New wheels, new stereo and some cosmetics

My plan has always been to keep the car stock and anything that I do change I will be keeping the original parts so they can always be swapped back… so nothing permanent, no drilling or gluing.

First up was a set of genuine 15inch Euroweave BBS alloys which have just been shot blasted and powder coated. The 14’s which were on the car had tyres which were all cracking and I prefer the wider 7j offset of the 15’s which also had new tyres on so decided to swap them over… hanging onto the 14’s though.

Really pleased with how they look.

Next up the bonnet sound insulation had perished and was falling off into the engine bay, I wanted to keep it original so managed to track down a new OEM set from a company in Germany, PartWorks GmbH.

The old foam came off quite easy but the adhesive backing was a nightmare. I bought some Gtechniq Glue & Tar remover and it worked an absolute treat, taking it right back to shiny clean white paint.

New insulation installed, went on fantastic following all the contours.

Windscreen and headlight washer bottles had 33 years of limescale and were looking very discoloured…

a couple of hours of scrubbing, dishwasher tablets, bleach and soapy water and they were looking like new!

Foolishly I didn’t take a before shot of the engine bay but I spent a full day cleaning, polishing, wiping and treating all the plastics. Looks much better but when it gets garaged again next winter I’m going to do a full engine bay detail.

Next up, the car came with a Sony pop off front stereo which didn’t really fit with the era of the car so I removed it.

After lots of Gumtree and EBay trawling I found this lovely Blaupunkt unit which has the classic removable credit card security system. Sounds fantastic!

The car came with a 13 button computer installed but unfortunately it wasn’t working. A bit of research unveiled a common issue with the light bar behind the LCD screen which uses traditional bulbs which obviously 30 years down the line go pop.

Thankfully, some genius has developed an LED version which fits perfectly. Its a bit of a faff to get at the computer as I had to remove the full heater dash trim but I got there in the end and after swapping the light strip its all working like new!

Last fix for now, the central locking wasn’t working, more online research and it looked likely to be either a live red loop wire which runs through the door or water ingress in the door harness plug.

I unscrewed the speaker and pulled the central locking harness from the space near the pedal footwell and everything looked perfect, no rust, no moisture, wiring like new so I pulled the Central Locking relay apart and found a fuse which had a low temperature solder fuse which had become detached. Re-soldered the spring load contact to the fuse, fingers crossed… nope still doesn’t work, sad times!

Next step was the door plug, and what do you know! The only pin that had a tiny bit of green corrosion was the central locking red wire pin! Some WD40 white lightening, plugged the harness back in and the central locking sprang into life… hurrah!

Next up some external cosmetics…

The exterior trim was a little faded, not bad but not like new so I did a lot of research on some detailing forums and everyone was raving about C4, its a permenant trim restorer, certainly not cheap and comes in a tiny 15m vile but after trying it on the front grill I can see why its so popular with the professionals and went on to do the whole car… just so you can see, right side treated left side original!

I wasn’t to keen on doing a full cut and polish as I don’t have a depth gauge but after asking a few detailers they recommended using some Bilt Hamber Polish which has a very gentle cut but is amazing for deoxidisation of old paint bringing back the colour.

Amazing stuff, you could see it go from a slight yellow tint to bright Alpine white with barely any paint on the pad. The paintwork now looks fantastic, rich deep whites which I finished off with some Auto Finesse Polish.