This page is dedicated to showing pictures of my car as it has evolved to where it is today. At the same time, I describe my current and future modifications in chronological order. I have written most of this page in the past tense even if the modification is still part of my car.
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I got the car in April, 2004. It looked like any other beige Corolla, believe it or not lol. I originally had no intention to modify it; in fact, I didn't even know it was possible. That was all about to change.
Then, in November, I hydroplaned into a Suburban's hitch at a red light. Of course, the SUV was fine. The only damage was to my bumper and head light. They don't make bumpers like that anymore lol. Now, they only crack and fall apart on impact.
$420 later (yes, I know, the n00b was ripped off) I had a new painted bumper. I managed to get the head light to sit right so that I didn't need a new one. But, I wanted to get a new one eventually on my own, so I started looking for parts....
A side view of my lovely stock car. It came with OEM power locks, windows, sunroof, AC, cruise control, 7afe engine, 4 speed auto. It didn't come with a tachometer, spoiler, or power mirrors. The hubcaps were falling off, so I was going to look for some new ones as well. I wonder if that bright blue jacket I'm wearing is any indication of things to come....
Actually, I did start with a really simple mod... purple covers over the license plate lights and orange covers over the front corner light bulbs. Believe it or not, I was going for purple, not blue. This didn't last long, though because I thought I'd get a ticket lol.
Here are some interior pictures. Pretty bad... and brown as you can see. I had a CD adapter in there so I could at least listen to an hour of music over and over again hahaha.
Here is a picture of the second stock engine. It's pretty clean. Not much going under here. Maybe 100 hp. I had to replace the first engine because the it threw a rod because it ran out of oil for 10,000 miles. Yep, never changed the oil or checked. Now do you believe me when I said I was a n00b? $3000 mistake right there.
I found the exact head lights I wanted, stock but with clear lenses and chrome reflectors. Perfect! I got them from matrixracing.com for 150 bucks plus shipping. Now, they are all over Ebay for $100. At the time, there were also the old style of projector head lights, but I didn't know how they worked or anything and that was too much for me to handle ;) I had these installed for 2 years (using 80 watt bulbs for 1 year), and they never leaked, melted, faded, or became cloudy. They were truly quality headlights. They fit perfectly. The light output was better than the stock headlights, and they looked a lot better. I still have my stock head lights for sale .
To replace the stock hubcaps, I got these 14" APC teardrop spinners . No, they did not come from Walmart or any store. I have seen them at Advance Auto Parts once, though lol. I thought they were cool for about a month anyway. I admit that I thought they would spin on the inside, not just have a spinner sticking off the front. They didn't spin the same, and we all know how dumb they look on the road. Again, I was still a n00b and I thought they were great for $50. But, they are gone now :.( I hit too many curbs with them for them to be worth anything.
Then, I took hubcaps apart so that the spinner was gone... and I liked it a lot more because it made the wheels look bigger since it wasn't blocked by the small spinner.
I also had a friend install these two-way Pioneer speakers for free. The stock speakers were shot, so I had no speakers in the front and just these in the back. They are really good for mid and low frequencies, but the tweeter was lacking.
I thought it looked cool, so I removed the inner tail light bulbs. You can see that I have the license plate lights back to clear. You can also see the head light pattern on the garage. Glittery! I also still have the orange bulbs in the corner lights, but they are now 18 watt 921 bulbs, 15 watts brighter than stock!
Now starts the downward spiral we call modifying. I had the really nice head lights, but now the corner lights didn't match and looked out-of-place. So, in May 2005, I got these new style of corner lights from Ebay to match. I didn't like the previous style because they weren't clear and chromy, they just were white instead of orange. The lights came with orange 194 bulbs, but I bought some hyper-white 194 bulbs from Walmart, and they looked nice. I eventually bought hyper-white 921 bulbs off of Ebay , because they are 18 watts. They were super bright, but eventually, the reflectors melted a little. Now I don't need my stock corner lights, so they are for sale .
Now the stock bumper lights were out-of-place. So those were next to go (and they are for sale ). In August, I got the only clear lights that were offered at the time. I also replaced the grille with one that I thought would come in chrome, but it was exactly the same as the one I had, so it made no difference. Not much to say about those. They came from Ebay and worked perfectly. So far none of my lights have leaked. I put hyper-white 1156 bulbs in the bumper lights to match the corner lights. Also, I've got some M3-style mirrors on there with blue and amber LEDs. Those were given to me for free, they were for a Mazda Protege. They looked cool, but the mirrors didn't really point anywhere useful lol. The stock mirrors are for sale.
I put these 20 white superflux LED bulbs from Ebay into my front turn signals. They were not very bright, so I won't be getting any more of these.
I installed this new flasher under the dash above the fuses to prevent my signal from blinking really fast now that I had LEDs. Now, the system doesn't think that there are burned out bulbs somewhere.
Naturally, I got the chrome 3 piece altezza tail lights around this time as well. Mine has the clear turn signal instead of the red one. I got them on Ebay (and it took forever for the middle piece to arrive), but they aren't there anymore. Of course, Ebay is still a great resource for finding cheap tail lights (or you can buy my stock lights ). But, if you want the ones with clear turn signals (or without the middle piece), you will have to find them somewhere else, like here . These lights did leak, so I fixed that with a bead of clear silicone caulk around the edges of the lens. No more leaks. The middle truck piece had two little red LEDs that needed to be wired into the parking light. I ended up disliking the middle piece; it just doesn't look good on the car. I do not recommend buying lights that look like these. I had to paint the bottom of the tail lights gold.
These are the LEDs that I used in the turn signals and backup lights from autolumination.com since the 20-LED ones were not bright enough. These are insanely bright, and all of the sideways LEDs filled the reflectors very well.
I got similar bulbs for the brake lights. These came from Ebay, but they were not very bright at all. I guess white LEDs are just a lot brighter than red ones!
