Yesterday evening, due to my own stupidity in misjudging the height of a curb, the left of my front bumper got wedged, and when I backed the car up, part of the bumper kinda got ripped off it's mounting points.

At first, I thought it was no biggie, I'll most probably just need to pop it back on with some elbow grease. But when I inspected the mounting points on the bumper, I was aghast when I saw the plastic holes on the bumper where the connectors go through were simply ripped open, leaving a huge gaping hole.

The bumper was held up using screws and plastic rivets (STUPID IDEA MY DEAR PROTON). The ripped hole you see up here is the head of the screw going right through the bumper. No way I could get it to fit back now.

Plastic rivets... no need to say oreidi. They patah like crispy papadams... so forget about reusing these useless plastic clips. These are HOPELESS. So, the first thing I had to do were to replace the rivets with sturdy METAL nuts and bolts.

Thankfully, I keep a lot of junk in my DIY toolbox, and I have a few nuts and bolts which might do the job. Unfortunately, they were a little on the small size, so I had to find washers of some sort to the make them fit on my bumper. I ran out of luck here coz I don't have any which fits the bill.

Enter, the ever useful aluminium sheet. These are kind of thin and very easy to flex, so I had to beef them up someway. And to do that, I cut these sheets up into smaller pieces, fold them twice with a hammer, to give it a thickness of around 2mm.

These folded tabs should be stiff enough to hold the bumper up. A quick drill in the middle, and these will be my makeshift washers to use with my nuts and bolts. For the ripped hole on the bumper, I had to create a bigger piece using the same method.

This should help patch up the damn ripped hole on the plastic bumper and allow me to pull the bumper back up when I screw it to the car body.

Once that's done, here comes the hard part. Putting everything back together. Due to the fact that there isn't much space for me to work with behind the front fender, it was a frustrating job getting all those screws and nuts and bolts to align the bumper with the car body. It would help if I had a buddy to help me hold things in place, but since I was doing this myself, it took many many tries and a lot of cursing before I managed to put 1 and 1 together. The top pic shows how fooking hard it is to see the damn nut and bolt when putting the bumper back together. Things were done mostly by feel since I can't see the damn thing.

Thankfully after about 20 minutes of elbow grease, I managed to lock everything back into place. The gap between the bumper and the car body is now a tad bigger than it was originally, but I can't do much about it since the plastic mounting points got stretched a little when it got ripped off. But overall, I'm thankful I don't need to shell out a single cent to get the fix done, other than a lot of sweat and grime. Which is a good thing since I still haven't recoved from the 3K bill inflicted at Hike Enterprise, Penang Road...

The Fish is planning to let go of his Dell soundbar which came from his old monitor. I thought this would fit nicely into my plans I have in future, so I asked him to gimme the weekend to try it out.

It needed to be fed with a 12V 1A power supply.

So I dropped by Thye Huat and got myself a power block which came with that same rating.

This was the input plug which came with the soundbar.

Unfortunately, all the power blocks at Thye Huat came with the same plug head.

U kenot make a banana poke another banana.

So I got myself some female adapter heads.

Then, I whipped out the ol' soldering iron which I haven't used since donkey years ago.

And thus giving birth to this doohickey.

I call it... "The Twin Headed Vaginas of Death"...

Now I can make a banana pokey another banana.

Voila.

The blue LED shines in agreement.

Ikan... u hav a buyer...  ;)

If you drive a Proton Waja, I'm sure you have heard of the infamous crappy door handle issue. Over the period of my possesion of this car, I have changed all 4 door handles numerous times.

And the many other owners in this country can attest to this fact. Anyways, the biggest gripe that I have is, when you decide to get a replacement at the workshop, there is a 80% chance that they won't have a unit in the color that matches your car. So you'll have to make do with a generic unpainted black unit.

In the beginning, I used to send my car over to the paintshop to have it painted. But this was expensive, and it took quite a bit of time to get done. After 5-6 years, I got sick of it and decided to leave it black. Unfortunately, the obsessive compulsive gremlin in me can't bear looking at three matching door handles and one farking black one. That's as attention seeking (in a bad way) as Pamela Anderson brandishing her 36-Double-D boobies in conservative Kelantan. Fuggly as hell.

So I decided to try fixing it myself.

First thing to do, I need to wash the handle properly to get rid of all the dirt and grime. I used normal dishwashing detergent and water. Once done, dry the handle properly.

Next, I used some Tamiya masking tape to mask out the outline of the handle. This is to protect the rubber gasket behing the handle from paint.

After that, get some scrap newspaper and 'frame-up' the areas of the car which you do not want to get paint on. This is a no brainer and can be done rather quickly.

