plof from the writing team is about to go on vacation for a week and Honda
Canada has graciously offered to lend him a 2024 Civic touring now of course
he doesn't get to keep it unless he spends a lot of money and plof here does
not like to spend money unless it's on his PC but that got us thinking now that
he's added taste to Modern features like remote keyless entry power Windows and a
quiet comfortable ride it's going to be such a disappointment for him to come
back to his reliable box
thankfully Alex here has generously agreed to help me bring his old Civic up
to speed by the time he returns though
you can't have something for nothing and to keep the rest of the company from
getting jealous his upgrade is going to come with a catch oh boy these are
really big chunks like I catched this segue to our
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month-to-month options modern cars are packed full of cool features and
shopping for them can be a lot of fun but with a block of cheese costing an
ARM and the interest on it demanding one of your legs these days there's a pretty
good chance that you're going to go straight from the online configurator to
figuring out how to keep your beater alive for a couple more years but that
doesn't mean that you need to live without modern amenities last time we
added Android auto and a backup camera to ploof 2004 Civic and this time we're
going to be adding new headlights acoustic dampening power Windows and
remote keyless entry all for less than
one monthly payment on a 2024 model at
that budget things are obviously going to get a little bit DIY and janky and
we're going to get to that in a moment but first we want to make his old Civic
smell like the new Civic it's about to become with a cabin air filter if you
don't remember the last time you replaced one of these by the way do it
now while the exact mechanism for this might vary a little bit it's pretty
standard to find the filter inside your glove box or rather in behind it let me
just get this out ah there whoa hey and all we got to do is open this little
panel boy here and Boop ew is that a bug
how did chunks this big get in it though to be clear I'm not judging him I don't
think I ever replace this on my old Civic with all of that said the
activated carbon filters that we went with were only $13 which is a pretty
small price to pay to not be inhaling that diesel particulate from the coal
roller in front of you next up is something you might not think of as a
tech upgrade unless you watched the recent veritasium video on the
development of the blue LED that's right headlights now our first plan was to
just buy some cheap LED lamps Chuck them in there Polish the housing and
realistically that would have made a world of difference but it also would
have risked blinding other drivers on the road and we really didn't want to
recommend that so we're going to upgrade to some Zen on lights instead the only
challenge is that in order to use these we needed to remove the front bumper in
order to remove the existing headlights we were concerned that would take a very
long time but as it turns out it was held on by two bolts and a bunch of zip
ties thank you pl's car's previous owner
what we need to do now that it's all taken apart is remove the lenses from
the lights using this box and a heat gun which has been sitting here for about 15
minutes now I think let's see if the adhesive is sufficiently loosened shout
out retrofit lab by the way for these replacement lights these look flipping
like Space Age Technology compared to what's in there hello how you
doing woo this was the point where we
realized that our projector lenses were for a JDM Civic so we ended up needing
to modify the housing slightly with a step drill the cover is also so needed a
little bit of trimming but we expected that once we knew what we were doing the
second conversion only took about 15 minutes after getting the lens off and
looked a little something like this it's pretty sick oh my
God now it's time to turn our attention to the oldfashioned window rollers and
the lack of power locks and while we're in this panel anyway is a perfect time
to throw in some sound deadening for about 100 bucks in an
afternoon of work you can sound deaden your your trunk and doors which makes a
huge difference to the comfort of your ride the best part is that not only is
this going to help with road noise but it'll help improve the performance of
your existing audio system without needing to perform any other upgrades
and somewhat unintuitively it'll help improve the performance of your HVAC
system because it happens to be an insulator Dynamat is a really great
premium option but Jake and Alex have both used cheaper stuff in their car and
found that it works nearly as well for about half of the price so we're going
to be using this mat and the first thing we need to do is clean any surface where
we're planning to apply it using isopropyl alcohol and a rag or in our
case quite a few Rags because pl's trunk was quite dirty next up figure out where
you're going to apply it if you have an unlimited budget then by all means put
it everywhere but otherwise Alex recommends just kind
of giving her some little knocks and finding the spots oh yeah where it