This next year (2006) was full of custom lighting mods that I had never attempted before. First, I decided I would try putting some permanent LEDs in my new bumper lights. Actually, these LEDs came from the 20-LED drop-in LED bulbs that I had in there before.. I cut off the LEDs, hot-glued them to the coat hanger, then wired the LEDs back to the bulb so that I would not have to mess with electronics. I took off the bumper light lens with a hair dryer.
I cut the lights so that the bars fit in there, and I also put some white LED boards that I picked up from superbrightleds.com . I painted the wires and all chrome so that it looked alright. I never put the lens back on because the checkerboard pattern in it ruined the effect of the LEDs.
This sort of shows the wiring I had to do to get the lights to blink right. During the day (parking light off), both the boards of LEDs and the line of LEDs blink with the signal. Then, during the night (parking light on), the line of LEDs switches to on, and then it alternates with the LED board as the signal.
Don't say a word about Audi LED driving lights. Did Audi have LEDs on the front at the start of 2006? I don't think so. Someone must have seen my car hahaha. Anyways, you can see that I replaced the free mirrors with the diablo-style ones from Ebay with 2 rows of white LEDs. Those mirrors were nice, but one of the mirrors stopped working immediately, so I had to return them and get a second pair. Also, they did not light up evenly, and the LEDs were different colors, so I was going to need to fix that. I had them wired to the line of LEDs, so they blinked and were lit at night. I recommend painting the mirrors, even if they come black, since the finish looks terrible after a while. You can also see the very bright 921 white bulbs in the corner lights.
Here you can also see that I have put 80 watt GP Thunder 7500K blue-coated halogen bulbs in the head lights. They were nice for blue bulbs, they were as bright as stock since the blue coating blocked any gain in lighting with extra wattage. The bulbs lasted for years. So, any time someone wants blue halogen bulbs, I recommend GP Thunder from Ebay . Any seller will do, but I got them from premiertek.net . The bulbs sold with the head lights. At this point, none of the white colors match, so I wasn't too happy with that. I need to fix it!
I have purposefully left out the details with this mod because it only lasted a couple of months before the LEDs stopped working because of my terrible job. Don't do this the way I did, use real LEDs and electronics.
I liked my car, but looking back, I realize how bad it looks. This was a low point in my car's history. Sadly, this was not the only time I didn't like my car. I still had no idea that it would look like it does now, though.
Then in April 2006, I made an LED third brake light using the same boards from superbrightleds.com . It was very bright! You can see the other brake lights lit up with the drop-in LED bulbs. They are not bright enough at all, don't buy them! Boy, the back of my car looks bad. See page 4 for details . The light is also for sale, see page 3 .
Recall that the LEDs in my mirrors were very poor quality. They stopped working again! So, in September 2006, I put my own LEDs in those, too. I used 9 LEDs in each bar instead of 5 to fill out the lens beautifully. They are much brighter, and the color is the perfect white with a hint of blue. (Note that these two pictures were taken half a year after I finished the mirrors.)
The LEDs were much wider-angled as well, so it could be seen from the side a little better (but not enough). See page 4 for details. They are also for sale on page 3 .
Since I didn't like the first tail lights at all, I got these APC lights. I liked them so much better because they were simple and almost like stock (except chrome). They leaked like crazy, so I had to caulk around the edges of these also. They use the stock filler piece underneath, so I didn't have to paint these.
The tail lights didn't stay like that for long, though. In November 2006, I took them apart and put my own LEDs in there. This was the biggest project I had attempted. See page 4 for how I made these lights . These lights are sold now to miib14 .
The parking lights are red rings and a small sidelight. They are about as bright as my previous BRAKE lights with the drop-in LED bulbs. You can also see that I have LEDs in the license plate lights (before Lexus ever put LEDs in their license plate lights lol).
These are the LEDs that I put in the license plate. They are terrible, don't buy them! No sideways LEDs, and they burn out really fast. See how the two lights in these pictures are not the same brightness.
Now the brake lights all match, and they are super bright! hahaha look out!
The turn signals filled the middle of the red rings. They are very bright, too. Recall that I replaced my flasher so that the LEDs don't blink really fast like they are burned out.
Here are the brake lights during the day. I also got rid of the middle tail light and painted the stock middle piece silver. It was supposed to be chrome paint, but that didn't happen. It looked much better than the before when it was black, anyways. No more red on the back!
Since I ruined my first pair of clear bumper lights, I needed another. So I looked on Ebay (but they aren't there anymore), and I found a brand new design that looked much nicer and cleaner. I had to seal them with clear caulk because they leaked like crazy. They came with blue 1156 bulbs and holders, but I put LEDs in there instead. The bumper lights still have the relay system that I installed for my line of LEDs and the mirrors. So, the mirrors and bumper lights are on bright with the parking light and blink with the turn signal.
These are the LEDs I put in the new bumper lights. The previous ones that I had were too white for me lol. These looked like they would match better, and they were bluer. They ended up being very bright, but they quickly burned out. They don't sell these anymore; I wonder why lol.
Then in August 2006, I sold my first head lights and bought new projector headlights with a halo rim and a blue lens, from kgsengineering.com , and they came with H3, 9005, and 194 bulbs. The halo bulbs are clear, and the three bars bulb is orange. All are changeable, but you have to take the black plastic piece off of the back in order to get to the 194 bulbs. The headlights are also available on Ebay . These lights fogged up before I even installed them on the car, so out came the caulking gun. Two applications of caulk around all the seals and they have not fogged since. You can also see that I tried painting the grille silver like I originally wanted, but it looked terrible and the paint flaked off.
I got LED 194 bulbs for the lights (3 pairs), and they are much brighter than the stock bulbs, and the color is much better. These are also the LEDs I'm using in the license plate lights and anywhere else a 194 bulb is needed. I recommend these type!
