99 SV Rebuild

I'm going to get some new carpet mats made, and spent 30 minutes today removing the seats.

 

They are held in by four M8 x 20mm cap socket head bolts.

The heads are only 5mm deep, and have a 5mm hex socket - which is a little strange.Lamborghini Part #008700847 £0.75each I believe.

 

Each bolt has a thick washer shim underneath, and its seems like I'm missing 2 shims on my drivers seat. Lamborghini Part #009435257 £6.27 - seems these were only fitted to later cars.

I'll also touch up the floor, as the paint is wearing off.

So this is what I'm thinking in terms of front mats..

 

 

(from the Murci pages)

but with a blue leather edge rather than white/silver coloured.

 

Wow this turned out fantastica David!

 

It was nice anway, but you you made it real superb, as it should be, I'll be sending work your way now lol. Mike is a Gentelman and knows is stuff too. I must give him a call, with my brain infection I forgot about him to reading all this thread. I made nice overmats for my car too, nothing like that fresh look and smell. I'm going too pull the seats this year and retrim them and do the base floor first, plus inspect underneath the carpets for corission as it can happen. I want to check out the seat rails too and tidy them up from any grime etc.

 

Great work David keep going and keep the pics coming.

Some new discoveries about my 99 SV.. thanks to Leo for helping me find them out :

 

The door handles were originally black plastic in the delivery photo:

and in the 2008 photos I have they are the metal ones, so they were updated during its life then.

[i will update the engine cover lift one as well, I have the part already, as the plastic ones are very flexible and poor quality in my opinion.]

 

Revio has pointed out the door speakers are fitted, even though there is no stereo fitted (none shown on order sheet either), and I know no amplifier has ever been fitted until I put one in last year.

I suspect these were all Alpine speakers, as the larger ones are now Pioneer. I'll change these shortly, as I reinstall my dashboard with a carbon fibre one this year.

 

Other bits that changed over time include:

• The gear knob was replaced with a 6.0 all chrome ball at some point too, between 2008 and 2013. The half carbon, half chrome SV version is sadly NLA.

• The front SV bumper was replaced with a standard/VT one, prior to 2008, including the 4 NLA expensive spot lights.

• The rear roadster/SE style bumper (specified on the delivery sheet) was replaced in 2009, when the car was involved in a the small accident with a standard diablo one.

One day I'll change the bumpers back.

• black eyelids on lights fitted on delivery were missing by 2008. replaced by me in 2014 with Carbon eyelids.

• The mats currently fitted have no bull as shown in the delivery photos, and I'm in the process of getting a new set made currently to replace the current set as they are fraying at the edges.

• All 4 wheels were replaced around 2010 due to buckling, by a main dealer. The replacements had black centres, which I had refurbished in 2014 to return them to silver.

 

first 10 of the Wheel Bolts stripped and clear zinc coated - I left the other 10 on the car to hold the wheels on whilst they were gone getting plated.

 

 

So this is what I'm thinking in terms of front mats..

 

 

(from the Murci pages)

but with a blue leather edge rather than white/silver coloured.

Who are you going to have do the mats?

Can't believe I missed your thread David!! Think I was in the Coma around that time? But anyway, this is looking superb, color is very nice. We used to do car mats and whole carpets as my brother owns a rugs/carpet centre. So as long as the OEM was supplied, he just took the template from there. In my Refresh programme, I had new mats made. When I get allot better this year [hopefully] I'm going to replace all the carpeting in the car.

 

Keep up the great work David!

 

Who are you going to have do the mats?

 

A local company called Trimline in the UK.

remember my car is RHD, so the mats are different to LHD cars.

A lot of companies will no longer put logos on, but Trimline will, so I am using them.

The carpet has taken 3 weeks to arrive, so I'm hoping to have them back shortly.

 

I've been painting the glass fibre floor covers in the meantime, as the black covering seems to have been scratched off..

You can see the metal washers fitted on later cars (plastic on early cars I understand) - cost about £6 each from a dealer, plus the low profile screws to hold the seat rails through the rear carpets/fibreglass panel into the steel floor

I had to replace a few of the rivets in the fibreglass floor too, as they had snapped off.

