Lovely, thank you!

Yes, ordered some of that exact product. Thanks, Bruce and Ger [emoji106]

Along with the leather cleaning at the end of the previous page, I managed to give the car a good coating of HD Wax this evening.

http://i.imgur.com/9QLs426h.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/DSjgbMgh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/O9jZWTqh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CcwWhOJh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/9IBi7PWh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/wZiv6HZh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/LDiv223h.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/v3snstXh.jpg

And a better one of the wind deflector decal:

http://i.imgur.com/b7JWnkjh.jpg

You guys are welcome:cheers:

the little touches make such a huge difference! great job.

Many thanks :)

Greased my brakes today as they started to squeal a little - I forgot to grease them when I installed them. Oops!

While the wheels were off, I decided to try to remove the years of brake dust/fluid stains that were on the alloys.

Before (this was AFTER I washed the wheel!):
http://i.imgur.com/DzyBcOLh.jpg

After:
http://i.imgur.com/i12RE7ch.jpg

Before:
http://i.imgur.com/WmlXlS0h.jpg

After:
http://i.imgur.com/6sPTVEVh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/TBYwRtch.jpg


They're not perfect inside, but they were a nightmare to get clean. I had to use a mix of AutoGlym Custom Wheel Cleaner, 2500 grit wet and dry sandpaper, and Meguiars Ultimate Compound. They're far better, and seeing a clean alloy wheel barrel through the spokes is far more attractive!


Back wheel:
http://i.imgur.com/fAAVWcAh.jpg

Front wheel:
http://i.imgur.com/RfARZUIh.jpg

Much better, you think? :)

Looks great. Nice result.


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So much better!

Have you tried an iron dissolver such as Iron-X or Decon Iron?

Thank you :) quite pleased with it.

Nah I haven't actually, I don't know anything about it :/ you think that would help?

Immaculate!
Nice work, looks fantastic.:cheers:

Ger's 2003 Porsche Boxster S
 

These products chemically react with the brake dust to break it down. This reaction causes the product to turn purple (and they have an odd sweet smell). Then you rinse off.

My experience with the Car Pro Iron X is it works well on removing light brake dust on wheel exteriors, but for that baked on, old, heavy duty kind in inner wheels no matter what product you use will need a significant amount of wet sanding, compound and elbow grease.

Aaaaahhh, Merlin's Blood, Very Cherry, etc. Gotcha, I didn't know what they were called or how they worked. Thanks!

I agree, it would take a lot of treatments to move that kind of buildup, and you'd still have staining to remove anyway. A wheel brush like a Daytona Speedbrush is the best weapon in your arsenal against buildup of that magnitude forming in the first place - when coupled with a user friendly non-caustic wheel cleaner they make it so easy and pleasant to maintain the drum. A small brush for around the nuts and you're set.
Iron-X or the like I'd recommend before your periodic wheel wax/sealant. So every six months for me. (but we don't have salted roads to deal with down under)

Good advice :)

Nothing much to report, just been running the car as usual. But today I decided to install some ambient footwell lights that are on when the lights come on. This mimicks the ambient light found up by the dome light, and bathes the foot wells in a very dim orange glow. When you open the door, a brighter light turns on.

Here's what was needed - wire, two bulbs, and a soldering iron:
http://i.imgur.com/PiS3y3nh.jpg

Made a loom (testing it with a battery)
http://i.imgur.com/cynSa5kh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/3BRFHZhh.jpg

Then wired the positive into a 12v feed that the parking lights work from, and grounded the negative.

Done!

Footwells when you open the door (like before):
http://i.imgur.com/bCY1x04h.jpg

And now when you're driving at night:
http://i.imgur.com/J5blMCzh.jpg

Sorry about the quality, didn't have a tripod for the DSLR.

Very happy :)

Very nice work! I love the look and the bright/dim function:cheers: Pics look good enough to me.

Thank you :) I've been outside about 3-4 times now (it's 23:26 over here) to look at them in the dark. It looks awesome!!

That's nice work, Ger. I'm not much for electrical work. How does the parking light feed "know" the doors open or close?

I did do a mini-mod the other day. I had replaced the ashtray with the non-smokers cup a while back. Doing so left a live wire under the console that used to power the ashtray light. I removed the bulb from the ashtray (kind of tricky), drilled a small hole in the cup, plugged in the light and inserted it (fit snugly) in the hole. Viola! I did add a dab of paint on the top of the bulb to reduce glare.
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...1ea333b0a0.jpghttp://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...3630005e03.jpg


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The wires that come out of the fuse box, I tapped into the ones that went to the courtesy light. They turn on whenever that turns on, and fade out as well when the courtesy light fades :) All thanks to Particlewave for finding the information for me.