In comparison to the other headlights, they are brighter in front of the car, but less bright elsewhere. The cutoff line is very sharp, but I got used to that after a little while. They had a nice blue cutoff after I adjusted it. See page 6 for installation details . These head lights and corner lights are now for sale .
At this point, all of the LEDs matched in color and I was pretty happy with the lights. This was before they started putting LEDs in aftermarket lights, especially for this car lol. And still before Audi had LEDs on the front of their car. This was also when the car was named "Starfighter" because it looked like a space ship or something. LOL.
Now that I had my new headlights, I could do my DRL mod in the high beam. At this point, I gave up on having LED driving lights because none of them were bright enough or lasted long. I used GP Thunder bulbs again, since I liked my first pair so much. They were standard wattage (instead of high wattage) and the same color. I was not disappointed in the light bulbs or the result (except I melted a spot on the head light lens). Visit page 6 to see the process. You can see I was in the middle of fixing some rust on the hood. In the dark, the primer kinda looked like some kind of flames haha. I also repainted the grille, this time the same color as my car. I painted the middle horizontal slat black for a cleaner look. It's a step in the right direction!
Now that I had painted the grille, I decided to paint the door handles and side moldings the same color as the car.
I was also starting to get some rust on the rear wheel wells, and since I had sprayed the hood with primer I decided I had nothing to loose by covering this up after I sanded it some.
Ewwww, rust coming through!!! Too much salt in the winter!
I also hydroplaned into a curb causing a lot more damage than this. I had to replace the wheel and the entire suspension there. Ran me about $660!!! Ouch. Too bad I was still a n00b or I would have gotten all new wheels for that price. But, I wasn't ready for that yet, so I hot-glued the hubcap back on and paid the $660.
So, I painted over all of the primer and the other spots that needed touch-up. Too bad the color didn't match. So I tried another. And another. The right color isn't in the store! So, my car ended up multicolored with no shine. Kind of like flat gold except flat black haha. But, that was before the flat paint craze, so it wasn't cool. Neither was the cracked tail light, the melted head light, or the busted hubcaps. However, the car is looking much better at this point, much cleaner and organized, but only from a distance lol.
For Christmas, I got a package of seat covers, a steering wheel cover, pedals, valve caps, floor mats, a shift knob, and a shift boot. I got the blue and black, another step in the right direction! Unfortunately, they sent the package for a manual transmission, so I put both the brake and clutch pedals on the brake pedal. I didn't use the shift knob or boot. The seat covers were a pain to install, but there are not too many wrinkles. Also, the front seats have come apart some. I could not believe how much better the interior looked! I loved how these transformed the interior, and I knew that blue and black was the way to go.
I also replaced the interior light with LEDs. These are the same kind that I put in the license plate lights (except in a festoon style), but they burned out soon after.
Remember my first bumper light LED retrofit that was fail? Well, the panel of LEDs on one of them ended up in the sunroof light.
Also for Christmas, I found these used z3 fenders on Ebay for 50 bucks plus 50 bucks shipping! I had wanted these fenders, and I could not pass up the good deal (1/3 the regular price). They are made out of fiberglass, so they were lighter and would not rust. Of course, they would have to be painted. I found out that Maaco would paint the entire car for $200 (they run a half-off sale every winter), which was awesome because the gold paint was so terrible-looking. And, I would finally have a blue car! It meant that I could do whatever I wanted to the body. My stock fenders are for sale . The following pictures show the end result of my body work.
You can see that I installed the fenders with relative ease, I filled the pinstripes down the side of the car, I removed and filled the door bumper guards, I fixed all of the dents, scrapes, and most of the rust, I modified (see page 5 ) and installed a 96-97 Corolla grille (threw the old one away), removed all of the emblems, molded the fender to the A-pillar/roof, and I smoothed out the trunk. I did not use any fiberglass or primer. This is how it went to Maaco . It was super cold, and I had to go back to school, so all of this work was done in 1 week. I was very hurried, so it didn't turn out perfect, especially the trunk. See page 5 for more details . Here are pictures right after it was painted:
I installed the gutter guard mesh from Home Depot in both the upper and lower grilles (see page 5 ). This grille is now for sale .
I also added a chrome muffler tip from Walmart since the pipe looked weird after the paint job. Plus, it looked nice! My car is looking pretty good at this point I think.
While my car was getting painted, I took apart the new bumper lights and put an array of 33 LEDs in there, the same ones as in my mirrors. Much brighter than any LED bulb! See how you can do this on page 4 . These lights are now sold.
The new LED bumper lights are very bright now!
I got a pair of 100 watt H3 bulbs for my projectors from GP Thunder of course. For some reason, they are not nearly as blue as the other bulbs I have gotten, but they are better than the stock bulbs. I think that the projectors make the light yellower. The bulbs have not melted or damaged anything, even though they are twice as many watts. I still recommend the bulbs for any application!!!!
Then, since the bumper lights and mirrors were so bright, I changed them to a bright-dim turn signal set up like on most cars. I was able to get rid of all my relays. You can see on the left that the lights all match better, and on the right, the turn signal is bright.
Also at the beginning of the year, I added some blue under the hood. This generic Ebay intake was my first performance/engine mod. See page 9 for more details. It is also for sale on page 3 .
Here is something slightly random. I replaced the windshield wipers with larger ones. I forget what the sizes are, but I could have gotten even larger ones. Before on left, after on right.
I finally painted the entire interior black or blue in the summer of 2007. I did not miss a single detail, from the seat belt locks to the ventilation sliders. Now it's looking more like my car! See page 7 for details about painting your interior . I also added some more pieces that I will show later. You can also see that I painted the door jams all black since they were still gold after the paint job. I painted the carpets black. However, the ceiling is still the same tan color at this point. I still have the parts that came with the seat covers. Below you can finally see the ghetto rigging on the pedals lol.
