Didn't get round to sticking my head in the frunk today, but did clean my steering wheel.

I wear gloves when I drive on track, but not on the road, or when I'm working on the car, so I give it a brush with some suede cleaner fairly regularly. But as I had some time, I thought I'd get busy with some Fairy to try to get the oils out.

First thing, remove the wheel from the boss. I can do this from the comfort of my utility room 😁



Warm water and Fairy is what I'm using to scrub.



Get a microfibre and really give that wheel a scrub. Rinse the cloth, wring it out, scrub, repeat.



It didn't look bad to start with but look at that water 🤢



Dry with afresh microfibre, brush with a stiff brush, let it dry.



Job done!

ETA - it's not perfect. It probably needs a lot more work to get the matting out completely. But also... it's 12 years old, on a track car, it gets abuse. This will do

Since using the car for gymkhana, I've been thinking of ways to make the car work for me on the road, on track, and for skids. The car has to be good at all three, and although it's a master of none, the driver is the weak link so I'm ok with it.

However, one thing you have to do for gymkhana is disable the ABS so you can use the hydraulic handbrake. It's very simple to pop a fuse out - you don't need to disconnect the battery or anything, popping the fuse back in enables ABS. So... it should be switchable right? The only internet reference to doing this was a single comment by Danny DC2 that he'd fitted a switch. No elaboration unfortunately. This should be fairly simple on its own.

I also got to thinking about the power steering - our steering assistance varies by speed, with max at zero mph, tailing off as speed increases. This makes sense on the road and on track, but for gymkhana wheel speed is often considerably higher than actual speed, causing inconsistent steering. If I could make the PS ECU think the wheel speed was zero, I'd have full assistance all the time. And if I could put that on a switch... you see where this is going.

So I hatched a plan to install a 3 position switch that could select different modes: road mode, ABS off, and gymkhana mode. I gathered parts, and opted for relays so the circuits could fail closed. It was a good time to also tidy up some wiring - I'd been powering my gauges off the radio harness, so could take the IGN+ and ground from there easily enough. I had got rid of oil pressure and temp, so just AFR left. I wanted to relocate that to a heater vent to avoid having a gauge pod in my line of sight.

So out with the sub loom and on to the wiring...



Honestly I had no idea what I was doing; or indeed how to do it. I made a lot of mistakes and had to redo things a few times but got there in the end.



The switch mounting was very easy - hole in a blank.



Once it was all wired up, off to pop it all in the car. This is the long bit... routing was hard and lots of do overs later I finally got roughly where I was happy being.



If you're ever thinking of vent mounting a gauge, don't bother. It's a pain.



Switch looks very at home. I just need to split the right wires to switch. Job for tomorrow...

Hi.
If anyone needs any help with agreed value insurance then please feel free to drop me a line.
Regards,
Dan. 

I'm very interesting by this product !
What's interface du you use to upload your map into your ECU ?

Thanks Carolyn, on all my other cars u have had to send them 6 photos so will give it a go and see what I can get. With the others when I added them I took a punt at a figure and then negotiated down so I'll start with 8 and see how low it gets

I have mine on agreed value with Adrian Flux.  Insured for £5,500.

JDM car with 103,000 miles 2001, with factory installed LSD, rebuilt engine, the valuable close ratio JDM gearbox, TRD strut braces, TRD short shifter, TRD stage 2 fromt bumper, TRD spoiler, genuine rainbow foglamps, Jack Smith roof, under bracing, leather, hard top, air con, fitted luggage....

£5,500 is still not close to replacement value though!

I agree with your logic.

But find insurance companies unfathomable at times.

Thread bump.

I have all of my classic cars with classicline insurance and all with agreed values. My MR2 is on a standard policy and I'm thinking I'm going to move it across later this month when the insurance is up.

Has anyone got an agreed value on their MR2?

My car is 2004 with 115k and in immaculate condition with recent repaint, proper expensive mohair hood, new wheels, full audio install and tan leather interior upgrade. Plus all refreshed suspension and brakes etc and white line arbs when I got the new blue one immediately after the silver was written off two years ago.

Two years ago on a standard insurance policy I got £2800 when the silver car was written off. That had a Swansea roof, standard wheels and interior but similar audio and the refreshed suspension brakes etc. it was on 130k. Thinking therefore an agreed value of say 5k at least should be achievable on the blue one? Thoughts

I'd forgotten about this thread.

Just to update ... this was put on hold while the car had not one, but two engine swaps along with a lot of other work. But Andy at J-Spec fitted an A1-condition soft top for me last month and it's looking great. I've driven in torrential rain without a single leak. Great stuff.