Next, I bust out my Tamiya surface primer, which works swell on gunpla, but actually is suitable for any plastic surface. VERY PRICEY though.

Give the black door handle a nice coat of primer. I'm supposed to sand paper the thing down after it dries, but me being lazy today, decided to skip this step.

Next, I got a can of DPI auto spray. It's nice to see that DPI have come up with a whole range of touchup paints for local cars. How good it'll match the factory paint... I dunno. Just sink or swim lo.

Give the primered handle several coats of DPI paint. Then let dry for about half and hour.

Finally, I brought out my trusty Anchor clear lacquer spray paint, which works cool both as a sealant and a top coat.

Give the handle another several layers of DPI clear paint.

Remove all the scrap newspaper, masking tape and you have a properly color coded handle. Let dry, and you're done. Okay... I admit the color doesn't match exactly a hundred percent (I should have used a white primer), but still it's good enough for me. Total time needed = 1 hour. 

The ceiling light next to my common toilet burnt out a few days ago. So I got a chair and proceeded to try and open the light housing to replace the bulb. It refused to open, and I tried prying the edges to loosen it up. Next thing I knew, the dome-shaped glass housing gave way, along with parts of the attachments to the ceiling.

Hearing glass shatter into a million pieces close to midnight isn't exactly the smartest thing one can do. My neighbours must have thought I fatt lan char or something. And spending the next half an hour or so cleaning up the debris field it created absolutely sucked.

A closer look at the plastic ceiling brackets revealed that 2 out of 3 of them were practically disintegrated due to old age. And that was why the housing suddenly gave way when I gave it a hard nudge. Anyways... nothing a little super-glue and some replacement brackets won't fix.

The bigger headache I had was what to do with a coverless ceiling light housing. So I spent the next day thinking of what I can use to replace that empty void.

I found a cookie tin which might do just that.

First thing I did was remove the bottom lid to create a hollow cylinder.

Next, I got some wire mesh and molded it to the bottom of the cookie tin.

It was held in place with generous amount of superglue.

After a fresh coat of paint, I installed everything back.

The first thing that crossed my mind when I looked up the ceiling...

""wtf..."

It looked like some World War II inspired  prison lighting...

Which was cool for like for 5 minutes... but then I had reservations on how it'll affect the feng shui of my house...

I can't afford no negative 'chi' beb...

But that wasn't the biggest problem. I realized that this design I used couldn't distribute light properly... so the lighting was really poor.

It was dim as heck.

And also irritatingly glaring.

So it was back to the drawing board. I ripped off the wire mesh and resprayed the tin can with a new base coat.

Then I drilled holes at 3 inch intervals all round the can to help ventilate the assembly once I seal the whole thing up.

I needed some way to diffuse the light. And to do that, I need something transparent to seal the bottom of the container.

I wanted to use acrylic sheets... but it's Raya and all the hardware stores were closed.

So I rummaged through my house, and I found some ol' skool over head projector transparency sheets.

These should be durable enough to withstand the heat from the bulb.

I cut them into shape to fit the bottom.

Now, I needed to change this into a diffuser.

And to do that, I used several coats of pearl white spray.

The result is an opaque sheet of transparency.

Then I glued this to the base of the container.

Some detailing was done using gunmetal spray to make it look less plasticky.

Once that's done, I mounted everything back up the ceiling.

The homemade diffuser did it's job and the light distribution is much better.

Hope this thing holds up until I need a replacement in future.

If you're a regular follower of MTV's Pimp My Ride, you'll realize the extensive use of candy colored paintjobs for most of the rides featured. Now why is this paintjob so popular? You could say this is due to the fact that candy colors gives the surface a depth which normal paints won't be able to provide.

The secret to eye popping candy color paint is that it's a transparent kinda paint, which depends on how bright or reflective the base coat is to provide the shine and depth which makes it's so attractive. However, it's also a bitch to work with, as I unfortunately found out while trying out some experiments for a new DIY project I'm gonna work on soon.

Using the information I gathered from the net, I found out that applying candy paint is going to be a 3 step process. I used an old cap from a spraycan as my subject for this paint test.

First, we need to give the cap a black base coat to cover all the imperfections on the surface.

Next, we need to prep the surface by applying a chrome paintjob onto the black base coat. I used decorative chrome from an Anchor spraycan for this.

After waiting for the paint to dry, give it a good buff using a very soft cloth to give it a better shine.

Once that's done, it's time to apply the candy paint. I bought a can of candy blue, and gave the cap several thin coats of the paint. And here's where everything went wrong.

