So I picked up this beauty about a month and a half ago. It's an '05 with a September '04 build date. The only mod it had in its 105k km life was window tinting. I'm it's third owner only. It's sitting on 7 year old Pirellis. There's cracking on the surface of the tyres but they've been pretty good so far, haven't had any problems so I'll replace them as the tread runs down more. Prior to picking it up I had one hour of manual lessons with an instructor, my first ride home in the DC5 was interesting to say the least. Stalled twice trying to reverse out of the driveway (smh) and once during a hill start. But I had the most fun ever driving even though I was bunny hopping all over the place.
There it is as it arrived home.
Started doing some small things here and there. There were a few problems that I had to address. The previous owner was driving around with the SRS light on for the past 6 months or so, guess he didn't care much about safety. Had the car checked out at Hanny's and turns out I needed a new seatbelt tensioner, sourced a seatbelt from the wreckers, got it installed and the SRS code cleared back at Hanny's (bunch of top blokes there).
Gave the car it's first wash, clay bar, polish and wax. Looks and feels amazing now.
Replaced the stock headunit with a Sony XAV-712BT. This is my first time doing anything electrical, this car is going to be an interesting learning time for me as I try to get in touch with my inner handyman.
IT WORKS!
Ripping apart the centre console to wire up a reverse camera
So I wanted to install a carbon fibre tow hook and this was the only one I could find. Little did I know that the front tow hook doesn't fit the rear. So I had some help doing a gangster rig with some flat bar and bolts to get the tow hook to attach.
Got a dash cam because 'straya
The stock shift boot was pretty torn up when I bought the car so I got this nice red stitched leather one for $20 from eBay. And whose idea was it to put a cheap plastic shift knob in this car? My shifts didn't exactly feel snappy so bit the bullet and bought a skunk2. Every shift feels solid now.
Bought some aftermarket weather shields. Was not going to drop more than $200 on OEM. I already felt these were overpriced at $90 but hey they look great and works well.
You can see the tiny reverse camera. Makes parking so simple now. On another note, anyone else realise that it's difficult to do the left hand over passenger seat whilst looking back to reverse thing? I felt like my shoulder was going to pop out every time I reversed but this camera and the head unit makes life easier.
And a final shot because I can't get over how timeless this car looks for being 10+ years old.
So far I'm not so keen on performance mods. The car's stock power is more than enough for me. Before this all I drove was a Nissan Pulsar and Mazda2.
The next big things I'm considering for the future are fog lights, better brakes (pads, rotors, etc), sway bars (the Whiteline sway bars look pretty good, any comments on them?) and a short shifter (any recommendations?). Any recommendations on what tyres I should get when these ones get run down?
There it is as it arrived home.
Started doing some small things here and there. There were a few problems that I had to address. The previous owner was driving around with the SRS light on for the past 6 months or so, guess he didn't care much about safety. Had the car checked out at Hanny's and turns out I needed a new seatbelt tensioner, sourced a seatbelt from the wreckers, got it installed and the SRS code cleared back at Hanny's (bunch of top blokes there).
Gave the car it's first wash, clay bar, polish and wax. Looks and feels amazing now.
Replaced the stock headunit with a Sony XAV-712BT. This is my first time doing anything electrical, this car is going to be an interesting learning time for me as I try to get in touch with my inner handyman.
IT WORKS!
Ripping apart the centre console to wire up a reverse camera
So I wanted to install a carbon fibre tow hook and this was the only one I could find. Little did I know that the front tow hook doesn't fit the rear. So I had some help doing a gangster rig with some flat bar and bolts to get the tow hook to attach.
Got a dash cam because 'straya
The stock shift boot was pretty torn up when I bought the car so I got this nice red stitched leather one for $20 from eBay. And whose idea was it to put a cheap plastic shift knob in this car? My shifts didn't exactly feel snappy so bit the bullet and bought a skunk2. Every shift feels solid now.
Bought some aftermarket weather shields. Was not going to drop more than $200 on OEM. I already felt these were overpriced at $90 but hey they look great and works well.
You can see the tiny reverse camera. Makes parking so simple now. On another note, anyone else realise that it's difficult to do the left hand over passenger seat whilst looking back to reverse thing? I felt like my shoulder was going to pop out every time I reversed but this camera and the head unit makes life easier.
And a final shot because I can't get over how timeless this car looks for being 10+ years old.
So far I'm not so keen on performance mods. The car's stock power is more than enough for me. Before this all I drove was a Nissan Pulsar and Mazda2.
The next big things I'm considering for the future are fog lights, better brakes (pads, rotors, etc), sway bars (the Whiteline sway bars look pretty good, any comments on them?) and a short shifter (any recommendations?). Any recommendations on what tyres I should get when these ones get run down?
Comment