Today saw some further progress on the inside of the car, mainly the install of the Defi gauges, centre pod, controller etc.

I made a decision on the pillar pod that I wasn't happy with the fixing point, I don't like the screw and wall plug arrangement so an alternative fixing method was sought.

This involved the filling of the hole, plus smoothing the pod sections of the pillar pod and then painting both the passenger and driver side pillar trims in matt black which I believe looks far better than the factory colour.

Below is the drivers side pillar pod having just been painted, also the fixing plugs from the factory trim have been now moulded into the back of the pillar pod which will give a far stronger mounting given that the pillar pod incorporates two 60mm gauges.





This is how the twin pillar pod looks as it was supplied from Nomad Racing, it matches the factory colour well enough but that top mounting point just really bugs me.



Below is the passenger side pillar trim in place having been refinished in matt black.





The biggest pain of the day was probably running the wiring for the 5 Defi gauges, a slight problem was encountered in so much as the output for the BF gauges should be off output 2 and not output 1 as it was originally plugged into - this caused all kinds of spurious faults which were really causing heads to be scratched for a little while.

All the Defi gauges all carry out there sweep startup routine properly and the next thing is to get rid of their annoying beeping when the ignition is switched on without the engine running.





All the remaining Samco hoses are now installed, although I believe I may be missing the vacuum hose which connects on the passenger side bulk head as I believed this was in the last Samco engine ancillary hose kit that I had.

Below is where I think the missing hose should be installed, I will speak to Samco on Monday to clarify.





The coolant has now been filled and bled up correctly, I know from bitter personal experience what can happen when the two hoses (left hand side of the header tank) which connect to the header tank from the return and the coolant overflow are connected up incorrectly. So I made sure that when I removed the factory hoses that the new hoses went back in the correct positions, there is no better learning tool than personal experience.

The head unit and Forester single pocket (again in matt black) both kept over from my Blobeye Spec C has also been installed, upon checking the sound output I had forgotten just how poor the factory speakers are.

So now I'm looking at ordering a set of uprated front and rear speakers, speaker rings, uprated speaker wiring and door noise deadening (probably Dynamat unless someone can suggest an alternative).

Don't get me wrong I prefer the sound of the exhaust, but when you want to listen to music I would prefer to listen to it properly rather than it sounding more like some stones rattling around inside a tin can.