skoda_cat

seam sealered all over my stupid welds. Added a powered feed for the stereo remote but i need to find a location to stick all my miscellaneous earths, there must be something obvious on the firewall I'm missing. I got the second headlight modified for the servo motor, but i really need to find connectors for the 6Y0 941 295 servos. The pins are NOT happy to be soldered to. I can't figure what connector type it is, nor can i find any loom cutoffs to fit, I'll ask chatgpt when I'm at work tomorrow and see if it can find anything for me. I drilled out the snapped thread for the wing/bumper bracket and welded in a new bolt from the back so that will be able to bolt up securely now. I ran a control cable for the headlight servos but still need to figure out where I'm going to take power for the servos from in the engine bay. Last thing I started it up just because, and it came to life instantly and beautifully first crank. Everything's getting cloooosssseeeerrrrrr.

20mm of rain, can't get it in a garage. Welp. Got the central locking wired in at least. Might put some shelves up in the garage tomorrow. twiddles thumbs wishing more car work could get done. Oh went to the motor factors to see about wheel liners and lower control arms, but they can't get liners and the control arms are a bit spendy.... Ordered two front liners from ebay, lets see if THEY turn up. I shouldn't buy new control arms till the MOT man says I have to :P

Well, I got vol up/down, FFW/RW, track skip back/forwards, mute, play/pause, and change input source all working. https://cat.scot/sony_alpine_working.mov Sadly the codes for siri and the menu button don't seem to work, but I've got quite a lot, as much as the polo does from the steering wheel anyway. The list of stuff to do before MOT gradually shortens.

Not quite so warm today, around the insufferable middle of the day, I got the last of the welding I think we need done on the passenger rail. Started working on the stuff to mount the wings. Looks like the studs on the drivers side are ok, and one on the passenger side, but the other is snapped. That will need something rigging to allow bolting up the bracket for the wing and bumper. Remembered that the head unit has a microphone so I clipped that into the headliner behind the mirror and ran the wire down the inside of the A pillar and ran it to behind the stereo. Did a test phone call and it seems fine. I got the handbrake interlock attached, so my settings menus and video modes are locked out for driving. Responsible, me. Also got the reverse wire connected so it goes into camera mode when I slam it in reverse. I found the wipers, so they can go on at some point. Boring progress, it's all just minor crap like this till MOT I guess.

Foooounddd iiiit. Thanks so much for this pointer. I used a coax to 1/4inch adaptor to get through the seal without ruining the socket. I should really have cut the wire and rejoined it but i don't WANT to. It's horrible shoving a socket that big through a seal :/ I've not managed to drop it out under the bumper yet because I got too hot, stupid day star ☠️ I'm going to hide inside today and work on the input for the stereo control circuit.

Well after a fashion, in principle it's working. I have no idea how to embed this: https://cat.scot/stereo_control_esp32.mov

The sockets turned up (evri still has everything else lost in the sea somewhere, useless company that they are) and I soldered up the esp32 output side for a look. Stuck a 22Kohm resistor in line with the output to limit current and I see this on the scope I don't know how to work: I'm HOPING that's showing a nice packet with a height of 2.84V which is less than 3.3 so should be 'good' unless it needs to have a bit more 'volt' to register the bits. I think this should be safe enough to shove into the car stereo and see if it responds.

No liners, the tracking also seems to be broken now. So I think they've gone to abs heaven or wherever. Worse still, Evri have got their careless mittens on the sony stalk as well now! Uurgh. The sockets to talk to the stereo over a 3.5mm audio cable are with royal mail which could certainly be worse.

Got half the coding done. Need a couple of jack sockets to be delivered and I can hook it up and test. I have the supposed resistor values of the controller but I’m not sure how they translate into the read values the microcontroller will see. It’s nice to be writing some code for fun again though. Setting up the ide has been a complete pig though, heh. I’ve bothered evri about the missing wheel arch liners and they suggested they might arrive later today. Not holding out a lot of hope.

GitHubGitHub - Wnthr/arduino-alpine-remote: An Arduino library...An Arduino library to control an alpine car audio head unit via a 3.5mm phono plug. - Wnthr/arduino-alpine-remotelooks like the thingy I probably need, this isn't canbus (which we don't have) but there's a 3.5mm socket on the back that talks this IR protocol because obviously it does. I'll see if i can lash something up and see where i could stick it, it's really just for a tactile button cluster that can be pressed without looking at anything. I remember the first time I build a car-pc and was all proud of getting my touch screen in the dash, then as soon as i was driving I had to get the stalk controls set up because, urgh. at least back then i had a serial port i could use :P

ahah, it speaks canbus, which, uh, we don't have any of... I guess I can either get a wheel which has controls on it, or do something to patch in with an stm32 or something, can't be hard can it?

The only real reason to look at it is to see what angle we're coming off the next roundabout :P I do wonder if there's anything I can to to get steering wheel controls into it, in my polo I do use the 'skip track' button a bunch.

