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Ryan's Double Unicorn


Shogun506

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Please update on the steering wheel controls if you get to it sooner or later. Exact same thing happened to me when I installed a 2011 STI wheel with controls. Got everything wired up, turn the key to auxillary position and turned on the lights to ensure they were lighting up. They did and then I went to button the interior up and when I went to take the car for a drive to test the cruise they didn't light up or work. Haven't had the time to take it apart and check everything yet.

 

Interesting. I plan to go at it with a multimeter in the next week or so, I'll let you know.

 

lot of good thing going on here , ilike that !

 

Thanks. I plan to throw on your carbon fiber snorkel and extended hood scoop when the weather warms up.

Edited by Shogun506
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Unwrapped the new front end and am pretty happy with how it's going to look.

 

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I didn't factor in that this would come with a complete wiring harness for both the headlights and foglights... I think I might consider changing plans from hacking up the individual JDM headlight harnesses and maybe cut the car side harness and transplant this whole thing over.. I mean what are the chances I need to convert back USDM?

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just completed my headlight conversion from JDM to USDM including making a custom harness and flipping the shields. I'm pretty excited to get these things installed now. They still need to be polished and coated but then they'll be ready to rock. I plan to get the front end on this coming weekend along with some other goodies I have stored. Look at this beam pattern!

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Nice! What bulb did you use for the DRL?

 

I used some T10 LED bulbs I got free from The Retrofit Source from another project but any T10/194 LED with a good beam pattern from Amazon would do the same job. Also I made what I think is a pretty elegant amber/white signal/parking light solution.

 

Check this out

 

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Fits perfectly in the signal slot.

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On that Pioneer, when you play Bluetooth or any audio off an SD card, does it show the album art?

 

No funny enough it actually is not a very attractive headunit by itself. I could have spent more and got one that has nice visuals but I bought it to use mostly with Android Auto so it's usually displaying those screens rather than the Pioneer stuff. It has good sound customization features and does all the stuff you really need it to do like play bluetooth, aux-in, etc for when my phone isn't plugged in though, just not as attractively as say one of the Sony XAV models.

 

Edit: actually maybe it does? I'll try it today and let you know. I only ever use it with spotify or audible if my phone isn't plugged in.

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Sounds good, I got one of those Chinese units but the quality of their sound isn't great when it comes time for me to overhaul the overall audio system of my car but I been just loading albums onto an SD card and playing it off it since I would like to use FLAC and uncompressed audio sources with the album art. I believe BT 4.0+ sends album art as part of the data stream and am willing so sacrifice to compressed audio if the visuals are nice.
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Sounds good, I got one of those Chinese units but the quality of their sound isn't great when it comes time for me to overhaul the overall audio system of my car but I been just loading albums onto an SD card and playing it off it since I would like to use FLAC and uncompressed audio sources with the album art. I believe BT 4.0+ sends album art as part of the data stream and am willing so sacrifice to compressed audio if the visuals are nice.

 

I checked it out, doesn't play the album art when you're bluetoothing. It does on Android Auto though. Those Chinese units are really bad quality. I got one of the higher rated more expensive ones on Amazon for a different car I had and it was extremely disappointing. The "AptX" bluetooth thing was not good at all, the sound processing/EQ controls were terrible, system was slow, etc etc etc. I would rather just get a quality unit with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto anyday.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I was fortunate to go on vacation right before this Coronavirus issue got big. I was in the UK and got back into Canada right as Trump issued the ban on UK travelers entering the USA, shortly before Canada did the same. Lucky me! Well anyway, 14 days of isolation meant lots of time to work on my car.

 

Day 1 self-isolation.

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Hmm...

 

When I received the front end I ordered, I realized the fenders were actually in really bad shape. Before I went on vacation, I called up a body shop and asked them for a quote to repaint the fenders the same colour in order to fix some scratches. They told me over $1000. ?!?!?!

 

I decided to take this as a learning opportunity and ordered up some paint supplies.

This is what they looked like to start:

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Very scratched up.

 

I decided to start trying to fix things myself. This was my first time doing any kind of paint/body work. Here's the body filler:

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I went through multiple primer/sanding/filling stages to get everything as good as possible before going on vacation and ordered my paint. When I got back I decided to try my hand at paint. I was worried about how good of a paint match I could get on my own considering the tri-coat paint job. Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures of the process but here's the end result. Not bad for a rattle can job I'd say:

 

Day 2-3 of isolation

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...also I painted my extended hood scoop.