Quality mod too! I'm tempted to get the non smokers thing as well, so this may be something I do too :)

One of my alloys wasn't in the best condition, with curbing and lacquer peeling causing dirt to permanently show. I decided to give it a quick blow over with the spray cans. Only took an hour.

The alloy as it stood
http://i.imgur.com/z68fm31h.jpg

This is the problem with it. This is as clean as I can possibly get it
http://i.imgur.com/W0FizY6h.jpg

Rubbed down the bad areas
http://i.imgur.com/2at8ddKh.jpg

Primer
http://i.imgur.com/U2a7184h.jpg

First coat
http://i.imgur.com/YjEEY1Hh.jpg

Second coat
http://i.imgur.com/lXOI9dBh.jpg

Lacquer
http://i.imgur.com/PERHe6Jh.jpg

Finished
http://i.imgur.com/GXzZ3Ykh.jpg

Looks much better on the car.
http://i.imgur.com/fUzsnXFh.jpg

But then, just my luck, I dropped the wheel brace and it chipped the paint
http://i.imgur.com/JLP3bDEh.jpg

Oops. Will go over that part another time, can't be bothered at the moment!

Either way it's far better now. To be honest I should have rubbed the whole alloy down as it's left a few areas a little 'bobbly' from where stones have hit the wheels over the years. But still, for an hours work I can't really complain.

Got me thinking though. What do you guys thing if I colour the wheels in anthracite?

I would stick with silver. The respray looks great:cheers:

Cheers bud :)

Thanks to Polaris for coming up with the AutoTop Arduino modification, I spent the day doing just that.

Got everything ready. Resistors, transistors, wires, arduino board, etc.
http://i.imgur.com/ubRg8rjh.jpg

Complete. Looks a mess, but essentially it's something you plug into the switch harness, and the switch plugs into this, so it sits in the middle.
http://i.imgur.com/IFlPIdbh.jpg

Wired up
http://i.imgur.com/liroOpNh.jpg

And a video showing it working!
https://youtu.be/9JIRxSIefpA

Over the moon with it. This, coupled with the modification to allow me to do this on the move without the handbrake is brilliant. Approaching a roundabout in traffic? No problem - don't have to hold the button, stopping the roof to change gear and continuing the roof. Just one click and I'm done. Also when setting off in the morning, I can just buckle up, click, and start driving :)

The whole thing cost about £30 including the board and required parts.

I've had this week off work, hence why I've had so much time to wire that damn thing up. I found some cans of primer, lacquer and three tins of anthracite from when I had my last car - I bought them to re-spray the wheels anthracite but never did.

And then I thought, f*** it. I'll re-spray the Porsche wheels anthracite to see how they'd look. It may update it quite a bit, and if I don't like it, I'll just re-spray them back to silver. Simple. I've got tones of primer, spray (both anthracite and silver) and tons of lacquer, so I can re-spray them back for free if need be.

In total this took me around 3 hours, from absolute start (getting all the things from the cupboard) to complete and everything tidied away.

Washed and ready to go
http://i.imgur.com/lvT0hkJh.jpg

Rubbed the curbing and chips back
http://i.imgur.com/2PIqFL4h.jpg

Primer is primer, no need to photograph.

First coat
http://i.imgur.com/kzx3DX1h.jpg

Many coats later with lacquer
http://i.imgur.com/fFrU1FAh.jpg

Also Did the centre caps
http://i.imgur.com/kcI1dMeh.jpg

And finished.
http://i.imgur.com/4LJ6etUh.jpg

And on the car
http://i.imgur.com/OSvIFjEh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Vc2qH2Kh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/G1k8Aich.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/QfwYgH1h.jpg

All done with spray cans. Please excuse the car too, it's filthy.

They need another couple of coats of lacquer to make them ping even more. I'll take them off one evening in the week to give them a quick blast of lacquer. I'd do them on the car but it'll probably run as I'd want to coat it quite thick.

What do you guys think? Yay or nay?

Top notch, Ger! And I like the deck of cards trick, too.

I say "Yay", looks great and like you said, the lacquer will make them look even better!