really resonates and focusing on those first we pee F the adhesive backing off
just be careful with the aluminum can cat you and I guess it doesn't have to
be like perfect perfect right I mean it's pl's car we put this boy in here
and give her a little rolly roll to make sure she's stuck down in tricky spots I
like just the back of a trim removal tool it's worth noting that getting into
the trunk to do this is entirely
optional now it's time to address one of pl's biggest pain points with this car
the lack of power locks and we're going to be using this kit from audiovox that
attaches to the locking mechanism or at least that was the plan my notes
say honestly kind of janky seems like it'll work cost $100 we CT scanned it we
CT scanned it and I don't really know how much I want to use it anymore like
if you look first of all everything in there's plastic mhm and uh this is the
shaft that does the actuating yes as we go through it here o it's got air
bubbles in it 40% of its air we have seen in some reviews that they have a
bit of problems with failing it's pretty clear why the installation at least on
the front doors is a literal nightmare to deal with you'll have to stick it in
behind this panel here and we got somehow bolted into here and then attach
this Rod to the stock Rod here so you can retain the stock locking mechanism
at the same time which will require a bunch of custom bending to the rod that's attached to the actuator a lot of
work for something that's potentially going to break within a couple of months
so the proper way to do this would have been to just go to the junkyard and get
the door cards and basically the entire door from a Civic that has Central
locking and power Windows but that was going to be kind of expensive so that's
why we wanted to try and do it the cheap way which has burned us do you think you
can do it oh yeah it can be done how much overtime do you want to pay us how
bad are the back doors are the back doors back doors are dead simple it's just the front I'm leaning try and if it
kind of sucks then maybe he should have paid for his car to be fixed by someone
qualified or just paid for a better car I mean all of this seems like plof
problems right now the other big thing we promised plof was power Windows so
we'll show you that on the other door but which um this is what like just
Vapor Barrier yeah it's a vapor barrier so it kind of keeps moisture in the door
not in your car we're just pulling it
off like yes but at the same time like
look at how much is left of this one oh it's been cut yeah this car's had a lot
of people in it already with that out of the way it's time to look at our power
window kit which we got off Amazon for 100 bucks it comes with a variety of
different toothed gears you pick the one that works with your car door and then
insert it into the end put in a little locking screw and find a spot for
it
somewhere now we're at the point in the video where Alex's expertise ends and
mine begins it's time to paint I do have
enough expertise to know that this is not prepped well enough no it's really
not this scuff sand is good enough to make sure that our primer coat is going
to adhere to the previous paint but it is not enough that we're going to get a
perfect you know mirror finish on the
car realistically though it's going to be better than what he started with yeah
has not hard another thing that Alex knows very well is that the first step
of painting is to put that painting equipment away and focus on prep even
though we don't need this to be the most perfect job in the world we don't want
to paint over his tail lights so with a combination of masking tape paper and
plastic will be blocking off all the areas that we don't want to paint now
this is not the right tape for this I asked for contouring tape I ended up
with this so enjoy your paint job Nick
also uh we were planning on taking these out but they are also among the things
that are non original and they are just silicone in there all to hell it's
horrible they are not coming out I think one of the most important things for
painting is accepting early on that it isn't going to be a perfect job when you
do that though you just you know completely different set of expect
ations it's more
fun now I'm sure at this point at least a few of you have noticed that we are
standing next to a DIY paint booth
you're probably wondering why we're not using it well in a perfect world we
would I've got a HEPA filter in here and positive air pressure that prevents any
sho from landing on the piece of work that's being painted while it's drying
which results in a much better looking job unfortunately
this is for my motorcycle it is not car sized so sorry bloof hey at least we
didn't do it outside like we were planning yeah are you guys ready for the
moment of truth I think so how many feet
feet cuz it's not going to be a 5ft job 12 that's pretty good I was expecting 20
this morning I'm feeling better we're referring of course to the distance from
which you'll be able to make out the obvious imperfections in the workmanship
I mean overall not too bad but there
there are going to be some flies in this ointment 1.8 to 2 mm
nozzle good gravy this stuff must go on