I got a $30 chrome vinyl dash from Rvinyl on Ebay that came with the pieces shown. In fact, the kit came with two of every piece in case I mess up! I only installed pieces 2, 3, 5, and 6. Pieces 1 and 4 only fit the window switches for 97-02 Corollas, not my year. The things really are cheap, they are just chrome stickers. I guess I messed up the installation because mine were all bubbly and uneven. I would stay away from vinyl dash kits, at least the chrome ones, because they are too flimsy to work. Spend the extra money ($100) and get a hard molded kit. However, if you do want some chrome stickers for your dash, I'll gladly sell you my extra pieces for cheap .
I also installed one of these chrome bezels for the speedometer gauges . It fit nicely and looked cool and matched my interior theme. It installs with double-sided tape. This is for sale on page 3 .
When I painted the door jams black, I also painted the black parts around the windows black. I did the same for the sunroof, gas door and trunk. I also painted the stock wheels black. See page 7 for some more details .
The final bit of interior work for the summer was adding blue LEDs behind all of the buttons, displays, and other places. See page 7 for some more details .
I also replaced the stock cover with a new one from alloverlays.com . I had mine custom made so that the symbols were blue, the background was black, and it said "COROLLA" between the in/out air adjuster. They even put the prototype of my design on their website for all to see . Check out the other designs on their picture gallery, you might recognize some! They are easy enough to install; they are meant to go over top of the stock cover. But, since mine hardly let any light through, I removed the stock cover and put this one there. I do not recommend doing that since these are to flimsy for that.
Here is the overlay installed. I had to rewire the LEDs behind there since they didn't work right, and now I had to light up the word "COROLLA" (see page 7 ). You can see how the light bleeds through. This was just meant to overlay the stock cover. At least it is bright now! I eventually took a black Sharpie marker to the back of the overlay and colored all of the black parts black so stop the light leakage.
Now that I had made my mirrors and bumper lights extra bright, I decided to replace the head light and corner light LEDs with 921 LED bulbs. They did not fit into the head lights without drilling, but they fit into the corner lights just fine.
This shows the new bulbs on the right versus the old LEDs on the left. Since the new bulbs have more LEDs, the reflectors are lit up more evenly.
Below, the old bulbs are on the left, and the new bulbs are on the right (remember that the mirrors and bumper lights are in dim mode now, the turn signal is not flashing). As you can see, the new LEDs are slightly bluer, and all of the colors match even better!
It's looking really good at this point! But, I'm not done yet! (alas)
In June, I decided to put side marker indicators on my fenders since the LEDs in the mirrors couldn't be seen from the side enough. I found these cool side markers on Ebay (but they are not available anymore). Unfortunately, the light only came out of the sides, which was good for front and back visibility, but my turn signal still would not be seen from the side of the car. The solution? Another LED retrofit. See page 4 for all the details.
I installed the newly-retrofitted and painted lights between the two lower scoops on the fender, with the scoops on the side markers facing the back of the car. These lights are for sale now.
In July 2007, I finally got some Pilot foglights from Ebay! They matched the car really well. I also put 8000K H3 HIDs in them. Up until this point, I had never thought that I would be able to afford HIDs, but this pair was $100, and it works beautifully to this day. Now, the HID kits have dropped to $60. See page 6 for the details on installing HIDs into the fog lights and then the fog lights onto the car. These lights are for sale .
Ummm, so the fog lights were supposed to have 7-color halo rings. They worked when I got them, but after installation, this is all that worked of them lol. Only 3/4 of the red LEDs worked, the blue and green ones were completely shot.
But, that's ok since it would have been impossible to see the halos over the bright HIDs!
The blue lens on the fog lights makes the HIDs even bluer. Too blue for me now, but then I thought it was cool. Each fog light has two spots of light. You can see that the projectors are very wimpy in comparison now.
Oh my, can you say glare? lol
The fog light switch went where the DRL switch used to be, and the DRL switch moved down a panel.
The next month, I got another set of HIDs for the projectors since I liked the fog lights so much. I got the same color (8000k) and installed it. See page 6 for instructions on how to do this.
Wow, at least three times brighter than that other picture a couple up!
The poor GP Thunder high beams can't compete!
hmmmm, notice something weird in the pictures above? These are not the same color as the first set!!!
As it turns out, they sent me a 5000K kit!!! To compensate, I swapped the HIDs since the fog lights made the lights bluer. The 5000K went into the fog lights, and the 8000K went into the fog lights. The lights on the right are swapped, the ones on the left are not.
Before and after below. Much better!
Look out, here comes "Starfighter"! hahaha
August 2007: Time to "bling" it up some more!
I finally replaced my hubcaps. I still liked the old ones, but they were falling off and I lost one :.( Also, they had just come out with chrome door handles and mirror covers , so I got some to break up the blue and to go with the hubcaps. in this picture, I have only installed the movable part of the door handles.
But, I didn't stop there. I finished the door handles and I put the stock mirrors back on with the mirror covers. It didn't look as good as I had hoped. But, I wasn't really liking the diablo mirrors anymore, so I wanted to try something new and closer to stock.
Here is a close-up of the mirror covers. They didn't fit very well. They came with blue and orange LEDs, but I had to put my own LEDs inside. See page 4 for details . These had a side light so that the signal could be seen from any angle. I got them because I wanted the stock mirrors back on because they are easy to see in the mirror. I was going to paint the chrome blue like the car and have Mercedes-style mirror, but I never got that far. They only lasted on there a couple of months. I sold them and the door handles.
Since the wiring for the new mirrors ended up being fail, and because the fog lights were so blinking, I reverted the turn signals back to stock. Now, the mirrors and bumper lights only turn on bright with the signal. They are no longer dim with the parking light. However, there is still one LED on the sides of the mirrors that are on with the parking light.
How..... boring. But that is OK since I never drive like this now that I have HIDs hehe. You can barely see the side lights on the mirrors from the front.
In fact, the side lights are more visible from the rear. I've also put some of my old 194 head light LEDs in the license plate lights since the previous ones burned out.
