6/9/08

We installed the angel eye headlights on Saturday. They look awesome. I still need to adjust the low beams as they point at the ground right now but they are really cool. I made a mistake the other day saying they were HID, they are not. They are projector beams but not HID. We’ve decided against the yellow film for these because they are just too friggin’ awesome as is. Friday evening I searched the internot to see if there was any information on how to remove the bumper to get to the lights. I did, surprisingly, find a copy of the factory service manual on a Nissan Owners website. Of course the picture was totally confusing and didn’t appear to help at all. I decided against printing it out and thought we’d just wing it. Saturday morning I rolled to the shop around 0900 h and sent John a text asking his status. He was on his way about when I was halfway to the shop. I arrived and rolled Timmy out then pulled Darth Versa in. I changed into “lying on the floor worthy” clothes and got the jack and stands ready. I jacked the nose up and set the stands. Just as I was about to turn the first wrench John arrives. He tucks into removing the grille as I'm getting the bottom of the bumper free. He undoes the bolt in the fender on the passenger side then takes all but one bolt out of the top of each headlight assembly. When I have the bolt out under the driver’s fender he pulls the bumper cover off. We remove the stock headlights and have a look at the new units. They plugged right in with no hassle and fit perfectly. Oh, and they look awesome, even with the bumper off. Speaking of which, while the bumper was off I took that opportunity to reroute the hoses for the air horns and remove the major kink I had introduced to them due to (tee hee, I said doo-doo!) the routing choice I'd made on installation. I also looked around for some flat black paint and found some semi-gloss. John had a can of flat in Fifi but we decided on the SG instead. He touched up all the light-colored areas behind the grille and bumper, as well as repainting the horns, and we reinstalled the cover. Oh yeah, we did test all of the headlights’ functionality before buttoning it all up by the way. I lowered the car off of the stands and we had a look. They look awesome. With that job done I decided to get cracking on the final transformation job on Darth Versa, the replacement of the Nissan “hamburger” on the horn button with a Renault emblem. I started changing back into my “sitting in the car worthy” clothes but John was already in the driver’s seat prying on the hamburger. I stood by and watched. He fingered out what was going to be necessary for the removal and told me it might not do the emblem any favors. I said, “Get it off of there.” He did. Apparently those parts are born together! The emblem is cast with two rings of material on the back, along with some alignment pins. The rings encircle the material of the horn pad somehow in the manufacturing process. I'm stumped as to how they did it. Anyhoo, after breaking the rings loose, and most of the pins as well the emblem was off. He peeled the backing material off of the Renault emblem and stuck it on. It looks good. I moved on to the next project I had planned for the day, rounding up a couple cylinder heads to take to the machine shop. John got to work on the project he came down to work on, making faux side markers and emblems for his car for this coming weekend. I grabbed the head I'd been using as a dummy for mocking stuff up and put it in a trash bag. I took the car’s original head and removed some items from it and put it in the bag as well. I then carried that bag to the trunk of Darth Versa. With all my jobs done for the day I washed up and “helped” John by standing around and looking pretty. We sought out a set of wheels for the movie shoot and decided on the Toyota’s wheels on the Corolla. We rolled said Corolla to the sidewalk and swapped the Konig Rewinds onto it. We rolled the car back to its spot and moved Timmy back inside. John stacked the steelies inside the door and we locked up. We decided to go to Automotive Machine and then grab lunch. At AM I told Steve what I wanted done to the cylinder head and left it with them. We headed north to Genghis Grill. I ate just a tad too much. Just enough too much that I felt logy but not so much too much that I felt bloated. Well, I was bloated from all the iced tea I drank but that was another issue. From there we parted company and I went home to get ready to go out with Tony, Pat, Rob, and Randy. But I'll save that “story” for tomorrow.