Got a trailer. I should be hauling kayaks, bikes and other stuff soon.

 

Applied car wrap vinyl to the hitch to make it match the rest of the trim.

 

I've got more car mod updates to post, but haven't had time to write them up. In the meantime...

 

I installed my purple and gold wheels at the end of July, 2016. Over time I noticed that the anodize color on the was unevenly fading. I ended up leaving a negative review at Amazon.

"These looked great when first installed, but the color on most of the nuts faded drastically. You can tell that they were anodized in different batches, with improper color fixing on some. Some are still as bright gold as when I installed them. Most have faded to just a yellow tint in six months time. Gave one star because the wheels haven't fallen off. But, only one star because they will all need to be replaced, making this a wasted purchase."

Here's what they looked like at the end of June, 2017, when I replaced them.



You can see on the wheel that one of the nuts remained yellow while the other three lost their color. Here is the comparison between lug nuts that had been installed and ones which had not.



I replaced them with these . At this point I have no idea if the color will last on this set, but we'll see.

Here are two of the old nuts with two of the new ones.



And here is a wheel sporting all new lug nuts.

 

I've been pondering how to start themeing the interior. I'd love to do purple seat covers, but there are some drawbacks. I really dislike leather (pleather) seats. In my part of Virginia, it burns you on hot summer days, and freezes you on cold winter days. I find cloth seats much more comfortable. But, the custom seat covers I've found for Fits all seem to be pleather. The next drawback is the price. I MIGHT be willing to spend multi hundreds of dollars for seat covers that were exactly what I want, but I haven't found anything online like that.

Earlier in the summer, I stumbled on a remnant of purple fleece that matched by exterior graphics pretty well. It was only like a buck-fifty, so I picked it up on a whim. For a couple weeks it just lived on the back seat, tucked in around the edges. A couple weeks ago I decided to do something more constructive with it: headrest covers. Making covers for the headrests seemed like a doable project with my limited sewing skills. Plus, colored headrests would be highly visible, giving a lot of themeing bang for the buck.
So, I hauled out the sewing machine and worked up a pattern for covers for the rear seat headrests.

 

In that last picture, is the weight of your cargo cover/sub pulling the shelf on the left off?

 

Yes, the little plastic clips at that seam come out. (Both sides) If it bugs me enough, I'll do something about it, but it hasn't been a major concern yet.

 

This is another upgrade i made some time ago, but I've been iterating on it and haven't felt it was mature enough to post. But, I'm tired of waiting, and this implementation has been stable for a while, so I'm posting it.

When I first got the car, I was using my phone for mapping, with it in a holder. This had a couple drawbacks. The first was that I had to mount the phone in the car every time I got in and out, which was a major annoyance. Eventually I realized that I just wasn't doing it, so I never had the map up when I wanted it. Second, as I get older my eyes are getting worse, and I couldn't see anything useful in that tiny screen if it was that far away. So, a tablet seemed like the answer.

I had an old Nexus 7 (1st generation) that's been gathering dust, so I took that and mounted it in the car. That size screen was better, but it was so old that it operated at a crawl, and the battery life was crap. I suffered along with it long enough to know I definitely wanted a tablet in the car, and that it definitely needed to be better than the old Nexus 7. So, I replaced it with a new tablet.





That leads me to my current hardware list.
Galaxy Tab A, 8 inch: This was in the sweet spot between the 7 inch Nexus screen, which was still a little small, and the giant Galaxy Tab A 10.1 inch tablet, which I got for personal use last Black Friday. Plus, the 4:3 screen ratio is more map friendly than a 16:10 tablet. It's also not top of the line, so it doesn't break the bank.
: I'm a big fan of this mount. It clamps into the CD slot of the car radio and holds the tablet up above the car radio display. Despite how it looks in the photos, the tablet position is above the radio, and below the lower edge of the windshield, so it doesn't block anything useful in my field of view. The one slight drawback is that the right center vent is blocked. But, I've found that I get along just fine with the 3 remaining vents aimed at me. The "blocked" vent isn't really fully blocked, it's just aimed full right, so it blows towards the passenger seat.
: I started with a straight USB cable connector. That was obviously wrong, putting side load on the USB jack. It's well worth a couple extra bucks for one with a right angle connector just because it looks so much better. Just be sure you get one that turns the right direction, so your cable goes down instead of going up.
: Nothing special about this other than it having 4 plugs, so I could theoretically charge a lot of stuff simultaneously. I usually have the tablet plugged in full time, and one other cable to charge my phone which lives in the center left cupholder. Occasionally, on long car trips when my wife drives, I'll plug in her phone to charge, and also charge my 10 inch tablet, to do some web surfing. It's pretty sweet to have that ability.

