Sprinter's IS200 Sport...
Sprinter's IS200 Sport...
We'll, I'm sure I'm thinking the exact same thing as everyone else was when starting their project thread..."I wish I'd started this when I got the car, not after 8months and a wallet full of mods" But then none of us start out planning to mod, but then you join a forum, and your done for! So here's what I've done to mine so far.
So here goes...
Picked up my 2003 IS200 Sport in Astral Black with 28k on the clock in August last year as a sort of birthday present to myself.
It started off life as most of them do looking like this
The first thing to do, was sort out the wheels. Which although they wern't too bad, couldn't be allowed to stay as they were. So 5 of these were ordered from Pristine Alloys on a wheel exchange program...
And while I was fitting them I decided the calipers could do with a touch up too...
As soon as I'd got the new wheels and tyres fitted, it went off to WIM for the special tyre saving geometry settings.
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Next lot of mods were all lighting related, I fitted 6000k HID main and dipped beams, and LED sidelight and foglight bulbs to match. This was then followed shortly by LED light panels for both the interior dome lights, and the boot light aswell. (I'll try to get pictures up of these soon) And after seeing a few of you who had changed your dash bulbs to blue I decided I liked the idea of doing it, but I went for white as I can't be bothered to change the heater console bulbs and the white doesn't look out of place with the orange.
After that I swapped the standard clear side repeater lenses for some smoked black ones (pictures to follow), and I put some chrome coated Silvatec bulbs in the rear indicators and also fitted some LED reversing bulbs too. I got some dual filament bulbs holders off eBay aswell, so I did the fog to side light mod while I was at it.
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Again no pictures for this but next was the GROM iPod gadget, with extra auxilary input which I thought would come in handy for my next mod...
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A fair bit more technical than the previous ones so I was a bit cautious about starting it, but very glad I did it. I managed to get hold of the 7" variant of the OEM Sat Nav housing, and went about fitting an aftermarket 7" LCD touchscreen inside it. And with a LOT of fiddling and removing connectors from the circuit board etc. I managed to get the screen running with 2 x Video inputs, 1 x VGA input, 1 x USB input (for touchscreen interface), 1 x Automatic video source switching input for reversing camera, and 1 x Audio Output. And linking in with my previous mod, the unit can now play its sound output through the GROM and into my factory stereo.
I wish I'd taken more pictures of the 'during' phase of this, but I was getting a bit pi$*£d off with it at times and wasn't really in the mood. lol But here's a picture of the unit in bits when I'd almost finished fitting the upgraded screen...
And here's one of it fully fitted and displaying a VGA feed from my 10" ASUS Netbook which now lives in the glovebox and acts as my Car PC/Media Centre...(I had my chrome heater dials and clock surround at this point too)
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I managed to find myself a set of 18" Aero alloys on eBay, which I quickly snapped up and got sent off to Pristine Alloys again...
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I also got myself a fantastic deal on a TTE bumper and rear lip from ACLex, so off to the sprayers they went. And when they came back my car looked like this...
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More to follow...
I'd heard good things about the K&N panel filter (mainly the noise) so I fitted one of those, maybe a VERY slight improvement in low down torque. But a definite increase in (audible) engine grunt after 3000rpm which I love, really enhances the sound of that amazing straight 6.
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By this point I'd already fitted a strut brace, but I thought it could do with a proper polish and a respray. So I took it off, sprayed the towers in Cusco blue, gave the bar itself a good polish and got myself a Cusco sticker from eBay to put on after I'd polished it. I went on a bit of a mission in the engine bay, also resprayer the radiator clamps in the same colour, sprayer the fuse/relay box covers gloss black and dotted around a few anodized blue bolts for good measure.
Towers after spraying...
Complete strut brace after its refurb...
And some of my shiny blue bolts...
The whole engine bay with all its shiny bits...
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Gas bonnet lifters have also been fitted, and again, I'll add pictures for all the stuff I haven't done them for already, and I might update some of them with better ones when I have time. But I think thats pretty much it for now! At least it will be much easier to add single mods as and when I do them from now on. Phew.
Looks very nice good work you have done there.
Must say I do like the bolts you have used for the engine bay !
Good effort matey :thumbup: Under bonnet stuff looks cool
Nice work so far mate, love the white dash conversion
Cheers for the comments guys
Just added in a couple more pics of all the front/rear lighting mods I've done.
Gunna have to get the SLR out to get pictures of the interior lights though, my phone can't handle the different light levels.
Well latest mod, bought a Modellista speedo off eBay for silly cheap money, the guy at the scrappers must have just thought it was a generic Altezza speedo!
Anyway, I wasted no time transfering my white SMD dash bulbs into it and this is what it looks like fitted and lit up, and also a short video of the false 10K RPM reading it gives due to coming off a 4 cylinder car :thumbup1:
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