 

I still need to polish those up to make them perfect as there's some orange peel on the clear but I can do that on the car. I used the popular SprayMax 2K clear with hardener in a can that's supposed to be body shop quality. I'd say it's pretty damn good

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Prepare for a long post..

 

Well to start off, let me just say this front conversion is NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. It took me way longer and was much more labour intensive than I thought it would be. Eventually I got it all done though, even though I had to track down some electrical gremlins along the way.

 

Day 4 isolation:

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It took me a full day and hours of work to get this thing fully disassembled. It was at this point I was wondering wtf I got myself into and just hoping everything went back together properly. My wife also gave up on me at this point and decided I must not want to drive my car anymore.

 

Day 5:

I got at it for a second day, this time flipping as many parts from the JDM clip over to mine and noticing all the nasty rust on my frame that was not on the JDM one. I got everything except the bumper itself on and surprisingly it was actually starting to look like a car again.

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I went to sleep optimistic.

 

Day 6:

I got the bumper, side sills, fender liners and a bunch of other things in place and it looks pretty damn good! I decided to test out the lights to see if my wiring actually worked. I hit the unlock button and.. the signals lit up white? I hit the signal switch and *poof*, my signals, hazard lights, alarm chirp no longer worked. Damn damn damn. I spent about 2 hours losing my mind and wondering what I destroyed. I unplugged the signals and still the issue persisted. Anyway, after trying a variety of things I narrowed the problem down to a blown "tail/clearance" fuse in the cabin and a blown "hazard" fuse in the engine compartment. The root cause though was the signal wiring. It turns out the 3157 adapters I bought from Amazon were not wired correctly. The ground/running/signals were all connected to each other, which I was only able to find out by using a multimeter. At the end of the day I cut the adapter out of the equation, cut the 3157 socket off the car and made the decision to wire my signals directly to the car harness, but it was too late so that would have to wait to the next day.

 

Day 7:

I had to pull the bumper back off to get to the signal wiring. I spliced everything properly into the car and when I hit the unlock, signals, and parking light buttons, everything functioned perfectly for once! Also, the low and high beams were also working perfectly. I need to snap a pic of that beam pattern, it's razor sharp.

I spent about 3 hours getting everything back together and was surprised by a couple of things.

 

1. The stock 05 splash shield actually worked almost perfectly with this front end. I just had to redrill 1 hole in the shield itself to reuse the factory mounting points and it worked well.

2. Not only do the headlights themselves plug into the JDM fenders, there's a clip on the headlight bracket that plugs into a clip on the fender bracket as well that needs to line up properly for the bumper to line up properly.

 

Well, I got everything on and it was looking good!

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I decided to press my luck and wire up my DRLs. I pre-ran a wire into the cabin from the engine bay while my fenders were off and then literally made the rest of the harness in the engine bay on the spot. It worked out though. I finished up the last touches and pulled her out...

 

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Will have a video on the swap coming to my youtube channel soon.

 

For now I'd say it's it's looking pretty damn good and I'm happy all the lighting is working as expected. I still have my extended hood scoop and some more JDM parts to throw on there; Tuned by STI suspension, spats, rain deflectors, rear garnish, taillights, and the list goes on. I'm also leaning toward losing that painted lip and ordering an STI polyurethane one. Once I get a nice aggressive set of wheels on there it will definitely set the car off too. Stay tuned!

Edited by Shogun506
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Updates!

 

I did some stuff this week since I'm at home. First of all I went ahead and installed my JDM facelift taillights. I initially thought I was going to open these up and black out the chrome before I installed them but I decided to just throw them on there. That might be a future project. Pretty clean look. I also took some pictures at dusk.

 

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Oh yeah I threw some JDM spats on there and painted mudflaps. Initially I thought I'd go mudflaps rather than spats. I still can't decide which one to go with. The mudflaps fit better but with the new front end, the spats do flow. I also don't have front mudflaps yet :icon_frow

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Next up I threw the summer wheels on there that came with the car when I bought it. I don't really like these so much but new wheels are not a priority right now.

