Right then, can’t leave things along for too long. Mainly those headlights, which were total pap. I knew they were a bit poor but driving this thing back up from Birmingham in the dark was interesting at times when there were not streetlights on a motorway.
Picture doesn’t do these things a lot of justice. When I eventually got the bulbs out the bit inside in the middle had gone solid white and sort of, melted a bit? Not really sure but purple and dim means dead in this case.
Discovered that Osram do Nightbreaker D4S bulbs, so got some of them on the go straight away.
Much more like it! Also these were way easier to change than the halogen bulbs in a standard Auris, work that one out for yourselves, I’m not complaining.
Stereo has also arrived, still waiting on a couple of adapter harnesses to arrive but have an old ATX>ISO stereo power lead I made up years ago, so gave it a test with an old HP power supply:
Actually far better to use than I expected, and really nicely put together. Oh, and did some important testing before it goes in the car - why just listen to the music used in Vice City when you can just play it?
On another note, I’m a couple of thousand miles in now and all still appears to be just fine with it thank god. There’s a bit of a judder on the brakes when they get hot but nothing serious, they work grand. Crossclimate+ tyres are as good as I had expected given my experience of the normal Crossclimates on the Corolla, and it is still lovely on the commute. Average MPG so far is a shade over 30, but that drastically increases when I’m not just sitting in traffic all the time as it usually does.
And for anyone wondering how much space there is under the bonnet, not a lot - take note of where the intake is, the rear bank of plugs obviously sits further back than that and they’re due a change soon…