There are some required software apps necessary for a tablet to be at all practical in a car. You can't get the tablet to work totally like a car radio, but you can come close.
Llama: This app links the tablet radios to the USB charger. When I start the car and the USB charger powers up, Llama turns on the wifi and bluetooth radios. The tablet automatically connects the the car radio via bluetooth. And, if the unlimited data hotspot is enabled on my phone, the tablet connects to that, too. When the car turns off, both the radios turn off, saving battery power.
Car Dashdroid: This is the car friendly homescreen that runs on top of the normal android desktop. It's primary benefit is ergonomics. The big buttons are easy to press, to launch apps.
Other apps: For a while I had Facebook, FB messenger, Slack, texting, etc. on the tablet, but found the notifications way too distracting when I was trying to listen to music. I eventually stripped them all off. Now I just have Google maps, Pandora for music, Weather Bug for weather radar, and Youtube for when I'm killing time in a parking lot and forgot to bring a book to read.

Operationally, the tablet is useful enough that I'm glad to have it in the car, but it's far from perfect. First of all, for 85% of daily driving, I just don't use it for anything. In that case, I press the top button to turn off the display and just let the tablet charge. The app I use most is Google maps, when I want to check the traffic conditions on my drive home from work. I occasionally use Pandora for music, too, but it's just so much easier to just use the radio with the steering wheel controls. BUT, for trips, the tablet is awesome. We use Google maps to keep us updated on changing traffic conditions and reroute us around problems. That's saved our bacon a time or two.



It's a constant challenge to keep the tablet charged. When the car is on, it charges the tablet faster than the battery drains, even when it's mapping. So, on super long trips, we always arrive with the tablet fully charged. If I drive with the screen off, it charges even faster. But, when the car is off, the tablet keeps drawing power, and the battery drains down. This is made worse by an annoying little bug that I haven't tracked down yet. Occasionally, I'll return to the car after it being parked for a while, and the screen will be on, with it sucking down power. I haven't identified what app is doing this, but it's extremely aggravating. Another drawback is that if the tablet is in direct sunlight while parked, it will get VERY hot. This means I need to put in the windshield sun shade every time I exit the car. I do this anyway, but on the few times I've forgotten, upon powering up the car the tablet will flash a message that it has overheated and that it's disabling itself for safety.

These power handling issues are why I haven't yet installed the that I bought many months ago. I don't want to take a chance the tablet will decide to power itself on and drain my car battery overnight.

 

Update on the subwoofer LED lighting...

I made some modifications to the lighting setup since the last video I posted. In that video, the LEDs were located in the 8 holes of the rubber gasket surrounding the subwoofer. They were alternating and . That didn't give a dramatic enough effect, so I stepped it up a little.

Now, all the LEDs in the gasket holes are purple. In addition, there are purple LED strip segments under the handles, shining down on the purple deck. I wrapped a strip of yellow LEDs around the outer perimeter of the speaker gasket, then to visually hide them when not lit, I wrapped the LED strip with a couple layers of yellow teflon pipe thread tape. That adds a bit of yellow pop to the speaker during the day, and lets the LEDs shine through when they light up. The LEDs are visable, but not super noticeable during the day, but at night, they really pop.

 

Any concern with theft? That would be my concern running a tablet in that configuration.

I use a magnetic mount near the head unit so it's easy take on and off. Just plop the phone and it sticks and put the power plug in, easy peasy. Have you tried out Android Auto on your phone? The buttons are larger than just running straight Google Maps so it might be easier to use, plus voice activated commands if you choose to use it. AA can use Pandora and Google music, and react to steering wheel controls (on my EX anyways). I made a post w/ a few pictures: https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/3rd-...ml#post1372253

 

I don't worry much about theft, but I don't park in sketchy locations often. I work at NASA Langley, and I have zero concerns when parked there. At home, I have motion sensitive lights pointing at my car. That would be a pretty big deterrent. Plus, I always put in the sunshade, which hides the tablet pretty well. If I were to park somewhere questionable, I'd just pop the tablet in the glove compartment.

Here's what the car typically looks like when parked. Incidentally, this summer has been so hot that I ordered side window sun shades. They're currently on a slow boat from China, but when they get here, that will cut down on lookey-loos even more.



I'll definitely check out Android Auto.

 

You talk about attaching your phone being a hassle, but isn't putting up multiple sunshades just as much a hassle?

