DaRtLeNe OrAnGiNa

The thing that needs the most work aesthetically is under the hood – I should have done this before ROTM (ride of the month), but whatever. My buddy taking pics said he didn’t take much under the hood b/c it looked sh!tty. lol.

Latest update – I bought a used RRM engine cover for the car last week. I must be missing something, perhaps someone else with this cover can chime in, but it sure as Hell did not fit! @%#^$ I had to double check this is for the 1.4, which it is. The only pics that I can find are with the RRM intake, but three of the four holes provided don’t line up with squat! Whatever, I guess – I made it work.  I was told others had some issues with it rattling, so I wanted to take care of that, first thing. Perhaps mine was missing the hardware, I’d be surprised if they sell this thing for $300 without hardware, as without the intake, it just doesn’t line up.

Not a problem – first thing I did was remove the aluminum plate below the lettering. It was riveted on, so my guess this is where the rattle was coming from for the other user. I cut all four rivots off, and removed the plate. I did some sanding on the surface, and painted it with (of course) orange high temperature engine paint – same I had used for the fuse box cover, heat shields, etc. When I put it back together, I used nuts and bolts with lock washers, so this thing will never come loose, or rattle.

Then I measured the distance between my two engine cover mounting rods, which was 15.5.” I marked the inside and drilled another hole, same size as the other (useless) holes. Once I had it lined up, it looked fine over the engine. I didn’t like seeing the other holes, so I used some black allen head bolts and washers, and secured them from the back with nuts. Now the cover looks fully bolted on, like my car!

I took some metal tubing I had lying around, and cut two pieces approximately 1.5″ each. Then I sanded them down and removed any extra particles – these will be the spacers to hold the heat shield off of the engine. I had to find two longer bolts, as the stock bolts wouldn’t even reach! Fortunately, I had these lying around, too. Now it mounts just fine, clears the engine & hood, and comes on/off quickly, now with an 8mm socket, instead of everyone else’s 10 mm.

I still have to clean up the engine bay a bit. I also added switchback LED DRL’s and had issues with the resistors – no worky! Perhaps it’s due to the switchback fog lights I have, as when the resistor was in line, the side marker lights and DRL cut out. (This means there is too high of a load in the system.) I experimented with a few things, and found that another switchback led I had lying around worked perfectly! So I have one extra LED strip inside the engine bay, which will work great, as I already have other engine bay lighting installed, I just haven’t updated this build thread, yet. At first I wired the white and yellow together, which worked at first, but caused some weirdness with the turn signals. Instead of flashing straight yellow, it flickered in white once every few flashes. This told me there was still too much load, as the yellow is triggered by lower voltage. I cut the yellow power line, removing that load (cutting the load in half) which solved the problem 100%! I haven’t had a single bulb out message in over two weeks of daily driving.

Score one for the good guys!