wash it in weeks!
So much better!
Exhaust
I'm getting the bypass pipes fitted to the exhaust on Saturday. £130 plus VAT from a well known local garage. I was following a new Boxster Spyder the other day and the sound was outrageous. Not overly loud, but gorgeous and full of presence. Sounded exactly like the videos I've seen of 986's with bypass pipes, so the moment I got out of the car, I called the garage and booked it in.
Projector Headlights
The next project after that will be the headlights. I've really, really wanted the litronic headlights when looking to buy the Porsche, but this example was in such perfect mechanical and cosmetic condition that I had to buy it even though it was a basic spec. The plan was to add the optional extras back onto the car myself. Including litronic-type headlights.
The plan was to open my headlights, buy projectors, fit them to the headlights, re-assemble the headlights and use HID 5000k bulbs (currently being used anyway). This would give the much better projector light output that's on the litronics, but wouldn't have self-levelling and washers. Still, couldn't really care for those. It's the light output that I'm interested in.
The trouble is, my facelift clear lights are around £200 a pop, and I don't fancy trying it on those in case I break them. Pre-facelift headlights are easier to open due to their silicone being drier over the years, and you can pick them up for around £50 each online, which is a great price to practice on. The obvious trouble there is that pre-facelift lights have the orange plastic.
BUT, after reading a thread online about actually being able to de-amber pre-facelift lights easily, it's what I'm going to do. It works by sanding down the orange until you reach the clear plastic underneath (about 1.3mm of orange plastic to sand through), and then polishing it back up. The result is headlights that look identical to facelift headlights. So I can now buy cheaper pre-facelift headlights to open up, and if I manage to open them without a problem and install the projectors, I can de-amber them and fit them to the car. They'll transform to old pre-facelift reflector lamps to facelift clear projector lenses. The whole job, including the projectors and pre-facelift lamps, will be around £130. Compared to the £800 price tag of litronics, that's outstanding.
That's one modification that I'm really looking forward to.