Thanks guys. Yeah I did put about 2-3 coats of lacquer on, but I want to cake on another few layers on soon. I don't have to mask the tyre up or anything, just whip the wheel off and spray a nice few coats on.

Did you spray the rims also from the inside. It doesn't look like so.

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads02/rims1464424943.jpg

Regards, Markus

I was going to but realised you wouldn't notice much at all, so I didn't bother. It's no biggie, if I start to notice I'll give them a quick coat of paint.

You could probably call the contrasting drum a feature. I think painting the drums bright red was in fashion for a few months a year or two ago, this is a subtle look that might work quite well!

I think the rims look brilliant and you're clearly a dab hand with a spray can, very impressive tweak.

Why more clear coat, if you're after more gloss, is there enough coats on to just polish what's there? Or even wet sand then polish?

I've painted a lot of rims in VHT wheel paint (polyurethane I think it is) and all it takes to get a mirror finish in them is lightly wet sanding with 2000 grit and hand polishing with Auto Glym super resin polish. (Though I haven't tried this with their new formula)

Coincidentally, I took a pic of mine today, with their third set of tyres just fitted since painting them several years ago

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...570ba5efc8.jpg

You absolute star.

Thanks to you suggesting to wet sand and polish them rather than lacquer them again, they now have come up as if they've been professionally refurbished. I've done a few sets of wheels before but I've never wet sanded them. I've always thought that if it's just spray cans and me doing it, I don't need it. But jesus christ, after doing a small section of one I had to do the rest. They've come up like a mirror! Thank you!

Have a look:

http://i.imgur.com/oJ6W20dh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Ea3iVoQh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/rnMAZy0h.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CtmOr99h.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ZuqCaHRh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/nDgXstUh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/aHLLEQ7h.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/BZzLgGBh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/jdnAU8Rh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1YuDmWvh.jpg

Now the the car's clean, do you guys think it suits the darker wheels?

+1

Gray is always a perfect matching color for black. Looks great.

Many thanks :)

Holy cow, they look fantastic!

I'm very glad to have helped. This thread has brilliant entertainment and inspiration value, cheers.

Awesome :)

Made a start on the headlights earlier. Bought a dremel and a metal mill bit, and got to work. Didn't have much time to work on it but I got over half way through the first headlight at least.

http://i.imgur.com/i0mXz5Th.jpg

I'll finish it tomorrow, and will sand & polish it back up to a shine. Should look identical to a facelift headlight then.

The plan after that is the same - to open them up, fit a projector lens inside, and to seal them again. They'd then look like facelift litronics, but made for a fraction of the price.

And then I thought, while I've got them open, what if I change the colour to the inserts? Now this is what I was thinking. The Carrera GT has black inserts with projector lenses. Many cars have black inserts with projectors as the inserts are obsolete and don't need to reflect anything while a projector lens is present. Even the new 991 GT3 RS has black inserts.

As you can see:
http://i.imgur.com/DRn8xtnh.jpg

And this is someone's retrofit, like I'm going to do (minus the yellow indicator), but with black inserts:
http://i.imgur.com/3775ND2h.jpg

I quite like that. Here's what they look like on black Boxsters:
http://i.imgur.com/bJSwOeDh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Ib2G4zMh.jpg

So that's what I'll be doing. They'll be turned from pre-facelift egg yolk reflector headlights, to facelift modern black insert projector headlights. Very cool!

Yes, dead sexy IMO.
And flat black reflectors help to absorb any stray light splashing around from the projector - they have quite a lot of leakage.

A very good point :)

It's not good.

I've finished dremelling, sanding and polishing, and it looks like this:

http://i.imgur.com/lJhmIgdh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/RgRzeWMh.jpg

Not good at all. I didn't have a depth guide so I did it all by hand, and this has made the surface uneven. I can't seem to sand and polish it to a reflective shine at all. So there we are, it's fit for the bin.

At least it was a spare that I bought for this very reason. If I want the projectors, I'll have to do it to my main headlights. Good thing about that is the indicators are already clear. Bad thing is that they're very expensive, and I don't think I'm brave enough to split them open. So it looks like this headlight project may have to be sacked off. I'm gutted :(

Keep an eye out for nice used, clear indicators. I ended up finding a good deal on new ones(close to used price) and used those for my projectors.

Huh?

The indicators are part of the lens, it's all one piece. The clear facelift lights like I've already got on the car are £250 minimum a headlight used price so certainly not cheap.