She's home

[Goran]

Yes looking at it, it looks very light. I don't think I'll bother removing it even though I will be removing the dashboard to replace the horrible khaki dashboard with a soul black one. Why-O-why didn't they just make a cream dashboard to fit the rest of the leather.

I was expecting some monster wires going all the way up front as I heard that the heated windscreen could draw up to 100A, but maybe that's not correct.

[ainarssems]

I think it runs on 48V supplied by inverter/control unit near battery and has max power of 1000W, so it would be 12v x 83A max from battery but 48V x 21A max going from back to to windscreen.

[Goran]

Ah! Thanks. That makes sense now. The wires to the control module are really big so I just assumed they stayed the same size going all the way to the front.

[notorious]

I retrofitted heated windscreen to my D2 a couple of years ago when my original non-heated windscreen was cracked by wayward stone. These pictures remind me the process.

Also ordered full loom from A8parts, though mine came from an LHD donor car. It appeared that the loom had type pressure control too, so extracted that wiring kit from the loom as well (now waiting on the shelve for a good moment).

Then the sunroof wiring was extracted from the same large loom when the time came to retrofit the sunroof.

And when I needed to change some bad electric connectors, i.e. screen wash pump connector became oxidised, I simply went to that huge loom and fished for a replacement.

It was very cost effective. It makes full sense to order a loom from well equipped car and do all upgrades with it if you're serious about D2

[IT]

I kinda see the theory behind having two screens, but it was never going to work properly. The multimedia kit has cables of very specific lengths, meaning the one on the left was never going to reach the boot area properly, and then they are both transmitting on the same IR channel, and there's no headphone socket and theres only 1 DVD changer, so its not like they can really watch different things, so, er, its got to go.



Removing the screens is going to leave a huge mess of roof lining, so the whole lining has to come out. This needs replacing with the new one. At the same time, I can inspect the heated windscreen retrofit to see if anything is salvageable.

So, it comes in this order: Rear seats out. C pillar trims off. Door sill trims off. Lower B pillar trims off. Upper B pillar off. Grab handles off. Pull the 4 release cables. Rear curtain airbag trim off, front curtain airbag trim off. Then carefully separate from the sunroof clips and finally sunvisors / sunroof & light control. Then pull the roof lining down vertically at the front, and when all side clips are released, push the lining back towards the rear of the car to unhook it. Piece of cake. Took me sub 2 hours in the dark on the driveway. Totally foxed me though as I came across some parts of the car that were actually still clipped together properly, which was pleasing.

These are the clips you have to release on facelift D2's to allow the curtain trims off. Crucially, when refitting, they need putting back on properly also, or if the airbag deploys its going to (presumably) just blast a load of trim at the side of your head. Nice.



Just takes some needle node pliers and a quick tug towards the rear of the car.



When the screens were removed, this was the hole left. Again, huge levels of weight saving here where the eye can't see. The red circle is representative of the hole the cable would normally go through, and a 2nd hole about twice this size would more then suffice to get the screws in place for the mounting brackets, but alas it seems hacking away acres of alcantara was the preferred method here....

Fortunately I'd already written this headlining off in my mind, but still seems a shame.




This is more interesting. The wiring from the rear of the car to the screen isn't as bad as I first imagined. Here, the positive connection for the screen is run from the rear of the car, all the way down and is happily connected to the top of the screen.




I cant say the same for the negative connection though as bizarrely it seems to have made it 95% of the way, and then stopped short popping up at either size of the dash:





It also takes a rather dodgy route, rather than going inside the nice cardboard lined protected channel, it instead chooses to be rammed just inside the metal bracket, rubbing against it nicely....

Needless to say, it will all be ripped out....



This is actually an earlier photo, from beginning to remove the rear seats. This is starting to unplug the mass of wires from the central wiring box:



and the first seat removed.... turned out to be pretty easy as it wasn't even bolted in.... <sigh>



Looking pretty bare now. Also means I have access to replace the diversity aerial switcher which has failed (common problem) and fix the broken armrest too.



One dead roof lining:



I've also removed all the lower dash glovebox etc as I needed access to trace the wires, and will need to be able to run the new loom in very shortly.

[Architex_mA8tey]

Good stuff Ian!
What would be cool is if you could incorporate the rear (LWB) D3 drop down ceiling mirrors into the new ceiling, would probably be a first in a D2 as well!

[HPsauce]

Excellent work, but knowing what a stickler for OEM Ian is I don't think those mirrors will appear.
Didn't realise this one had the rear reclining seats as well.

Looks like it needs a ski hatch or fridge.......

[IT]

Originally Posted by Architex_mA8tey

Good stuff Ian!
What would be cool is if you could incorporate the rear (LWB) D3 drop down ceiling mirrors into the new ceiling, would probably be a first in a D2 as well!

Hell no. There's no way I'm making any holes in this roof lining.... I've even written off re-installing the original rear seat entertainment for the that reason. I only fitted RSE in 2010 to mask the hole left in the original donor car by a drop down screen lol.

I also imagine it would be quite difficult as I'd expect the mirrors sit proud of the headlining rather than flush, and so require the material to lip up to work, and I wouldn't have the overlap of material for that.....

[IT]

Originally Posted by HPsauce

Excellent work, but knowing what a stickler for OEM Ian is I don't think those mirrors will appear.

Spot on...

Originally Posted by HPsauce

Didn't realise this one had the rear reclining seats as well.

Catch up.... That was kind of its party trick Believed to be the only D2 sports model with individual rear seats in the UK...

Originally Posted by HPsauce

Looks like it needs a ski hatch or fridge.......

There is an LPG tank directly behind there, which prohibits both. That should just be flush, but there was a RSE module rammed in there hard up against the tank, squashed, and smashed. I've stripped that out. Not sure what I'm going to do with the gap yet.

Tempting to relocate the gas tank to the spare wheel well, but then I have no spare wheel, and I've been caught out before running LPG with no spare...

[Goran]

That was one unfortunate butchered roof, and just for the sake of some toy-like looking entertainment screens. Its going to look a million miles better with a stock unmolested roof lining