Right then, on with the show. Part 1 - Stripping the car down.
The first problem is finding somewhere to work on the car, after a bit of fettling I managed to squeeze her into the rear garden. The car fits through the gate with about 2cm to spare on both sides so its a very careful task. Once the car was in the garden, first step is to whip out the seats and mats.
You can see here the old sound dampening foam here, its pretty pointless so that's coming out too. The drivers side mat has a nice hole in it. New mats needed too, clearly. Another point for the list.
Under the drivers seat I find £2.01 in change, and a coffee stirrer. I'll put that towards the new car mats :) Under the passenger side there is a electronic gizmo that seems a bit battered. Apparently its a g-force sensor. Probably something to do with the ABS or airbags. I will need to be careful not to damage it.
Heading back through the car, its time to pull out the rear seats. First step is to get shot of the old CD auto changer. We have these new-fangled USB things that mean we don't need that anymore. While here i noticed what is likely to be the first in a long line of kludges on this car. Duct-tape engineering. The rear boot floor cover is being held together with tape. Looks like the board broke at some point. that'll need fixing but for now it can just come out and I will deal with that later.
Whipping out the rear seats themselves was a challenge. It seems that the bolts holding in the seats are a bit corroded and needed a lot more force to undo than seemed reasonable. (This is what you might call foreboding...) Also removed some more of the sound dampening materials to get it back to bare chassis. Under the seats we can see what the guys at Mighty Car Mods refer to as "human grime". Basically dust and dirt that has accumulated over years of use. Thankfully the automotive archaeology didn't reveal any major surprises left behind by previous owners.
Here you can see a some of the random cables that I will be pulling out. The grey cable in the left pic goes to the back of the car. This could be to do with the fog light but I have no idea why its taking the route it is. On the right we have the cable for the CD changer that is no longer required.
Next up, carpet. It seems that several of the plastic clips holding in the carpet to the center console were broken or missing. Something else that will need sourcing. The carpet itself came out very easily. In previous GTOs I've noticed that you actually have to remove the entire center console to get it out, or cut the carpet at the join in the middle. It seems someone has had the carpet out in the past as this cut has already been made.
Next we pull off the internal trim panels to get to the wires and other hidden gems. You can see the original speakers still mounted in the rear section. I've not taken the door panels off yet to see if they are original, but I do have replacement speakers for all 4 locations so that will be as part of the upgrades. Second pic is just some of the stuff pulled from the car. There's more in the house, on the settee, behind the settee, on the kitchen table, under the kitchen table, in the shed, etc.... its a mess lol.
It seems that Mitsubishi, in their infinite wisdom, decided to use these barbed metal clips to hold some of the upper trim in place. While they certainly do their job, removing the panels attached with them is a total nightmare. I broke at least 2 of the plastic lugs and some of them were already broken by previous owners. Dear Mitsi, next time use screws.
And this is what the car looks like fully stripped. Now in need to trace the wires and see where everything goes.
Last point here, hidden above the drivers side rear wheel arch, inside the metal support structure, stuck down with more mastic than you could believe, is a little black box, glued on top of a little silver box. These both appear to be wired into the factor wiring loom, and also connected to each other. I have no idea what this is, or what it does. And so far the internet has not revealed a solution to this conundrum. If anyone can offer a suggestion on what it is, if its needed, and / or how to get it out, that would be great :)
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