Thought I'd create a new thread here to start a story of all modifications to this car under it. So, here goes, done so far since I got the car exactly two weeks ago: Cleaned and painted the rear brake drums First I cleaned all the loose dirt and rust, then used a metal drill brush and finally treated the rear brake drums with brakleen and painted them with black zinc-phosphate high-temperature spary paint. Small detail, but a nice touch. Surprisingly laborious though, took about three hours in all. New stainless steel mesh radiator grille Original plastic grille was broken and even some pieces were missing. New stainless steel mesh radiator grille from a Dutch company Cabrio Supply adds some bling, but still with good taste, I like this new smile. Noticed while installing the new grille that the front bumber has taken some hits that might have also bent the very light and delicate aluminium hood. The gap between the grille and the hood is not even, but to fix this completely I think it would require a new front bumber and maybe a hood too. So, I'll just ignore that for now.. Anyway, this must be one of the easiest mods there is for Copen, took less than 10 minutes! New radio-navigator-computer unit As the old, there-when-bought, Pioneer head unit was just constantly displaying a reverse-camera warning on a black screen I decided to get one of those not-very-expensive Chinese head units running Android. I got an Xtrons unit off Ebay and it shipped (from UK by the way) in about a week, I chose a model with Android 8 and a lot of RAM and FLASH to avoid getting a sluggish feeling thing and maybe to prolong its usable lifetime. Installation was rather straightforward plug-and-play, old unit out, new unit in type of business. Most time went went to mechanically attaching the unit to the dash and prying the cables inside the cramped space.. The new head unit booted right up, and now there's navigation, web browsing, Play Store, bluetooth handsfree, etc. and it even plays music too! Lot to configure and play with on this thing, maybe I'll follow up with the features on this thing later when I've had some time to play around with it.. This mod took a good three hours I think. Well, hmm, what next?
Looks very good and the wheel hubs are in great condition. I shouldn’t worry too much about the panel gaps on the bonnet as you’ll probably have noticed that even when it’s fully closed, there’s still some flex in it. There are some bump stops but they’re so far up that they don’t really help to adjust the nose droop (the sloping front bit with the badge on). The only thing I looked for was the the rear edge didn’t catch the wings or scuttle panel when the bonnet was opened/closed.
The rims came with the car. The "cold air intake" mod was already there too, it seems to have been installed well but I don't know what kind of filter element there is and when it should be replaced/cleaned? Also, the stickers were there too when bought, I'm not sure about keeping those.
Thanks, good to know. I'm not going to worry about that too much then as the read edge of the bonnet doesn't catch other panels when opening/closing. Some paint chip work next maybe then...
It seems to be something like a BMC Carbon Air Box: BMC Carbon Dynamic Airbox Nr. CDA85-150 You should be able to open the box and take the filter out, then clean it like a K&N filter
Don’t forget it’s an aluminium bonnet so you may need to be careful with primer etc. I had mine resprayed last year and it bubbled again. They resprayed it again this year but the paint “bloomed” in that it had a whitish pigmentation in some areas. The best paint match was from Chips Away who did my sill perfectly but when I sold Noddy, I chucked the leftover paint.
I had mine resprayed in 2012 and now there is one little bubble on the edge, but I'm waiting for it to get worse so its worth respraying
Nice work ! I'm looking for a car radio navigation aswell , what 's the type off xtron you have.... and are you satisfied with it.... how is navigation ?
The exact model is TE706PL, 4GB+32GB, octa core, Android 8.0. Haven’t had much time yet to fiddle with it but I tried the stock Google Maps and navigation and it works just as expected. You could install any Android apps, navigation apps included. I created a new Google account and registered that to the head unit to make the Google navigation work. I didn’t want to use my personal account just to be sure. I’ll write about my experiences as soon as I’ve had time to use it more...
