hahuang65

That's the only real thing I'm worried about. 5 gallon tank, no real problems there if somehow that were true. I'm used to getting 15mpg in my STI so no issues there either lol. That being said, pretty sure my friend was plowing at 100+ mph for a good portion of that 40 mile drive, maybe even half of it lol

What is his fuel consumption? I went from thinking I had a full tank (5g by my definition at the time) to empty in like 40 miles .

Yeah you're right about the difficulty of threading the wires with vs without the pins. I did it with the pins as that's how it came already from the factory. If I have the wire length, then cutting off and recrimping the pins should not be a big deal. I'll see how it is when the pins come in and I fix my loose one.. if they work well with my crimper I might just redo it. I should probably heatshrink the wires too (I didn't previously).

@Origin7 happy to, but what measurements would you suggest?

@chrisp993 your blog is very thorough and clean. Well done! I took a video time-lapse blog but the downside there is that there are no up-close video of what I did. To complement that, I just took hand-written notes in a notebook that I'm holding onto forever lol. I'd love to convert that to a blog one day, but as time passes, my recollection of what my notes mean are fading more and more. At the time, given I only had 2 or 3 hours to work every night after the kids went to bed... I just wanted to get the build done and documented JUST enough. Anyways, looking at your pic, I'm realizing that if I wanted to get off the pods, I'd likely have to pull the entire length of wires out of the chassis to remove the pods... re-threading those through the tubing and the chassis will be quite a pain. Not sure if I want to do that. Yeah, I found the spec on the pins but couldn't find anywhere to purchase them without buying 6000 of them. Thank you for the offer to send over some, but your link to Corsa is great. I'll just order a batch myself. Thanks again for being so generous. As far as blacking out those nuts... you could use a Sharpie for now... but given your thoroughness with the blog and build so far... maybe get the same spec nuts, and get them powdercoated, even cerakoted lol... and replace. I think overall I like the look without the pods from afar.... but looking close-up...the headlights look weirdly stood up and strangely tall. I'm un-sure if I'll commit to removing the pods, probably will be an in-the-moment decision when I re-pin the headlight.

@chrisp993 it's the crimp on the pin. i bought an Econoseal tool and pin pack off Amazon. It wasn't the exact right part. It still fits but poorly. It's loose and after about 300 miles of driving and vibration it appears to have fallen out. I was curious how the headlight and the front of the car looks without the indicator and pods

@chrisp993 I need to rewire one of my headlights due to poor crimping on the connector and was considering doing the same. How does it look?

Yeah I'm gonna do that. I just wanna see exactly how many miles and how many gallons (from full) each 1/4 tick of the gauge is. Was gonna do half a tank first, then I can see where 3/4 tank and 1/4 tank is... and then finally just drive til basically empty and see what that is. I think by that point, I might have enough data points to be able to guess relatively close where empty actually is.

I do too. I haven't ruled out just me being a really dumb fellow quite yet, but so far, with me only filling up ~5 gallons, it's always displayed full on the gauge and will go steadily down towards empty. I always filled it when it hit then 1/4 mark, and it'll take about 4 gallons (until the nozzle shuts itself off). I just have a lot of experimenting and note taking to do for the next few fill ups just to see where I'm going off the rails.

I remember trying this with my very first fill-up, but I can't remember what the results were. But again, I think that was with only 5 gallons... as my habit was to stop filling when the pump nozzle stops. I'm gonna carry around a small jerry can, and test the range. I'm at 777 having pumped "fully" and then drove 2 miles home. I'll check the mileage at 1/2 tank and then attempt to fill back to "full" and see what that volume is.

I'm saying this. I'm possibly saying this. I only ever filled it to 5 gallons because 1) that's how big my jerry can was on initial fill 2) I thought it was 5 gallon capacity because the pump nozzle would auto-stop anytime I filled around 5 gallons. (I'm now aware of why this happens) Currently, meter reads full, and seems absolutely topped out. I don't see how I could have made a mistake given I was literally out of fuel and kept track of how much I filled up.... but I'm gonna drive around until the meter reads 1/2 and then see how much I can fill up. I'm at 777 miles exactly when I topped the tank off.

