Project Silvia’s Grlfriend: Part 3 – Making it Pretty

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The result is at least effective enough to go unnoticed, which is about all you can ask of a seatbelt.

 

 

Okay, now we’re getting into some really nitty gritty details, but it’s the details that really make a car like this a viable daily driver. In the ‘90s, car companies still hadn’t figured out that a decent stereo is something people will be willing to pay for with their car, so the original stuff is junk. The world of aftermarket stereo nonsense is as foreign to me underbody neon and lowrider hydraulics (with the caveat that I can actually appreciate listening to a well executed car audio system,) so again, I’m not offering expert advice here so much as encouragement from one neophyte to another.

It turns out that the spacial packaging challenges of fitting bigger/better speakers into factory mounting points have been solved so effectively that you can now just go on eBay and get adapters that make speakers a simple bolt-in project. This adapter for the speaker mounted on the rear shoulder trim under the C-pillar is far better than I would have been able to fabricate myself, and installed in seconds.

 

That said, nothing is ever as simple as it looks. The interior trim that goes over this speaker won’t actually fit without some serious surgery. The plastic bit on the bottom here is the original piece. The top one shows how much plastic had to be trimmed away to make it fit.

 

 

As I mentioned at the end of the last installment, Project Silvia’s Girlfriend is now up for sale. After so much work building the car, what could possibly convince Sarah to part with it? Quite simple, really. She found something browner…

 

 

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