So, the turn signal looks like this. It needs all of the contrast it can get so that it outshines the fog lights.
I wasn't satisfied with the brightness of the mirrors out the side, so I kept the side markers after all.
Ah, there's the look I'm used to lol (hazards blinking). But that's cheating, no more "Starfighter" anymore :.(
The final bit of "bling" that I added was chrome window trim. This stuff came from Advance Auto Parts for cheap. I got the molding for $13 and the door trim for $6. I never used the trim or the rest of the molding. Use sparingly, for excessive use of this stuff can have adverse effects on your car and the people who see it lol.
I use the HID fog lights as DRLs. I still have the blue bulbs in the high beams set up for high and low, but I never use them since the HIDs are so much brighter.
You can see that the bumper lights are getting yellowed, yuck.
I'm not really happy with my car at this point. It seems I'm just tossing more and more stuff on there, and it is not headed in the right direction. I want to go for a clean look, closer to OEM/stock. During this time of confusion I painted the edges of the tail lights black. It made them look much cleaner, so that helped.
Recall that I had not upgraded the sound system in my car yet. I still didn't have any front speakers! That was about to change since I got some money for Christmas to buy finally buy a system. I went to Walmart because obviously I didn't need the best sound system in the world.
Here is the CD player and speakers I ended up using from Walmart. The CD player was great. It was $80, it lit up blue, it had a remote, it played MP3 CDs along with normal CDs and the radio, it had an input for a 2 GB SD card, USB, and stereo cable which it actually came with, two sets of preamps, a detachable face plate, and 16 watts RMS to each speaker. It did all of the basic stuff like equalizing and random play and that sort of stuff. The brand was VR3, and I was very pleased with the result. See page 8 for installation details. This deck is now for sale !
As for the speakers, the Sony Xploids were nice because of their excellent tweeters for the highs. They had 35 watts rms. They didn't do much for bass, but the mids and trebles were great. I wanted speakers like this for the front so that I wouldn't need additional tweeters. Also, I was not planning on replacing the Pioneers in the rear, and they were great for the lows and mids but not treble. These 4-way speakers were almost $40 for the pair. The stock speaker is 4 inches, but I got 5.25 inches, and they fit fine but sound better than any 4 inch speaker. See page 8 for details on installing larger speakers .
I also got these blue LED speakers for almost the same price, but I returned them since they sounded muddy compared to the Sony's. They sounded more like the Pioneers. The blue speakers were 50 watts rms. If I wanted to use tweeters in addition, than these speakers would work fine. But, considering I already had the Pioneers in the back for lows, I chose the Sony's. The result was a very balanced sound that I was pleased with.
I bought my VR3 sub amp for $50 and Scosche amp wiring kit for $16 at Walmart. The amp was 100 watts per channel and it had all the options an amp should have (bass boost, frequency, volume, etc). Definitely a good buy on my part rather than spending lots more money for the same thing (but a different brand). The wiring kit was perfectly matched for the sub amp. I already had a Bose home-theater sub that would work with the amp. See page 8 for installing details .
The installed head unit looks great. I ended up putting a piece of Velcro behind the faceplate because it didn't stay on well enough. Nothing like having the music shut off when you go over a huge bump lol. This is now for sale on page 3 .
It also looks great at night! The lights turn on either with the radio or with the parking light if the radio is off. You can see that the light was still bleeding through the overlay; I still hadn't fixed that at this point.
The front speakers fit perfectly in there. Too bad the blue LED speakers didn't work out because they would have looked better. Oh well, you can't actually tell in person that they are red. I just used the flash to make a point.
There is the amp screwed to the sub and all wired together. The sub was Velcroed to the carpet and the entire thing was tied back to the metal behind the seats. I'd never seen anyone use a sub like this in their trunk, but it was free. It wasn't the loudest, but it got plenty loud in the car. It wasn't like I WANTed the people all over the place to hear my music.
I had determined that I would not put a body kit on this car because none of the available ones looked good or original. Since winter was here (and Maaco would be running their half-off special on paint jobs), I was looking to see if I could put a custom body kit on my car. I was looking for the rare TRD lip kit for the 98-02 Corollas when I found the perfect solution for my car.
This beautiful, clean, and original JDM body kit showed up on Ebay one day. I could not believe it; it was perfect! Well, at least the sides and rear were. Since the auction started at $9 and the shipping was $200, it was also an incredible deal. I couldn't sleep for a week while I waited for auction to end, and I was almost outbid at the last second. I ended up winning for $22. Awesome! When the body kit arrived (it came within 3 days of payment in a huge trailer all by itself lol), the packing list said that it cost the seller $193 to ship. So he only made $30 on the entire kit! What a steal! Also, the packing list said that all four pieces were DISCONTINUED, so that meant that they aren't making this kit anymore. I guess that the seller was just trying to get rid of the kit since it wasn't being made anymore. Whatever the case, I was really happy with the kit. I remember seeing it on bodykits.com , but they haven't sold it for a while. But, rumor has it that Edozone.com has the kit even though I can't figure out how to buy it. Now my stock bumpers are for sale .
It came in perfect shape as it was packaged well. I decided that I didn't want to use the front bumper because it looked too old-school JDM for me. It took the JDM version bumper light turn signals and square fog lights. It came pre-meshed. See page 5 for the installation details.
This was the true Erebuni full JDM body kit. It was made with several layers of fiberglass and it was very strong and stiff.
I didn't want to use the front body kit because I had my mind set on putting this front end on my car. I only used the front bumper and the front lip . I needed the chrome strip as well for the grille. The bumper and chrome strip were OEM quality, but the front lip was thin fiberglass. When it finally came (it took 2 weeks for it to arrive), it was not packaged in a box, just bubble wrap and cardboard. Naturally, the thin lip came broken. I had to repair two cracks before I could install it. See page 5 for the details about the front end conversion.
