My Black Magic VR6

[Lukey. 381]

Cheers mate :-D

i would say if you do then use 430 ohm resistors, the 300s are the LEDs running at optimum which is 3volts and 30mA, 430ohm would mean they receive 2.5volts and 22mA which i think would create a nicer much less bright light that would only illuminate the control markers.

The only reason i plucked 430ohm is because they seem readily and cheaply available. The only other thing to look for would be the wattage, 0.6w seems the most common, which would give plenty of headroom as the draw would be about 0.2w - 0.3w so the resistors wouldnt be getting taxed and heating up any.

In fact this whole setup uses 1.0w and 100mA of power, far less than the stock rubbish 1 bulb setup

I like the brightness of the white markers but if someone wanted a more sublte light this is what theyd need to do

[seedy-steve 0]

Thats a nice mod

[Pearsy47 1]

what seller did you go to on fleebay !

[Lukey. 381]

Wire

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3metre-EL-Wire-Tron-glow-2-3mm-diam-2-50-meter-/150645402059?pt=UK_HomeGarden_Lighting_Lamps_Lighting_SM&var=&hash=item68c81c3f70

Inverter

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tiny-Water-Resistant-12V-Inverter-5-meters-EL-Wire-/160635011082?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item256697c00a

Maplin Order code of the LEDs - N28FN *must be resistored on the + side or they will blow immediately*

[Lukey. 381]

Just a small update, I got tired of the brightness of the LEDs in my dials so I've done what I said, put higher ohm resistors in to dull them down, i also sanded the plastic LED bulbs themselves, this has scattered the light brilliantly, before they were so brightly focused straight ahead where now they have a nice dull glow.

For quite some time its annoyed me that the tint spray chips off the fog lights no matter what I did, like this;

so I'm binning them in place of some low spec fog light blanks.

I've sanded them flat and painted them just standard gloss black

but I'm not really happy with it so am going to spray them in body colour.

Meanwhile I've finally sorted the glove box handle rattling joey style as nothing else worked too well

Hot glue, is there anything it cant do?

[hvr6 88]

got pics of the led effect?

[Lukey. 381]

Not yet I haven't been in the car in the dark yet

[hvr6 88]

would be interested to see

[Lukey. 381]

ive had a look and on the camera it looks no different to the first pic, but IRL its noticeable

[Pearsy47 1]

im liking what you have been doing ! and yea i get the same fucking problem with the light tinting ! bloody things ! keep up the good work !

[Lukey. 381]

fitted my comfort turn kit today

I missed this feature since i got rid of my audi but forgot about it, then my gf got her A3 and i was reminded of this feature and how i liked it, so i found out that VW do an OEM retro fit kit

[Lukey. 381]

I think I've finally sorted all the lighting that I wasn't happy with, be it too bright, too dim or not working at all, it's also now fully LED so will hopefully be maintenance free for a long while, these pics show the befores and afters.

After I re did the heater dials I found it too bright in these dark winter nights, so I dimmed them off a bit, no glare any more.

Before

After

Then I did my headlight switch which was pretty much no light at all.

Before

Now its much better

After

And finally the clocks, these were so dim with the crappy little 1w bulbs as standard, I swapped in some super white LEDs and played around with the amount of milliamps they received till I was happy with the result.

I think this is the best result by far, its made the clocks appear like night vision electro luminescent, its all so clearly visible while at the same time the brightness of them is really low so its not distracting in the dead of night.

They could probably do with another LED placed in the middle of the 2 dials, but the pic actually emphasises the dimness in the middle, to the naked eye its not discernible, plus I ran out of LEDs and couldnt be bothered drilling a centre hole in the top lol

Before

After

[Pearsy47 1]

love it !! i was doing the head light switch but i kninda broke it lol oh well but im planning to do somthing with my dials ! great work keep it up !!

[Lukey. 381]

yea the headlight switch was a b@stard to do, took me ages to do, then when I'd finished it, I put it in the car and snapped the casing together and it all died, so I had to take it apart and package it all up in a different way, as id soldered the LEDs by their legs and once fully together found id measured wrong and they all bent and snapped lol

[hvr6 88]

looks great

worth the grief though

[Lukey. 381]

Finished and fitted my body colour fog light blanks today, after much polishing as per the rest of the paint on the car.