 

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To compliment the wheels I finally installed the JDM rain visors I ordered in November. Most exciting though was these!

 

JDM Tuned by STI Wagon suspension

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They look like candy compared to the old crusty stuff I pulled off the car.

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I had a hell of a time with the first corner I did (passenger front) and ran into a ton of problems including slightly tearing the cv boot. I'll need to replace that when I can. It took me a whole day to get through that corner. The 3 other corners I knocked out much quicker the next day.

 

Strangely the car seemed to be sitting higher on one side than the other yesterday after I finished the install.

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I took it for a run around the block and it was smooth. There was some clunking from the front end over bumps but otherwise no issues...

 

I drove it a bit today and it seemed to be handling really nicely. Similar ride to the stock suspension while cruising except a little noisier over the bumps. Very solid in the corners, definitely less body roll. It felt quite connected to the road and I enjoyed the drive. I THINK the car has leveled out in the front but I'll take another look tomorrow. Maybe the suspension just needed to settle. There doesn't seem to be much of a drop but there is some saggy butt. I think a half inch spacer in the back should do it. I want a slightly higher rear than front instead of fully flat..

 

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Not a bad week.

I only have a few more parts saved up from the winter to install then I can actually spend time with the wife again.

Edited by Shogun506
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IMO, the car looks much better with the winter wheels.

 

I'm not a fan of black wheels...to me they always look dirty.

 

Great job on the car.

305,600miles 5/2012 ej257 short block, 8/2011 installed VF52 turbo, @20.8psi, 280whp, 300ftlbs. (SOLD).  CHECK your oil, these cars use it.

 

Engine Build - Click Here

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  • 2 months later...

It's been a while since I've updated on here. I've been focusing on my Youtube and decided to start up and instagram account since apparently that's where everything is these days. Since the last update I've been busy making the interior more comfortable. I installed my Polk DB6502/652 set along with a Polk PA D5000.5 amplifier and Polk MM1240 sub. It's taken a hell of a lot of fiddling but I finally got the sound to somewhere I'm pretty happy with. I'm not sure it will ever be as good as my 2018 Rogue's Bose system but they're different classes of cars.

 

Along with the speaker install I also installed loads of sound deadening over the proceeding weeks. I installed 1 layer of deadener, 1 layer of closed cell foam, and 1 layer of mass loaded vinyl in the doors and hatch area. I've got to say, based on the stuff I've read on the forums, I expected the results to be a lot more apparent but it's all done and I can't take it back now. I'm not sure it was really worth the effort though.

 

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Also wired up my backup cam while I was in there and ran the wire to my headunit. Looks and functions great although the image is flipped for some reason.

 

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I noticed I must not have sealed my headlights properly as after a car wash some water had gotten into my driver's side headlight. It had been in there for the past couple of weeks.

 

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I was originally just going to take it out and reseal it properly, but I decided I couldn't go through all that work and leave it at that...

 

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I've always thought the facelift JDM headlights looked nice in chrome with the slight blue tint they come in on white cars so I was pretty hesitant to change that, but after looking at a few pics I decided to risk changing it up. I blackout out the whole housing except for the DRL strip which I left chrome to emphasize my DRLs. I thought about (and ordered) some halos to throw in there but at the end of the day I decided against it. I blacked out the grill at the same time.

 

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And the result...

 

It looks amazing!

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I love this picture, kinda makes me think of a C63 AMG..

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Also wired up my backup cam while I was in there and ran the wire to my headunit. Looks and functions great although the image is flipped for some reason.

 

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Depending on the backup camera, you might need to cut a white or green wire to flip the image. I recently installed a new backup camera and almost missed that in the instructions. I saw a few camera's on Amazon with similar instructions but different color wires.

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Edited by Dre617
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  • 2 weeks later...
Depending on the backup camera, you might need to cut a white or green wire to flip the image. I recently installed a new backup camera and almost missed that in the instructions. I saw a few camera's on Amazon with similar instructions but different color wires.

<img id="hzDownscaled" style="position: absolute; top: -10000px;"><img id="hzDownscaled" style="position: absolute; top: -10000px;">

 

Yep that was it! haha I thought it might have something like that before you posted this too but I could only find the wire to cut to get the parking lines to appear. Turns out there's also another one to flip it. That makes this way more useful lol.

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