I sold the front body kit bumper to slowngreen.
Here are some pictures after I finished my second round of body work and after I got it painted Subaru blue at Maaco for $200:
Since I did not like the stock fog lights, I got these projector fog lights from Ebay. See page 6 for details . They were much brighter than my first ones and they didn't blind other drivers. Plus, they matched my head lights and they had a white halo ring. They came with a very nice wiring harness, complete with switch, relay, and fuse. These fog lights are for sale . Since this bumper did not use my LED turnsignals, I got these LED light fixtures from autolumination. They were very nice looking since the lens had a blue tint to it and they were all chrome inside. However, it was not bright enough for me, so I put my own LEDs in them (see page 4 ).
I also got some K6-style mirrors from Ebay. This was before they had the LED arrows in the mirrors. I really liked the way these looked on my car, and the LED lens looked stock enough (like Scion mirrors); plus they were great for the LEDs I put in there (see page 4 ). In my opinion, these were the best-looking mirrors for this car.
I also got this BMW lip spoiler with an LED brake light painted the same color as my car. I liked the idea of the brake light on the trunk instead of in the window since it looked cleaner. It was flexible and fit very nicely. Make sure that you get a 49" one instead of the 48" ones that they sell for this car because 48" is not long enough to cover the entire trunk. The brake light was NOT VERY BRIGHT but the wire was easily run underneath the spoiler to the edge where it went into the trunk.
Here was the new parking light. I had the turn signals (the mirror and the LED light next to the fogs) doing the bright-and-dim thing again. Also, the halo LEDs burned out due to heat, so I put the regular bulbs back.
The 5000K HID kit was in the head lights and the 8000K HID kit was in the fog lights.
I got these APC tail lights on Ebay because I had gotten a $50 ticket for having illegal white turn signals in the rear. I was planning on putting LEDs in these tail lights again, but that didn't happen for a while.
Here's what the interior looked like at this point. Not much different, but you can see the chrome bezel around the gauges. The paint and LEDs were all still the same.
2 months later (June 2008) I took the tail lights apart in the oven to start the new lights. It almost went perfectly, but I had one light in for too long and the lens warped. So much for that!
Then came July 2008 and it was time to repaint the interior. I changed it up some this time for a cleaner look. I removed the chrome stickers. I replaced the stock shifter with the manual one from my seat-cover set from so long ago. I painted the glove box blue as well as the entire center consol area. I removed the steering wheel cover.
I also painted the ceiling for the first time. I really loved the way this turned out, especially the blue carpet. It was this that made me realize that I should have painted the floor carpet blue. But it was too late for that since I had already painted it black. I painted all of the parts on the ceiling black.
Also, I finally lit up the rest of the interior with blue LED strips from Ebay . See page 7 for installation details .
I used blue LED strips to light up the sliders and center area. I removed the 3 recessed LEDs that I had aiming down over the cassette tape area. I removed the 8 LEDs that I had behind the sliders. It was much better-looking now! The light was a lot brighter, but more importantly it was very even and clean. I also added LED strips in the vents, in the foot wells, and in the cassette area. The LEDs behind the cigarette lighter and all of the buttons/symbols were still there. I colored the overlay black around the backs of the symbols so that the light didn't bleed out as much.
I kept the 2 LEDs for the emergency brake, but I replaced the 1 LED in the storage area with a strip. Much nicer now!
I added LED strips on the doors as shown and under the seats. So far all of these LEDs turned on with the parking light (gauges). But, I added LEDs above the windows that only turned on when a door was open for an original effect that I had never seen before.
All of these lights turned on when the trunk was opened. There were blue LEDs on the hinges, on the ceiling, under the amp, and at the top of the trunk lid (I'd never seen those, either). There were also white LEDs on the ceiling.
Another shot of the window lights (one of the doors was slightly ajar).
In addition, I added these 4' strips of white LEDs along each side of the ceiling and wired them to the sunroof switch so that I could turn them on when I needed some reading light (so my book wasn't blue lol).
Here they are again. They did a great job lighting up the front and back seats. Neither one of the OEM ceiling lights were working at this point (bad LED bulbs).
These next two pictures show the inside of the car when only the parking light is on (no window or ceiling lights). This was so the interior was all blue without being visible to other drivers.
Here's a few more cool shots of all of the lights on (I really loved these pictures!):
Then in August 2008 I got this used OEM carbon fiber hood on Ebay! It was a great deal ($200 including shipping). Just as with my body kit, I got lucky on this one-time deal. It was made by C-Wings. It was at least as good quality as the stock hood (it even said "TOYOTA" on the bottom). It was super light, at least half the weight of the stock hood. Unfortunately, this used hood had some defects:
But they weren't that noticeable and I was happy with the hood for the price.
Here it is installed; it made a big difference! See page 5 for installation details . My stock hood is also for sale .
My Corolla had come a long way at this point (and it still had a long way to go)! At school, I parked next to what my car used to look like and snapped some pics.
I've got those ricey tail lights back on since I broke the APC ones in the oven.....
In August of 2008 I installed a full six-piece exhaust system from OBX and Tsudo (see page 9 for installation details )
This is the OBX header for the 1.8 L 7afe engine. It takes the 2-bolt oxygen sensor. It was really hard to install, but in the end, it fit nicely and provided for a better airflow out of the engine. I definitely recommend OBX over the no-name knockoffs on Ebay. You get what you pay for.
The downpipe came with the headers and fit through here nicely.
It is hard to see, but the OBX catalytic converter is to the right in the picture. It was a true, legal converter, not just a straight pipe. This was the most restrictive part of the exhaust, but at least it wasn't as restrictive as the stock converter. The Tsudo catback exhaust starts after that and goes back out the car.
The Tsudo came with a generic can muffler welded on. I left the silencer installed because it was plenty loud enough. My exhaust as a whole was pretty raspy, but I guess that is just how it was. Everything fit nicely and I was able to install it all myself (page 9 ).