As you can see from the above pics, 3 major things went terribly wrong. The first was that any dust or grime will have a severe effect on the surface finish. And I saw a really horrible surface finish on the cap.

Next, the candy paint sort of 'ate' into the chrome mid-layer coat. And this left really ugly black spots all over the surface (the black spots are actually the black base coat showing).

And finally, I found that chrome finish from a can is hopeless. It looks pretty when applied on it's own. But when you add another top coat, the mirror like finish dulls into a matte finish and there were blemishes everywhere.

So, I took another unused spray cap to try and see if I could work around the problem. I cleaned the cap thoroughly this time. Then I waited longer for the black base coat to dry. I also applied thicker layers of chrome paint, hoping that the candy paint won't eat through this time.

All that gave me this. It looks marginally better than the first attempt. At least there weren't so many blemishes this time. However, I'm still extremely unsatisfied with the results. It wasn't anywhere good enough to be called successful.

My opinion is, candy paint works best with properly chromed surfaces. Off the shelf chrome paint just won't do, and will not make candy paint look at it's best. It's way too much work and the results are at best average. Don't even think about a showroom shine.

16000km since I first swapped my stock air filter for a drop in K&N replacement; meant that it was high time I got it serviced. So I dropped by Speedworks to pick up a recharger pack for about 60 bucks.

After yanking out the K&N filter from the airbox, I replaced it temporarily with my old paper element filter so that I could still drive around my car. The first thing I realized was how much heavier the damn K&N is. If the standard filter was a Volkswagon Beetle, the K&N filter is about as heavy as a fully loaded German Panzer tank.

I flipped it over to have a look at how badly clogged the filter is.

It wasn't hard to see that it was way past it's service date. The characteristic red cotton gauze element was practically charcoal black with dirt. And a bug or two thrown in for good measure.

As I opened up the recharger kit, I found a spray bottle of cleaner and a bottle of filter oil, plus a step by step guide to clean the filter.

First thing u need to do is spray the clean side of the K&N filter with the cleaner solution until you completely saturate the cotton element.

Once that's done, flip the filter over to the dirty side and repeat the procedure. Leave it to soak for about 20 minutes. Now I had my reservations about how well the cleaner was going to do it's job, since my filter was pretty clogged up with dirt... not to mention greasy as hell. But I just went with the instructions and hoped for the best.

Once the 20 minutes have passed by, it was time to rinse the cleaner off with plenty of clean running water. Important thing to remember is to run the water through the clean side of the filter; this is to make sure you do not drive the dirt further into the cotton gauze element. Let the water run until you stop seeing oily residue floating on the water which passed through the filter.

When I picked up the filter, I was very very suprised to see how clean the filter element was! No dirt was to be seen anywhere... and all I did was run water through the damn thing. No scrubbing, no high pressure water, no industrial strength detergent... (and these are to be avoided at all cost as it could damage the filter). However, the red filter element was now practically white since all the filter oil have been removed by the cleaner solution.

The next thing to do is to let the K&N filter element dry naturally. This is very important  before you can move on to the next step. SoI left the filter to dry for a full day.

Once it's dry, you can start reoiling the filter element with the bottle of oil in the recharger kit. Make sure that you drip the oil on the cotton gauze sparingly, as a soaking wet K&N filter can wreak havoc on your MAP/MAF sensor, or worse, damage your engine (I'm keeping my fingers crossed I didn't screw up this part... it's so tempting to soak the filter with the red filter oil). It's easy to see when there's enough oil, the filter element will be a shade of nice red.

And voila... that's about it. Touch up any white area spots which you may have missed with some additional oil. And you're done! That's it... straight forward and simple.

You now have a clean K&N filter which is as good as new... ;)

Proton designers are idiots. When they first came up with the Waja, they went for the European inspired driver-centric front dash. Which looks pretty cool, until the driver realizes he's permanently stuck in an Alaskan blizzard, where else the poor passenger is forever experiencing the merciless Sahara desert heat. Simply because the passenger side aircon vent is practically useless due to it's angle on the dash.

I attempted to rectify this problem; with mixed results. I used a roll of aluminium sheet to try and fabricate a part.

I ended up creating this.

Which is sorta a home-made remedy to help divert some cold airflow to the left of the car. Which works suprisingly well.

Unfortunately, when you have a look at the final product, it's pretty much an eyesore. Which sucks donkeyballs. And if you're not too careful, you'll just smack the thing off since it's not secured by any adhesive of any kind.

So I did some digging on the net and found this fella selling at lelong.com for approx. 70 bucks.

