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 :/

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!

Looks good.😁

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?!

Wheel arch liners cost money don't you know! 😄

Skoda weren't allowed to play with them until the Octavia Mk 1 came along anyway.

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 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

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

Great work! I used parachord that my Dad came with, it was a decent thickness.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

That's a great lot of work you've gotten done there Cat! Looking great. Might not feel like it to you but it is. Keep it up! 😁

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.

The controls are really very good to reach on the Felicias. You shouldn't have any trouble other than having to look at the screen.

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.

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?

GitHub

GitHub - 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-remote

looks 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

On 05/07/2025 at 14:47, skoda_cat said:

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.

Behind the NSR light unit there is a handy spare hole in the panel, intended (I think) for tow bar wiring. Run the cables through there and that gets them behind the bumper.

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.

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.