I then converted the short-ram intake to a cold-air intake. See page 9 for how I did this . In doing so I broke the positive terminal on the battery so that is why the vice grip was on there lol.
The filter went right behind the opening. It sucked lots of cold air and I could easily feel the extra power in the warm summer months. I definitely recommend a cold-air intake for when the temperature is over 50 degrees. The short-ram intake worked fine for colder temperatures.
The other thing that I did when I installed the exhaust was replace my stock speedometer gauges with the stock tachometer gauges. I managed to find this replacement in perfect shape on Ebay for $50 (a steal). I painted it black, changed the turn signal indicators to blue LEDs, and changed the display bulbs to white LEDs. See page 7 for details on swapping your gauges !
Now that I had the tachometer gauges I could finally get some cool gauge faces for them. I bought the AC Autotechnic S72 luminescent gauges from Grip Motorsports, but they don't sell them any more. This was the picture they used to sell them, so I had no idea how they would look on my gauges. They were supposed to be 3D with extra pieces that stuck on to the gauges but the ones for my car don't I guess. They were also supposed to light up like this....
There really was not any red at all. Oh well, at least I had never seen any one else with gauges like these so they were original. They were not very bright, either, so I don't really recommend these. See page 7 to see how to install luminescent gauges .
The other problem was that the temperature gauge face had the C and H backwards! Don't get these gauges lol.
Here is what I ended up with. Not too interesting, but it was better than before. To fix the temperature gauge problem I swapped the gauge motor from my first gauges to these so that the gauge rotated the other way and so that the gauge started at C and heated up to H. At least it matched the gas gauge this way! These gauges are for sale . Now, the interior lighting was complete:
I took a few pictures at a friend's Labor Day party:
I also managed to park next to a Subaru the same color as mine at school:
At the end of September I finally caved in to everyone's demands and decided on a set of rims/tires. I got 17" gunmetal Drag DR-9 wheels with a chrome lip mounted and balanced with 205/40-17 NT NeoGen ZR tires from discounttiredirect.com . This place was great and the mounting, balancing, hub-centric rings, and shipping were all free! Their prices were very cheap, too, so I got all of this plus some tuner lug nuts from Ebay for under $700. The tires and rims were great; the handling improved incredibly as the stiffer/shorter tires didn't deform around curves. They came filled with air at almost 50 psi. And they looked awesome!
Whoops.... I was trying to make a lane change in a line of cars at a traffic light (I was lost) and I hit the curb pretty forcefully tearing apart my front end. The grille was toast and the mount on the side of the bumper broke off. The lip got completely scraped up as well.
I managed to fit it all back together but the damage had been done. It was getting close to winter when Maaco would be having their half-off paint sale anyways.
Then I decided to replace the fog light halos with universal CCFL ones from Ebay . Just look at how much brighter they are! They were very good quality. They came with their own ring housings. They come in different sizes, so just get the ones you need!
I also decided to get these great-looking red/clear tail lights . They were the same as the APC ones that I had been getting except they were red on the upper 2/3 just like I wanted. They came with a middle piece that I didn't need. These lights didn't leak, either! I would use these for my LED tail lights (see page 4 ).
I used the CCFL rings as my new DRLs instead of the HID because they used considerably less power.
The front turn signals were still the same.
The rear turn signals were composed of the yellow mirror LEDs (still) and I got some drop-in LED bulbs from Ebay for the tail lights. I was going to replace them with the new LEDs in the tail lights when I got around to it.
These were the brake lights before I put LEDs in the tail lights. The brake lights in the new tail lights would be the same configurations only with LEDs.
The backup lights were nice and clean.
It was looking really nice at this point. I loved the way it looked! But I still had a couple of things left to do.
CCFLs are the way to go! They are soooo bright. As you can see the color is a lot whiter than the LEDs (closer to 5000K). I wanted to make all of my lights that color. I still had the 5000K HIDs in the head lights and the 8000K kit in the fog lights.
At this point, the outside of my car is almost complete. But after hitting that curb I needed a new bumper. This time I would do it right.
I finally got around to acquiring these 1-piece chrome LED/halo projector head lights . They are much nicer than the previous head lights. See page 6 for details for installing these head lights and for comparisons to my previous projector head lights.
They were pretty sweet. Since these head lights took H1 bulbs (instead of H3 like the last head lights) I got my third HID kit . This time I got a 6000K kit because I thought that it would match the 5000K kit I had. Remember that I ordered a 8000K kit and they sent a yellower light. I didn't know what they had sent until I got the 6000K and found that they didn't match (see page 6 ). So my HIDs still didn't match no matter what I did.
Next was the body work (it was that time of year again lol). I took off the body kit and front bumper and put my stock bumpers and modified grille back on (these were still the previous blue color but I didn't care). I was not to paint the entire car this time because everything except for the bumpers was still in fine shape. I also finally got the windows tinted at 35% by a local place that gave me a no-questions-asked lifetime warranty for replacement. I also took my nice tail lights off and took them apart in the oven (see page 4 ) so on went the ricey tail lights. I can't seem to keep those off my car!!!! I had to put my OEM bumper turn signals back on because I had sold my LED ones. My car looked pretty terrible at this point but that was OK since it was only temporary.
I replaced the front bumper with another 2002 front bumper but I modified it differently so that there were no more ugly gaps. I repaired the front lip from the curb accident and the rear bumper because some lady rear ended me at a stop light. I added the chrome strip around the grille. I installed chrome-painted mesh behind the grilles. I custom-fitted 2004 JDM Altis fog lights . See page 5 for every detail . This was the result:
I put the 5000K HID kit from my old head lights into the fog lights. These became my DRLs. The previous fog lights are for sale .
I had to do something with my turn signals. So, I jammed some 921 18 watt bulbs in the corner lights and wired them to the signal. It actually worked very well and it was very clean. They were a temporary solution as they were not LEDs like the rest of the lights and signals. They did not turn on with the parking light anymore.
