tommy

Thanks - that's the Eisenmann race exhaust; fun at some times, annoying as stepping in fresh dogsh*t others.

jcnash

Good to hear the rest of your trip was fun! I've thrown on both headlights and so far they're great. Waiting till the spring to get my front bumper re-sprayed before throwing on the HID fogs in some clear fog assemblies with some yellow Lamin-X.

tommy

Cool. Good thing you're getting the bumper resprayed - getting to the damn foglights without having the bumper removed is like one of the tests in "Saw". I couldn't believe how hard access to those little buggers is.

tommy

So small update time!

For anyone with the new new key, here's a pic of the back of the cover that you have to remove to gain access to the battery (just one with this key, btw):



You can see the two prongs on the left; they go into the front of the key, and act as the hinge; the larger end on the right has a tab that you can't see there that you have to release to open the cover. (so, take out the mechanical key like other versions, but then use the mechanical key to lift up that tab, and the cover will come off). Once you know what you're doing, it's easy, but I was trying to use the instructions for the first new key that was available, where the cover slides off, and obviously that doesn't work. Luckily, I stopped before I hulked out and completely destroyed the key.

And now for some tail.

As previously reported, I bought infected's OEM tails, as my Renntech spoiler is missing one of the side pieces, and there's some nasty residual glue on that tail. I used some car model tail light tint paint and clearcoat and painted them this past week, and finally got around to installing them today (there was some a-hole at either the bodyshop, dealer, or my indy who replaced three of the nuts on the passenger's side tail with non-oem stuff , so I'll have to order a set of new ones and swap them out when I can get around to it). On with the pics:


The pic above is showing infected's on the left and my oem light on the rear; you can see that the oem ones are a bit darker.


In this pic above, I've got both "new" tails on and you can see the Renntech spoiler with only the center piece. I'll have to admit that it looks weird, but I'll also admit that I have no interest in getting a new spoiler, if I can either find one, or removing the center piece (at the moment, things may change).

Final pic is my 250k mileage badge I finally got in on Saturday. Looks pretty good, and got a cool binder and certificate with it as well. MB gets a gold star from me today.


Enjoy! For bigger pics, they're all on my gallery here.

Peydidy

250k?! Wow congrats on the mileage award!

tommy

Don't forget that's kilometers, not miles. I'm only at 160k in miles.

Peydidy

Haha my bad, either way glad its still running strong

infected

Congrats on the star, Tommy.

MBfinatic

Is your dash in km?

johnand

Glad to see you finally got the mileage badge and it was work the wait

tommy

It was in Canada, eh? Pretty cool actually; converted over to km and deg celsius, though still had no idea what I was talking about.

I use metric when it's more impressive, mostly with the ladies.

Midnight Koop

guess who this reminded me of?

tommy

Not me - I iron my smurf t-shirts as soon as they come out of the dryer.

tommy

In case anyone is interested, they do sell the "oh sh*t!" handles in black. I just ordered a pair from my local dealer as I was getting my cabin filter and oil filter for my Service B I'll be doing this coming weekend. Also ordered the little mounting brackets in black too. As I'll be having my sagging headliner redone (either in black alcantara or just black cloth), wanted to get new handles instead of dying the old ones, since I'll be touching those handles every so often. Already have the A pillars in black from Steve; will be reducing the gauge total down to one, as the tach and d-pic have both got lcd issues. Besides, the three-gauge pillar adds a bad little blind spot that I don't need.

So hoping to get the headliner redone in spring. Right now it's too damn cold to worry about how the inside of the car looks.

BTW: the two steering wheels I have (non-C7 versions) will be thrown out if no one makes an offer. Right now, I'd be very easy to negotiate with, so if anyone has any interest in a coupe steering wheel, now's the time, before they end up on Staten Island landfill.

tommy

So it's been 5 months since an update, meaning it's time to show what little changes I've done. I had my RPF1s powercoated a couple of months ago for the crx in a two-step "gold vein", so threw in the front tow hook as well for the same treatment. Also thought it might be a good idea to get some lug nuts done, in smurf blue, of course. Couple of other things- painted the star in the rear to match the C230 badge, in a slightly different blue than the Orion. And stole Frank's idea (thanks! ) and put a gold "Carlsson" sticker just above their front lip on the driver's side; subtle, but I like it.

My parts accumulation for the black headliner has gained one more - bought the overhead light console in gray, and will be dyeing it in black. So all I need is to figure out what to do with the visors (probably send them to Dallas Custom to get done in black leather), see if I can get the visor clips in black, dye a couple of things, and then wait for September for getting my inspection and have them do the alcantara headliner as well - no interest in doing it myself, honestly. Pics:









There's a meet Friday at BMW US HQ in between work and home for me, so I'll be showing up in the Benz. Hope the car doesn't get egged. Have been in the BMWCCA ever since the 1 series came out - was going to switch over, but the Benz sensed that, and has been very reliable for the past couple of years, which has now pushed that off. Looking forward to the new Fiesta ST. Actually, going to Citi Field in Queens in August to do an event that Ford's hosting, where it and the Focus ST will be available for driving, as well as the "competition". Should be a fun day! If anyone's interested, probably still slots available all over the country - do a search.

EDIT: And in case anyone's interested, here's a pic of the CRX as it stands now, with the wheels powdercoated. Very fun car.

kluvsbenz

Penetration(Penn) State? Really? Nice rides, homie

tommy

Class of '88, missy!

tommy

I guess I'm the first here - just sent a set of:
interior door pulls
window switch surrounding trim
door handle trim
overhead dome light

off to O'Carbon (seeing their name always makes me think their Irish ) to be redone in blue kevlar. Should be very similar to the blue cf on my Brabus steering wheel. So O'Carbon, you're on the clock.

And just got some minor fixes done to the lemon - had rear wheel bearings fixed (also another bushing I've never heard of before - will edit later with the name of it) and tranny fluid swapped out. The annoying sound coming from the axle is now gone, thankfully. But then, this weekend, my car revolted against me only spending a little bit of money on it, and the panorama roof completely went screwey . The driver's side is now sitting up higher than the passenger's, and that's as good as it gets. Had the always-lovely black gorilla tape on that side for a couple of days until I could get it in. Not looking forward to the bill on this one. And my car had been doing so well........

tommy

Ouch!!!! :
Just got the call; entirely new sunroof assembly necessary. Gonna be very painful. Will probably get the car back on Monday, and shortly afterwards, be selling a kidney. PM me with any offers.

samaritrey

wow that sucks man sorry sadly I can't help you with the kidney I still have two good ones

tommy

Don't worry, Trey - I'll wait for you to destroy one.

Picked up the car today. It's funny - you can spend thousands for a new panorama roof, and through the tears, still think it's kinda cool that I can now open the roof from the inside with just one pull of the sunroof switch instead of the pull it once, wait for the sunroof to open 2/3 of the way, and then pull the switch again dance. Still have to hold it the whole time for closing. It may seem like a teeny upgrade, especially considering how expensive the repair was.
It's good to have my baby back - the C300 loaner with the engine shutting off at full stops was kind of freaking me out.

EDIT: Damn, this subforum is getting slow. Pretty soon, it'll be like the other non-W204 forums here.

VVF

(offtopic) I thought you could disable that "start-stop" eco feature thing on w204s...

tommy

Yes, there's an "ECON" button just south of the radio. More fun to b1tch about it, though. Maybe you can remove it on your settings, but on my car, it was on automatically every time I started the car.

LILBENZ230

...Thousands...

tommy

Can't make an omelette without breaking a few benjamins. Do yourself a favor - if you buy a car with a panormama roof, don't break it.