@JohnCh only once. When we were out of gas I attempted to crank the starter twice. Seemed like definitely out of gas. As soon as get got the 2 gallons of fuel in via jerry can , cranked and started immediately. Definitely seemed like out of gas.

As some of you may know, I ran out of gas on the road last week... that event was the catalyst to me finding out the gas tank should be closer to 9.5 gallons, with about 1.5 gallons un-usable. I was always under the assumption the tank was around 5 gallons, so this was great news to me. I also found out that I was filling up the gas incorrectly... just cuz the nozzle shuts off doesn't mean that it's full. I guess the size and shape of the tank makes the gas easily shut the nozzle off. My dealer told me the trick was to fill it much more slowly. I tried this today... I filled it until the nozzle shut off, then filled it more AS SLOWLY AS THE PUMP ALLOWED. I filled it until it overflowed, and then verified that the fuel was indeed filling up the section between the flap and the gas cap... and if I open the flap, it wasn't flowing down into the tank. The math is as follows: When I ran out of gas, I got a 2 gallon jerry can to fill it up. Then drove about 15 miles to a gas station, and filled it up 1 more gallon (it shut the nozzle off so I stopped). Today, the total I was able to fill it up was 1.5 gallons. That seems like I'm still just totaling around 5 gallons. What is my dumb ass missing here? Somewhat related note... I have the @BruceBe fuel gauge mod... it's always designated full tank historically when it's about 1/4 tank and I fill up roughly 4 gallons.

Crap, I missed it!!

they're pretty fantastic. you should grab a pair.

Nice pic on a beautiful day....after I ran out of gas and had to push the car a quarter mile. Surprise as I had what I thought was a full tank of gas and only drove about 40 miles. Turns out gas capacity is supposedly 10 gallons. I always thought it was 5 gallons as my tank keeps overflowing when I pump ~4 gallons. It'll also read full on the gauge after that. I also have the Beachman Racing fuel gauge modification.

Maybe I'm a crap driver but mine does that when turning or if i hit a bump

I personally would love to just own one...i just don't want it to occupy the garage floor space when I use it once every 3 years lol

It's certainly less anxiety if you own. You never know with a project how long you need or if something might go wrong. You could end up spending $300-$400 on a rental if something goes wrong.

@williamwashere Yeah Sunbelt rentals. They have a very transport friendly one that fully disassembled into straight rods and beams pretty much. It fit in my wife's SUV. It's the one pictured on their site. They may however try to give you one that's not disassemble-able like they did with me. Just call and make sure the location you're going to has that one (if you need it to be disassembled). If you have a truck then it's not a problem. IIRC it was like $150 for the week. Quite affordable. What wasn't feasible was when I had to pull the engine and have it out for an indeterminate amount of time while I diagnosed my issue. Was also too lazy to rent it, and take it back and rent it again.

I had a 2 ton for my initial install that made it cake. I had a 1.5 ton when I had to pull the engine to crack open the transmission bell housing... Barely made clearance. It's the length of the arm and the height of the lift that was the issue. 2 ton is the clear choice here for no hiccups

Assuming you're running LEDs, I think there's more than enough voltage to run them in series...though double check random idiot on forum talking. If you're planning on running both the pod and the LED blinker, then I would assume that's the most straightforward way to do it. A reason not to do it now is that it's some small amount of extra work and if you're (possibly) not gonna need it, then don't do it now. Though, for what it's worth, I grounded my pod blinker in the headlight bowl, so you're gonna be running a wire into there already anyway. I suppose it can save you some re-tidying up wires if you're anal about that kind of stuff though, but just achieving illumination in both lights would not be an extraordinary amount of work, if I recall my own installation properly.

I quite like the symmetry, especially with the stripes... It does remind me of a Hobbit door:

I'm a bit of a (relatively) plain jane with my Detonator Yellow + 2 Stripes but I think that's the way to go. I did really like the 3 stripe but the nose badge made the middle stripe look too thick. I like how the 2 stripe curves around it. Sans nose badge I would have gone 3 stripe. I absolutely love the triple side stripes of the Encore. Would love to get that some time in the future

@Vovchandr in your pics, the windshield definitely needs some headlights up front. The aero without the headlights could go either way for me TBH. Looks pretty slick without, but it already looked good even with the lights.