Lovely clear reflection of nosey and very vain kitten

Excuse the dirty car, cant keep clean 5 minutes in this horrible weather

Old rubbish chipped tint fog lights

Nice shiny sparkly new body coloured fog light blanks

Much better

[Lukey. 381]

I found that all of my bushes could do with replacement (understatement, they are mostly torn up to sh!t) so got the full powerflex kit for the VR6.

Rear Beam, Wishbone Front, Wishbone Rear, Anti Roll Bar, Power Steering and Subframe

first I tried the 4 subframe bushes as they looked the easiest to do, wrong, i couldn't get the top washers off for anything, i tried all sorts, I'll probably end up hacksawing them off and just fitting suitable replacements, but i gave up on them and moved on to the rear beam.

This was hard but not as hard as I thought it was going to be, manage to not have to disconnect any lines or cables and do them on the car with the beam unbolted and supported with blocks, just prised the spring clips up off the brackets for the brake hoses for bolt clearance and tied the handbrake cables out of the way. I found it much easier when I also unbolted the beam shock mounts.

Old ones out

And new ones in with brand new OEM nuts and bolts

Also managed to get the power steering bush in too, which there's 2 sizes of for 2 different diameter pumps from 2 different manufacturers. 50/50 chance and I got it right

I can say that with the rear beam done there is noticeably more keen-ness for the car to respond to turning, which is to be expected when you stiffen up the rear, its a great improvement, now its made the front seem even more vague, can wait to get the remaining ones done

Still have both front wishbones front and rear, ARB and subframe to tackle at some point, wishing myself lots of luck!

[hvr6 88]

cool how much did you get the kit for?

[Lukey. 381]

I got it for £186 from larkspeed, cheapest I could find and relatively local to me

[hvr6 88]

That's pretty good good luck with the remaining ones!

[Lukey. 381]

Ha cheers, just got some new hacksaw blades for the subframe washers see how much of a fight they put up

[Lukey. 381]

Got the subframe bushes in today, which was a bit harder, they needed pressing in, they wouldnt just slip in. Being just on my drive with the wheels raised on blocks I improvised.

Getting the original ones out was hard enough in itself cos of these stupid press fit washers holding them in, the hacksaw sorted them out.

Even with a great slot cut out of them they still require braying off with hammer and chisel, the originals still didnt want to come out and has to be cut out.

Finally got the original stuff off.

Having no way to press them in I improvised using a 36mm socket as a spacer block between the subframe and the chassis, spacing it a good 2 inches away from the body, so when i did the bolts up it would force the bushes through their holes til they popped into place.

This worked beautifully, mostly, but i had to get longer bolts to wind the bushes on, first i threaded 80mm on all the way, then braced the little crossbrace with a jack, replaced the 80s with 70mm bolts and wound them all the way on, repeated to get the original length 60mm bolts on, then the bushes just popped into their grooves. Then i undid them and removed the socket and put on the top washers.

For the washers i only found some square zinc plated washers in B&Q that were big enough but they had 10mm centre holes, I just bored them out to 16mm so they would fit over the collars on the crossbraces.

[Lukey. 381]

I found that the skirt hanger strip had come away from its sticky so i removed the skirts and was only going to replace the sticky strip, but when i (carefully i might add) removed the sticky strip it took bloody great lengths of paint with it!!

Like so

I also found some surface rust where the sticky had failed and it let in water etc.

I buzzed all of the surface rust off and when i was happy with it i zinc primed the full sills again. As it was surface I didnt have to remove any metal, i just removed the top film of rust til it was clean again.

Then I just gloss blacked over the top, using my very best joey home body shop techniques.

When this is fully dry I will remask a strip off at the top for the cleaned up and re stickied skirt hanging strip to stick to then 3M shutz the lower section and re skirt her.

I will also be giving the arches and underside a shutzing as ive noticed that its a big grimy under there while doing the bushes.

[eastwood john 1]

top job lukey,

while your in the wheel arch remove the plastic inner arch cover and clean down the back ov the wing right at the bottom, lots ov damp crap finds its way in there mate,

[Lukey. 381]

Ah yea I did that when I was dealing with some rust on them, there was a huge pile of crap came out of each of them lol

They were still smaller than the pile of sand that I drained out of one the chassis channels, you could have nearly filled up a kiddie sand pit haha