Dashboard/fascia update

Ya, I've actually given them a try with the crossover boxes. Not bad... They could go back in, but I'm mounting them better than with hot glue if I do.

This car came standard with two 10cm door speakers and two 5.25"s behind the seats in speaker boxes. Weaksauce... My AE86 had the same setup. Apparently 5.25s up front and 6x9s in the rear is doable without too much modification. Could I do a decent setup in those sizes, plus maybe some fresh new tweeters and a smallish sub+amp (if I can find a spot for it!), for under, say, a few hundred Eurobucks? I really don't know anything about car audio design, so some hints as to the kind of stuff I should be looking at/for would be pretty useful. My new head unit was cheap and will probably be the limiting factor in sound quality.

I'd love to have the quality of the factory System 10 in my old Celica, but that's probably not going to happen on my money budget OR my weight budget...

Jay wrote: Ya, I've actually given them a try with the crossover boxes. Not bad... They could go back in, but I'm mounting them better than with hot glue if I do.

Yeah, it looks like the PO had some great ambitions, but just never installed a "high end" (or actually, any, from the looks of it ) system before.

Haven't done much on this in the last couple days, too busy at work. I'm pretty happy with how much I've been able to simplify the under-dash wiring though. Here's a quick update...

Here's a couple more pics of the mystery knob: Seems to be important so I'm not going to touch it...

The yellow wire under the centre console terminates at this bigass fuse here: I'm just going to leave it in case I need to draw power from back there for some reason in the future.

BTW it's really hard to get at the battery with an SPC rollbar installed! I hope I don't have to replace it anytime soon:

So I had a couple of nasty cracks in the fascia itself. Here's probably the worst of them:

How the heck am I going to fix that?! Well, first I needed something the right shape to brace it in position. I knew this would come in handy!

I save all my old toothbrushes when I stop using them, y'know, on my teeth. Never know when you'll need a toothbrush for something.

Add a strap to keep the ends tight:

Hey! Remember this thing?

It will live on as an integral part of my car...

I'm sure I'll find out later that it was a priceless tapestry stolen from the Sultan of Johor's collection in 1862 or something like that, but for now it gives up a nice, high-tensile piece of woven fabric that will hopefully keep my styrofoam dash together. Plus they told me in elementary school that recycling is good.

I'll wait for the glue to dry and see how that turns out. Not sure if it was the right stuff to use on this.

I was all gung-ho to rattle-can the fascia black, but now I'm not so sure. Can't go back to un-painted after I've done that. I'm waiting to see if some of the guys on the Elan forum have a pic so I can get an idea what it will look like... My eventual plan is to dye the whole interior a nice, deep black but who knows when I'll get to doing that. Probably years from now.

That knob looks a LOT like an a/c control knob as found in '78-89 Volvo 240. If the a/c in your car is gone and never will be replaced, the knob can go.

I'd be tempted to skin the whole thing with fiberglass.

Big kudos to you for sticking with this project many wouldn't haven't considered.

I think that was William Wallace's wife's hanky thing from when they got married. Probably worth a bazillion euro...oh..ahh...two bazillion euro now...