This is Proton's solution for the aircon vent problem. And it comes with the latest batch of Wajas. The one I got here is an imitation part, which probably is made in Taiwan or something. The seller assured me that this part is 'Plug and Play'. I should have known better than believe some bangla I've never seen before who operates via the net. Biotch personified.

But more on that later.

Armed with a Phillips screwdriver, I set off to tear my dashboard apart. There weren't any intructions of any kind with the package so I had to just fiddle my way around.

First of all, locate the tiny screw just in front of the gear shift lever. This holds the whole assembly together.

Next, you'll need some brute force to yank out the front plastic panel, since it's held together by like a gazzilion plastic tabs. Once it's out, set it aside.

Yes... I know I hav beautifool hands... now quit staring oreidi... :P

Next, remove the screws which holds the 2 DIN radio to the front fascia. There're 4 , so make sure  they're all gone before you pull the thing out.

Once that's out, take a look at the plastic panel coverivg the 5 buttons above the radio console. Yank this out. I broke 2 pins in the process, so be gentle if you're planning to do so.

Once that's out, you'll see 2 screws holding the button assembly to the dashboard. Remove this. Now the hard part starts.

You'll have to pull out the button assembly, which is easier said than done, since there's hardly any space between the dash and the console. I used a flathead screwdriver to pry the damn thing out, which took me about 15 minutes. Farker.

Once that's out, I proceeded to pull out the aircon vent to replace it with the new unit. I then went... FUCK. This ain't right? It's a 2 piece assembly, meaning that I'll have to do more work. I'm beginning to think it isn't that Plug and Play anymore.

So I had to remove the fins. Then I had to find someway to remove the center control lever which controls the airflow.

Some more prying and the damn thing finally came off.

With that outta the way... I can proceed. Then I realize things were flapping loose like some limp dick without the control lever.

So I had to secure the valve which controls the airflow to the top of the assembly with a piece of cable tie. No biggie.

At this point, I should be able to pluck in the new aircon vent into the blank void I created, be done with it and go have a nice cold can of Coke while sitting back to enjoy my handy work. But nooooooooooooo. It didn't. Curses of a thousand homo monkeys, the damn thing just won't go in. Banging the thing with my fists doesn't help either. I definitely felt something is seriously wrong with the new vent.

Upon closer inspection, I found the problem. The new vent has additional brackets and reinforcements, which doesn't exist on my original vent. That aside, the vent was also crudely fabricated, meaning that the edges were roughly finished and the tabs on the top and bottom weren't properly punched, thus the whole thing wouldn't click together.

I felt like throwing the damn thing into the dustbin as there's no way the thing would fit now. But after looking at the vent again, I decided to try and rework the tabs by shaving off some plastic to make the tabs and brackets a little flatter, thus should theorethically be able to fit when all the parts are assembled back.

I pulled out a metal file and started filling off layer after layer of plastic. Then returning to the car to see if it fits. After 5 attempts, I'm still going no where.

The filing was taking forever, and the thing still won't fit. Given enough time, I'm sure I'll get it done. Unfortunately, my patience was running thin this weekend, so I got pissed, pulled out a metal hacksaw and decided to whack the whole bracket off. Then, I shifted my attention to reshaping the holes on the tabs using a boxcutter and cleaned the whole thing up using some sandpaper.

With the damn extra brackets outta the way, and the mis-shaped panels filed to size, I tried again. Finally the thing fits. It took me close to 3 hours just to rework the damn vent using the tools I had. I'm pretty sure it'll take less than half the time if I had a powered dremel tool. Then I started screwing the panels back into place.

Come evening, everything is completed. And seems to work well.

So, the next time some damn online merchant tells me not to worry and that his product is completely Plug and Play... I'll ask him to go eat shit and fuck some filthy lorong belakang in-bred mogrel. Cause it ain't no fun paying for something which require 2 afternoons of my bloody time to fix defects that shouldn't been there in the first place.

Fuckin asshole.

Listening to : Marilyn Manson - Irresponsible Hate Anthem

I dunno if this company is owned by the Governator or something... but the service is pretty fast.

I tried fabricating a part out of aluminium sheet to try and rectify the air conditioning vent on my car several months ago; which was biased towards the driver. It works well, but unfortunately looks like shit even after I gave it a coat of matte black paintjob. Macam tumor je. Quote Poporoti, "WTF is the turbo intake thingy doing on your dashboard?"

So I ordered a part which originates from the Waja Campro version which should solve both problems. I manage to track one down at lelong.com; imitation one... but much cheaper than the real mccoy (costs 3 times more). And finally, it arrived yesterday.

Yay... can try DIY liao this weekend. Time to rip the dashboard apart... nyaaaahahaha...