27 replies to this topic

[allpaw4]

Had a few boxes rock up this week! My black upper trims have arrived, and to my surprise, included with the eyesight black OEM trim is a spare eyesight camera assembly! Sweet! Hopefully the transport guys have been gentle with the boxes. Not that I'd pin my hopes on the camera being correctly aligned still, but I'll definitely put it up on the shelf as a potential working spare.

Seats and eyesight roof liner hit Import Monster this morning to, so hopefully in a few weeks they'll be on their way to me as well. I was hoping they'd be quicker, but apparently its gonna be a few weeks before they can even get to quoting it for me. She'll be right!

I haven't even unpacked the boxes properly yet, so I'm tipping its gonna be a few weeks before I even get the bits fitted.

Cheers,
Ben

[El_Freddo]

That’s an awesome score on the spare eyesight camera!

It must be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride as bit are arriving, while others you’re waiting on hit “milestones” then are delayed in their journey to you.

Got a birthday coming up? Maybe your minister of fun and finances could wrap them up as presents for you.

Cheers

Bennie

[allpaw4]

Yeah, its a little painful knowing they're so close, and yet so far lol, its part and parcel though. Large items have always been this way with IM though.
Hahaha, nah, as soon as they rock up, they'll be put off to one side to be installed as soon as I get the spare time in the shed.

Pulled the door cards out of the box last week, as I needed the box to send some gen3 stuff out. Still no photos, as they're still all wrapped up in bubble wrap, but hey. Want to keep them protected until the last minute. Gen3 is currently paying for a few new bits for this which is nice.

Cheers,
Ben

[allpaw4]

Seats and eyesight roof liner rocked up last week, but everything is still packaged up, as I've had some dramas with the youngest involving a hospital stay for a few days. All is good on that front now though, so hoping to get into the shed on the weekend and fit most of the good shite thats rocked up over the last couple months.
We'll see how we go there though, got lots of jobs that still need doing around the house.

No photos of the goods yet though, as they're all still literally in boxes. I only had enough time to pull them out of the car yesterday and put them in the shed, despite receiving them tuesday last week 🤦

Anyways, besides that, car has been going great, getting around 730km to a tank (last fill was 51 litres), which is downright amazing.

Cheers,
Ben

[allpaw4]

I bit the bullet last weekend and changed the door cards over. Can happily say that the clips that hold gen5 cards on compared to gen3 are substantially stronger! My fingers did not like me after pulling the 4 cards off.
Took me way longer than I anticipated, 2.5 hours. But they look amazing.
Swapped over the carbon trims from my car, as they're black carbon, and the tS ones are silver. Also found that the tS models didn't get 4x auto windows, so had to swap over the window control trims, as well as the patch looms on the inside of the cards, as the wiring is different. Drivers door card now has seat memory buttons, but after looking at the schematics for this in the FSM, its not a simple thing to make work. I'll get there, but it's not gonna happen soon. Need a few plugs and wiring changes, plus it needs to be programmed into the body control module, hopefully its something I can use FreeSSM to sort out. Haven't looked too much further on this yet.
Also haven't cleaned them up properly yet, as it was getting late.



Was planning on swapping at least the front 2 seats, but it took way too long to get the cards swapped, so they're still covered in plastic in the shed. Standby for the next update in a month or so...

Next collection of parts was shipping out earlier this month, but on the slow boat, so might see them in another month or 2...

Cheers,
Ben

[El_Freddo]

Looking good Ben even if progress is slow! Surely with all the interior swaps you’re doing you’ve got a set of trim removal tools?! They’re worth their weight in gold and they save your fingertips to boot!

That wiring conundrum sounds like a challenge that’ll be a good one to get sorted. Funny that Subaru does wiring changes like that as previous models used to have the wiring there but not the switches or control modules. That was pre canbus too, I guess that’ll play a part in it.

See you again in December, pre-Christmas I’m guessing

Cheers

Bennie

[allpaw4]

Well, the two boxes rocked up on friday.
Red stitched steering wheel, plus a few assorted trims and dress up bits. Photos will come once I've had a chance to actually fit them, which lets be honest, could be more than a month away... 😭

New trims will enable the trusty ILX-W650 head unit that was in GX30 to be fitted. The more I look at Alpine's website, the more I want to buy a new navigation head unit from them. I just can't justify that much money at this point in time...

[allpaw4]

Well, as was expected, haven't had time to do much with this thing, between kids and work, it's just been flat out.

Until last 2 weeks...

The wife got asked to go back to work early, which meant that I needed to take some leave to look after the monsters before daycare started back.
With the youngest yet to go, the first week was a transition week. Which meant by the end of the week, I had 2 full days of time to work on the jalopy!

I'll upload photos later this week, but I managed to get most of the interior changed out. I say most, because there was slight differences in the seats (tS ones seem to be missing the airbags, despite the leather having the tags for them), and the base of the rear seat seems to be missing from IM, and then to top it all off, the black visors I got as part of it all are for a non-eyesight model, and don't fit with the cameras...

Even then, I was hoping to get time to do everything, but twas not to be. To fit the airbags back into the tS seats is going to be several hours work, as they need to basically be completely stripped to do it. Job for later.
Also found that the centre row seat belts needed to be swapped between mechanisms, as there was slight differences there. Not a big drama, but still an hour or 2 of fiddling around and swapping belts between mechs.
Front belts need the upper mount dyed black, as they actually stand out like dogs balls against the black trims, and finding + shipping replacements from japan is difficult due to both the pretensioners; and the drivers belt on my car has an additional pretensioner looking device on the base of the belt as well as the bit on the winder.
One other thing. Gen5 went to clips for everything, including the jesus handles. Which makes it an absolute prick to swap a roof lining on a long boi. DO NOT RECOMMEND doing this job on your own. Many cuss words were uttered and yelled at this car, and what should have been a 10 minute job to actually put up the lining ended up being a 2 hour ordeal, all because I didn't have a second pair of hands. Its not a fun job to do in any car, but the difficulty level went up a notch compared to the gen3, which was surprisingly easy to do.
But. All in all, despite swearing at it multiple times, 80% of the job is done. Needed to cut the hole for the roof mount 10 screen, and some hunting around online after looking at the plugs and things on the back of the head unit made me look long and hard at buying a new unit as opposed to fitting the 650 from my shelves.
When I saw the ILX-F309E was on a stupid good sale, I ordered one. Fitted it last night. A good couple of hours work, with quite a few things that I had to do twice, as I hoped to set it up one way, but due to the layout and methods of putting the gen5 dash back together, it couldnt be setup that way, so out it all came again... Will need to come out again, as I need to install the microphone and the USB lead for my phone still, and also look at the schematics to see how to implement steering wheel controls. This unit doesnt have video output either, so when I finally get around to buying a DVD player for this, itll be hooked to the monitor and sound through an aux input on the headunit I reckon. Theres a single DIN space underneath for it to go (Ive got a 1DIN cubby from the gen3 in there at the moment), so that might be the next small purchase for this jalopy.
Ill upload the photos soon, and update the post with them, makes for a bit nicer post, as opposed to a lot of words...
Until next 6 monthly update, see yas round!

Cheers,
Ben