Another thing I forget to mention about AA is that you can set it to auto launch if it detects certain Bluetooth networks. So in the Fit, as soon as it detects the HandsFreeLink it launches, but it ignores the bluetooth speaker at home.

 

As a point of reference, I recently had my A12 maintenance. This code calls for an oil change, tires rotated, and air filters changed. I bought my car at a dealer which offers free oil changes for life, when you buy a new car, so they can get you on the rest of the maintenance items. They wanted $40 to rotate the tires, which I declined, because NOBODY touches my wheels. They wanted ~$120 to change the air filters. I don't think I actually laughed out loud at that, but I wanted to. Declined.

While they were changing the oil, I stopped by the parts desk to see how much the filters would cost through the dealer. $60 !!!



So I found a comfy chair, pulled out my phone, and ordered filters from Amazon. $19.49

Links:




When they arrived, two days later, it took me about 15 minutes to change the filters myself. And, it only took that long because I took the opportunity to clean out my glove compartment.

 

Yeah, that might turn out to be the case.

But, the sunshades aren't really for hiding the tablet. They are for keeping the car cool. Only time will tell if they are effective enough to be worth the hassle. I figured it was worth $13 to give it a try. Now, I often open up the doors and the hatch for a minute to let the heated air vent from a car which has been sitting in the sun. If it's less hassle than that, I'll call it a win.

Looking forward to the time when manufacturers put electronics in cars which people actually want. Not holding my breath, though. The corporate mindset is to install crippled systems rather than giving the customer the freedom to make mods and possibly mess something up.

 

I hear you on the temp control. I use a sunshade and I park in the "far lot" just to be in the shade of a tree line. The car stays in the shade most of the day and it's drastically cooler when leaving at the end of the day, versus parking closer to the building. This means I can run the AC at 1 versus higher because the car doesn't have to cool down as much, and the dash isn't radiating heat into the car.

No one used to park out there and now a handful of cars park out there withe me after some people asked what I was doing. LOL

I've used both of those filters you bought and they work just fine. I switched to a K&N for the engine filter as it was on sale but I still use the ECOGUARD for the Cabin Air.

 

Today the mailman dropped off my new bumper LED lights. I ordered these from an ebay seller.



I mounted them on the car tonight, and tomorrow I'll wire them up. I thought I'd need to pull the bumper cover, but I was able to mount them without doing that. Instead, the first step is removing the tail light housing.



There is a plastic tab, marked with a red X, which can bend up out of the way just enough for me to jam my arm down to release the tabs on the back of the panel. It takes some fiddling, but eventually the panel came loose.



Next, I drilled a 1/4" hole in the bumper cover for the wires. Feed the wires into the bumper cover, and pull them out the top of the cover by the existing light harness.



Then push the tabs of the new light into the existing slots. The old panel fit quite snugly and clipped in firmly. The light panel doesn't fit quite as well. This might be because of the blobs of RTV sealing the wire openings in the panel.



I stopped for the night when the lights were physically mounted. I'll complete the wiring tomorrow. For now, the wire is zip tied to the existing wire harness. Here are what the lights look like installed.

 

The side window sun shades came in the mail last night. They are quicker to install and remove that I anticipated. So far, I only install the shades on the side of the car facing the sun.



The two shades for the windows on either side of the car are rolled up and tucked in the cupholder of the rear door where they install. I only rarely have people ride in the back seat.



Just to save walking around the car, I'll probably plan head-in or head-out parking so as to put the drivers side of the car to the sun.

 

Spent some more quality time with the sewing machine this afternoon. I'm so pleased with how these headrest covers turned out.

 

Did I mention that the rear lights are wired? It's tricky to get good pics of this without a good camera, and the point and shoot I use for quicky car pics isn't really up to the task. But, they show up in the pics of the work I did this weekend. Three lighting tasks:

1) The original LED strip installed behind the lower grille died sometime over the winter. I replaced it with a new one. We'll see how long it holds up.



2) Added LED strip behind the tow hitch, for rear underglow. The wiring goes from the rear seat footwell lights, under the left side door trim pieces, behind the rear felt, out the left taillight rubber boot, and drops down behind the rear bumper cover.



3) Added LED strips around the bottom of the center console cup holders. Water bottles in the cup holders look awesome, and really light up the interior of the car.

 

On those rear bumper lights, is the white part wired into reverse? I find the backup lights a little lacking, even after I installed LED backup bulbs. Don't get me wrong, they are brighter, I just think they reversing could be better if it was lit up more.