thick hold on let me have a look at my primer screw it we're using your primer
this is my primer okay damn boy she's thick it might be a
20ft jump this like high Build primer is something that I have never used before
and have not researched at all because for my project I'm doing all the
finishing first before I Prime now most of my painting experience is painting
houses not cars this is my first time spraying a car so if you're an expert
thanks for your comment telling me all the things that I could do better when I do my bike I'll be sure to do all those
things all right let's see how it
goes oh boy well it's a good thing PL
doesn't care about his car looking good I wish I'd used the other primer but
we're committed now
well even if it's not going to be pretty it's not going to come off so that's
something all right whether it's the settings or the material we're using or
the technique it's not that even but on
the plus side it's a product that'll adhere better than the last time we
painted a Civic and it's probably more
even than rolling it on at least our customer is not
picky we're back from luses and the paint job looks uh better than I
expected after the first layer of primer at least but we have a lot to do first
of all secure the light ballast aim the headlights the locks we need to get
those working right now they are just not working at all but the two systems
individually are working I don't know we have an electrical engineer here we also
need to clean up the wiring install the back seat top up the oil do the door
cards trunk liner the other stuff that needs to go into the trunks the rear
lights those need to be hooked back up random trim pieces those all need to get
on outside trim needs to go on hub caps ensure that it won't catch on fire just
you know do a little look and make sure that everything is fused properly and a
bonus eqing the stereo plof we'll see
you soon
I am nervous but I am excited tell me when oh my God what an absolute
unit can I look yep you can look
what it's beautiful isn't it I love purple how did you oh my god purple and
gold flake that's amazing I thought it was going to be like pink and green or
something I love how textured this is too what did you guys use we got some
filler primer yeah and the filler primer you're supposed to to use 20 psi of line
pressure okay and Linus only has
nine so that's why it's textured you know what it adds to it
yeah did you look here ooh they look
much more clear than they usually work beyond that look in oh the hid Zeon Zeon
what right are these things going to get so I can be like the on the other side
of the road that blind me I can blind them back no we just aimed them like up
no down you I want to blind people okay well yeah
that's good you should calibrate them I mean all right I got Racing Stripes oh
yeah where's the amazing look at this wa
it can lock and unlock okay I'm going to try it the locks worked what the it's
all four too yeah so now when like some
spooky homeless guy walks by I can just lock all my doors yeah probably I I
don't know how much I trust it if I'm honest yeah oh my God you actually I
mean it's look it's very slow to go up yeah we need to grease it a bit okay but
but it works this much better okay so that's how it could be amazing do you
want to open up the trunk and just have a little look sure what's in the trunk why not much all of the panels it's all
dyn what killat we're cheap killat we're cheap all right let's take her for a
ride and see if you can notice any nvh difference oh my God okay it's hard
because I haven't driven in it almost like 3 weeks how does it compare to the
24 Civic it's actually pretty similar and I thought that that sounded a lot
better than this thing so Kudos it seems
to have worked it'll probably be more noticeable when you're on like a slightly rougher road yeah or even just
like the highway and I'm doing like 100 or something like that I am genuinely
like thrilled honestly I thought for sure it was going
to be like a hot pink and like a lime green so honestly I love purple this
feels this is great it Sparkles so much too does it really I'm excited this is
the time I've seen it in the sun and it's great it's beautiful what a
magnificent Beast you guys have created with what we've done I'd say those power
Windows super easy they just worked and
they weren't super hard to install I would do that those locks oh my God I
hate them and I think they're going to just stop working at some point in the near future don't do that Dynamat just
do it and this paint job even though it was two car payments instead of the one
for the rest of the stuff what Man worth it it looks amazing I have zero
complaints you know what everyone people saying stuff like oh you're going to
hate it blah blah blah have me worried but uh no you guys crushed it the
headlights you almost forgot about the headlights they look amazing well I don't know yet but one is dark out now
I'll be the one blinding people just like this blinding segue to our
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pulseway plans huge thanks for watching hit like get subscribed and just have a
great old day maybe watch our gr Corolla review great car is it better than this
oh yeah kills this car