My 1,500.00 1990 project

Well I found a nice drivers side headlight lid. Seems to match pretty good, think I am going to have the whole car repainted though so these white parts will eliminate a ton of prep work over the original parts at any rate.

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Here is a better picture, everyone said replacing with white parts from a different car would be a bad idea because nothing would match. Everything seems to have been an extremly close match. Aside from some nicks and scratches I think the car will look fine just painting the doors back and maybe re-do the front bumper cover.

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It was cool all this weekend so decided to once again tackle the nightmare bose system. The previous owner decided to try and bypass the original bose with scissors and really messed up the entire harness. I bought a 1990 parts vette for 600.00 bucks with and excellent bose system in it along with many other parts my car needed.

I took the entire bose harness & speaker assemblies, excellent condition door panels, console lid, halo trim, and trunk plastic trim. I then sold the parts car for 500.00 to my friend who wanted it for the dana44 and suspension and all the other leftover parts.

I had issues with everything turning on but no sound coming from the system but yesterday it finally came to life and actually sounds pretty good. Nothing compared to todays sound system but plenty loud for what I like.

One thing I am very picky about is how a radio matches everything else and the lighting matches as well. So thats why I was determined to get this bose working again. Now with a nice bose harness back in the car and the CDM back in place I can resume the interior installation.
 
So far the bose is working excellent. I know many of you hate it and that is fine. But for what I need it for which is just a few radio stations and the C/D it will be fine for me. The sound to me is actually quite good and it seems to be able to get easily as loud as the 200 watt system in my 97 camaro, I am going to still order new factory speakers for it but as of now all the amps appear to be working perfectly.

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Good job - better than the hole I have in my dash!

I looked at getting one of those modded retro radios but they're worth a mint so I think it's just gonna be a cheapy after market...
 
saudivette said:
Good job - better than the hole I have in my dash!

I looked at getting one of those modded retro radios but they're worth a mint so I think it's just gonna be a cheapy after market...
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When I got my 82 vette it's factory gauge/radio bezel had been dremeled open with a rectangular hole and modern am/fm c/d player installed. That I didn't mind but the bose being a double din would have looked bad with a single or din and half replacement. Any double dins that would actually look nice in the dash and by the time installed would have costed more then I paid for the car. I think to date I probably have 175.00 into getting the bose working & had the previous owner not butchered everything it could have been replaced easily.

I still have to figure out the antenna issue as well. The mast can be pulled out by hand but not sure if it can be fixed.
 
I started putting the dash together to make sure everything id there but still have to replace many bulbs. I idled the car for about 3-4 hours today and everything seemed to work fine (no blown fuses, ice cold air, didn't get real hot) Still trying to make sense of how the CDM was mounted originally & why my beer dissapears so fast. Going to try and have the whole interior back in by next month though,

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Made some good progress on the car today. I started putting the whole right side of the dash back together, put in my replacement bose harness since the original was butchered, installed my replacement sun visors.

So far the bose is still working great so it is going to stay in the car, however I would like to purchas new speakers for it though and later down the road have the head unit upgraded.

I'm actually planning on possibly registering the car next month and use it occasionally till all the bugs are worked out.
 
I've driven a C4, the speedo never got that bright, but it wasn't hard to see. You should try to take off the plexiglas in front of it and clean it off. I'll bet there is a ton of oil and dust behind it.
 
enkeivette said:
I've driven a C4, the speedo never got that bright, but it wasn't hard to see. You should try to take off the plexiglas in front of it and clean it off. I'll bet there is a ton of oil and dust behind it.
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it had one burnt out backlight now it is much brighter at all times
 
this is how the dash is so far, major pain putting all back together. I finally got all 6 speakers working and I am pkenty happy with the sound of the bose. I idled the car for about 3 hours today with the a/c on to stay cool while working on it lol. anyways the bose worked flawlessly the whole time so I think that nightmare is behind me now and time to move onto worse nightmares with the car hahaha .....

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with the speedo back lights replaced it is much easier to red now

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here is how the lighting looks at night. phone camera pics suck though.

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cluster pictures

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headlight switch .... so far all back lighting works perfectly so time to finish putting dash back together.

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does look sweet with all the lights working. I envy you for having an original radio. I don't a european CDM is next to impossible to find also :( At least the kenwood I have now is set to amber color but original looks so much better
 
Twin_Turbo said:
does look sweet with all the lights working. I envy you for having an original radio. I don't a european CDM is next to impossible to find also :( At least the kenwood I have now is set to amber color but original looks so much better
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Can't a place re-work the cdm for european stations? I took and routed things a bit differently under the dash so in the event the cdm fails again it will be much easier to remove.
 
Made some progress today, reupholstered both console sides and the drivers door sill. I'm overall happy with the acc carpet kit but pretty dissapointed that they don't include speaker carpet considering all other pieces are included.

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I just finished the passenger side door sill. My camera phone sucks and doesn't do the carpet justice. It is very nice quality kit though and I highly recommend ACC carpets to everyone.

you can see the fading this car had compared to the new carpet.

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