 

painted..

not that anyone will see them once the mats are in place :-)

April 2015: Fitting a new amplifier and cover

 

The car originally came without any stereo - the doors had speakers fitted, and all the wiring was in place, but no head unit and no amplifier were fitted.

 

I decided to remedy this, by fitting a new amplifier - and it had to an Alpine one!

I chose the PMX-F640 4 channel as this would fit within the space allocated.

I would need to make a new cover, and this seemed a simple part to try and make in aluminium and then skin in real carbon fibre.

aluminum cover:

I also had to make some mounting brackets to fix the amplifier to the mounting holes (here shown mounted to the back of the amplifier:

Wiring was quite straight forward, with the door speaker cables, phono cables to the head unit, and power cables all being in place already behind the original plastic cover.

job complete and fitted:

 

when I fitted it, I found the top gap was a little bigger than I had hoped, so I may revisit this in the future.

 

 

April 2015 Carbon Skinned re-modeled 99SV dashboard

 

similar to what I did with the amplifier panel, I decided to try and make the whole dash in carbon skinned aluminium, and redesign the layout slightly to fit in a double height shallow depth hifi head unit.

the Alpine Carplay had just been launched, but I selected the Parrot Asteroid Smart as it had a lot more features.

So I wanted something like this..

removing the old dash is relatively easy once you have a torx security kit, as the screws are a little special.

 

Once removed this is the main dash panel:

rear:

 

I proceed to make the aluminium parts for covering:

 

and then covered then in carbon using the skinning method.

The outcome was not as perfect as I wanted, as the finish wasn't good enough, the ash tray wouldn't open and the vents fouled the stereo surround

 

I'll come back to this in 2016 I think

been checking out my door speakers - seems the mounting wells in the door are 13cm diameter, with maximum depth of 80mm, the Alpine SPR-50's seem to fit as they are only 57mm deep.

Time to replace the Pioneer ones that someone has fitted in the past.

Id love to see how your floor panels turned out!

Whilst waiting for the mats to come back, I've undersealed the underneath of the car, and am starting to clean the suspension up - repainting the suspension arms with POR15 to stop them rusting - there is surface rust on the bottom of the arms where they are getting hit with stones from the road.

 

Here's the battery cover panel from the rear wheel well, after some initial cleaning - more still to do, before I paint it with POR15

 

Geez, almost looks like a lead acid battery exploded and that's the result of the acid spray. You mentioned re-painting, but did you ever consider powder coating it?

I under sealed mine too....Well worth doing. My battery cover looks similar to yours too, I'm going to try and get to it this year, I'm going to put a light weight racing battery in there while I'm at it.

First zinc plating and than powder coating is the best solution imo.

You will never have rust problems!

 

I chose POR15, as I want to do the job without taking the suspension apart, and having the car still usable - as much as I like fixing and improving bits, I also love to drive it - so when its not available to drive, I get quite frustrated.

 

basically POR15, is a 3 step 3 coat rust proofing paint - see http://www.por15.com

Large 13cm Alpine speakers now refitted to doors, and crossover added for existing small tweeters (smaller than the ones that came with SPR-50C kit unfortunately, so I'll have to stick with the existing rather than upgrade.

 

In January 2017, I dropped the car off to get some corrosion sorted out on the passenger side of the car :

 

• front of door (common corrosion area)
• front of rear wheel arch (turned out to be surface corrosion only)
• sunken paint around indicator repeater on front wing (turned out to be a 60x40mm hole, that someone had fixed by sticking a plate to the rear of the wing and patching up)

 

 

Hopefully I will be able to pick the car up in about 2 weeks

and here she is after the paintwork is done, the new front bumper (correct SV one) is all done..

 

Absolutely gorgeous! Congrats! That's Blu Scuro right?

Fantastic job. Beautiful car.

 

I'll keep a look out for you this year.

Absolutely gorgeous! Congrats! That's Blu Scuro right?

 

Yes, a 2 coat paint - undercoat in one colour, and then top coated in another, then clear lacquer

Yes, a 2 coat paint - undercoat in one colour, and then top coated in another, then clear lacquer

 

That would be a 3 stage paint, right?

That looks fantastic!