Yeh, I'm really glad I have this thread and the support of the people in it. I've done soooo much stuff and got so far, but it still seems like there's just about an infinite amount still to do. Today's been rained off till 4pm, but before it started sheeting down I got the whole stereo system in for a test. Initially I couldn't get any life out of the sub which was concerning, but I tried plugging it into the rear outs and it worked fine so I went through some of the menus and finally found the toggle to switch the sub output on, but it was greyed out. The manual for this thing is absolute TRASH, but I finally got it figured out that you need the handbrake interlock defeated to enable the settings. It turns off loads of stuff if the handbrakes not on so you can't fiddle with it whilst driving. Trivial to just ground it out to get access to everything, but I'll put it on the handbrake because I don't want to be tempted :P The screen is lower than ideal, but seems far more usable than I feared.

refitted the wiper motor assy, and the scuttle panel. I did use the squirty washers and giggled as they hit the window not the seats. Dry fit the dash after wedging in the central locking controller and dragging the wiring through the doors. It's not long enough so will need extending, joy. The dash isn't particularly exciting till you realise that I didn't dismantle this car so it's the first time I'm finding out what it's LIKE assembled. Smashed open the bed access panels which the last idiots had thickly brush painted including over the screws, had to use an impact driver to crack them after digging out the drive flats with a pick. That's let me get the cable for the rear view camera to the rear of the truck, just need to figure out how to get down and under the bumper. I lopped off the screw bosses that used to hold on the bucket behind the seats, that was very smashed and stinky when i got the truck so it's long gone. This gives plenty of room for the sub, the seat is all the way back and lowered till it touches the rear wall. I stripped the tailgate to get the new release button fitted and found out just how filthy it is in there. And found another few bits that will need welded. I really just need to get the wiring behind the dash finalised so I can install that properly, finish up the welding at the front end, lob the wings on and find out how much insurance is going to be for this lump. I wish the wheel arch liners would show up, I need them to finalise what's going on at the front for mounting things and whatnot.

I realised that my failure to liberate the left lock means I can’t swap it with the right, I’ve got a **** central locking kit so I don’t need to use the key to unlock the doors. Tomorrow I guess I play with the wiring through the doors, in the rain. Forever.

heh, you can get them in a kit of all the door lock bits for £50 https://www.autopartspro.co.uk/bugiad-8117507 It's not actually like spring steel or anything, i can probably make one, it's just a plate with one hole big enough to get the lock barrel through and a slot which is cut to match the width of the barrel cut outs. I can see on the installed one that it's got some 'teeth' pressed into it, but that can be done with a punch, surely.

They don't make any of this mess easy to get at! I wonder where I'd get one of these metal clips for securing the lock. I don't even know what to search for. I had a look at how the dash needs to go in, found out how to remove the stalks from the column so you can get the main dash slab in. I can't move forwards because I need to glue one of the lower mounts back together as it was snapped when the last owner removed it. However with the lower dash vaguely in the area it will live in I got to route all the stereo wiring and antenna stuff into sensible places. I made up a connector from the stereo loom to send the voltage to switch the amp on and started figuring out where the run for the rear view camera is going to go, ultimately down the passenger side I think, that will be 'fun' to fish though. the cable currently goes as far as the B pillar but going through the rear cab wall and down the body will be an experience. I need to figure out this lack of screws and fasteners for the dash thing, is there a thing like fowlers for cars that you can look up what the screws should be? Last thing is I wedged a bluetooth receiver inside my garage speaker system so I have music again. That's nice :D

Oh yeh, the high level brake light went in as well. Found the red and black one at the b pillar. It works but I need to insulate where I tapped in and soldered. Wondering about using paint on insulation as I just stripped back the plastic so couldn’t get heat shrink on it. Electrical tape always just goes gooey over time in hot cars.

Turns out it was pretty easy to pop out from the back, just the two end clips gave a bit of a fight, but it went pop in the end. I'm pleased with that because I don't want that grill body colour. In other news of things popping out or in: It's practically ready for it's MOT. The rope that came with the rubber was basically useless, it was too thick and took up too much space in the gutter. My neighbour who actually pulled this in had enough decent thickness electrical wire to get it done though. I don't think I would have had the strength to pull that in, I just did the work of leaning on it and giving it a gentle 'bop bop' every once in a while. It feels weirdly cramped inside now, but I'm sure I'll get used to it quickly :P It's just a bit annoying we can't pass tools in and out through the front now :P

oh yeh, also stripped back the PERFORMANCE thingy, and gave its rusty bones a coat of dinitrol d900 or whatever it is which seems to have found PLENTY of rust, just look at that colour, lol

still battling the failures of biology, I swear I used to be a well person. in between 'the suck' things have been millimetrically moving forward. welded that bit in: coloured it in a bit: put the glue in the gutter and put the rubber on the glass, **** that SUCKED. Tomorrow either glass go in, or glass smash and truck goes in sea. The colour is ok, I like it.

oh no, another rusty bit fell off, but now it's tipping with rain. I COULD go and make a replacement in the garage, but the garage is too full of dashboards and whatnot :/ Still, it's progress... I can't believe how much rubbery 'stuff' was behind that. Why didn't it just have wheel guards fitted?!

cut a hole fettle to fit make a mess call it about done and and figure seam sealer is amazing and this will do... Now to prep for paint and then we can get the glass in!

Just for context: P I believe is prawy which is polish for right? that's the stuff off the end of that shiny lock barrel transplanted onto the old lock. You can see how the old P lever is corroded through the galvanising, whereas the new one is well fresh. I still plan to switch the lock from the left door onto the right, so I'll need to switch the backends over. The circlip on the old lock actually shattered when i tried to get it off! I can't get the guts out of the new lock, i think there's a grub screw or a pin in the 6th pin slot. Anyway none of this matters. fresh lock rears and a new plastic gasket for the driver's door, yay. I hope I can locate whatever goes in that groove in the lock body to secure it into the door panel :/

The lock mech is fine actually, brass is lovely. It’s just the galvanised steel mech on the back is a bit gritty. Really it’s just cosmetic. The drivers lock is a little fiddly from being worn from use, but I could swap the left and right locks and get a less used barrel on the drivers side. One of my keys is a little bent which is dull but I think a tap on the vise anvil will sort that out.