Here are the parking lights and the head lights lit. The parking light on the front was only the head light halos and 3 LEDs.
I didn't like the way the license plate and mesh sat behind the lower grille so I moved them to the front and snapped a few nice pics. I loved my car! I couldn't believe how nice and different it looked. To bad I still had those ricey tail lights on there. But my LED tail lights were coming along and would be ready soon....
Next it was time for a tune up. Since I had been burning a ton of oil and since my spark plugs were not burning all of the gas, I decided to Seafoam my Corolla. It was very easy to do; I just sucked 1/3 of the can into the brake booster vacuum line. The result was awesome! I watched videos on YouTube of people Seafoaming their cars but I never saw anyone get this much smoke! Thankfully it was windy that day or I would have suffocated lol. I did it by myself and it was smoking before I could even finish putting the Seafoam in there. 15 minutes later I turned it on and revved it up. This picture was taken at idle speed. So much smoke! I did it in a new parking lot so I didn't bother anyone.
This was nothing compared to all of the smoke that came out. I had to drive it around the parking lot for 15 minutes before it stopped smoking! It reminded me of those airplanes you see in the sky that leave the white streaks behind them lol.
Once I finished the Seafoam I went back home and replaced the burned-out spark plugs and wires with new NGK Platinum ones . They were really easy to install. The the parts made a small increase in performance as now all of the gas was being burned. You can see that I had removed the flexible cold-air intake duct and put the filter back on there because the flexible duct broke apart.
I also managed to pick up some rarer pieces for the interior. I replaced the entire driver's side vent panel with one from a 1997 Corolla because it had the mirror switch and it didn't have two extra cutouts on the bottom. It was a lot cleaner. I also managed to get a set of chrome ring trims for the 4 gauges to make it look more professional. It looked good! I hadn't painted the new panel yet.
Then I put this carbon fiber bezel on the gauges to see how I liked carbon fiber for the interior. I loved it! It was the perfect touch and gave me the look I wanted. These very gauges are now for sale .
Then, in April 2009, I finally finished my red/clear LED tail lights! The LED boards in the red circles installed very cleanly. It looked OEM! See page 4 for details .
I spent a day running this rear fog light wire and temporary toggle switch for my LED fog light in the tail lights. It would match the other button switch eventually. While I had the interior all apart to run this little wire I cleaned up a bunch of my other wiring to hide it and make it nicer. I also wired in the power mirrors finally so those worked with the switch. I also removed the two blue LEDs shining on the emergency brake because they weren't needed anymore with all of the blue LED strips.
Finally, the tail lights on my car were finished. The red rings lit up dim as the parking light, as you can see in this picture.
The toggle switch made the red rings light up full brightness even if the parking light was on so that my lights could be seen in broad day light or dense fog.
Here are three pictures of the parking light rings (in dim mode). So, these rings were dim with the head lights, but they would turn bright with the fog switch or with the brake lights. You can see (zoom in) that the entire circle was filled with red LEDs. The rest also turned on with the brake light.
But the real brightness came with the brake lights. When the brakes were applied, the LED rings got bright but also the entire circle lit with LEDs. Also, I replaced the spoiler brake light with an LED board using the same LEDs as the tail lights. It was also extremely bright.
The backup lights were just simple drop-in LED bulbs but they looked very nice.
The rear turn signals were yellow drop-in LED bulbs in the tail lights and I still had the super-bright yellow LED arrows in the mirrors.
The mirrors were still the same, they got bright with the turn signal.
The front turn signal was still the bright 921 bulbs in the corner lights.
The parking light in the front only consisted of the 3 LEDs on the head lights. One of the halos burned out (already) so I removed all 4 of them. The outer lights were still turn signal-only. The mirror light was the only light on the side of the car.
Switch on the head lights and you got a 5000K HID kit in the low-beam projectors.
The fog lights were still 5000K HIDs, so finally they matched. They were very white as you can see on the road.
Now that I had the new 5000K HID kit in the low beams I was able to put the old 6000K kit in the high beams. Now they were all 6 HID! Super bright on the darkest of roads.
I finally got some recognition for all of my hard work here on CarDomain: I made it into the Car Domain Blog! Thanks Gotadime ! Way to represent Toyota Corollas!
Click on the picture to see the Blog!
Also, my ratings finally made it all the way to 4.5 stars. Keep the 5-star ratings coming!
Finally, check out this Ebay seller who used my pictures of my car to sell head lights! Even though they didn't get my permission or anything at first, I'm pretty honored. And, in my opinion, they couldn't have choosen a better car! LOL! But, I did contact them and I got $30 for the use of my pictures. Sweet deal!
June 2009 ended up being a terrible month for me. I started my first full-time job since I had just graduated, so I found myself with no time for my car. Not that having time can help you prevent random stuff happening lol.
Only 1 month I finished the custom LED tail lights, I backed into a metal railing that was painted the same color as the building behind it. It cracked the lens a few ways as you can see here. I put a piece of clear packing tape over it to keep the water out. So much for my perfect tail lights. The crack didn't affect the light output/pattern, and it wasn't THAT noticeable. But, you notice these sort of things on your own car. So, I needed to buy the entire set of 3 tail lights ($130) and make my lights all over again.
I was failing the emissions test every month because I had so much unburnt fuel and oil. It turned the bumper black with my new exhaust because it wasn't long enough. Well, as it turned out, the computer had no reading from one of the engine coolant temperature sensors. So, it was putting out gas all the time like it was -infinity degrees (startup on a very very cold day). My shop told me that I needed a new computer. That would be $1000 please.
So, I took apart my interior so that I could get to the computer (it is the gray box with the white/orange label in the back):
But I wasn't about to spend that kind of money and not have the problem fixed (we weren't even sure that the computer was the problem). Good thing, too, since I gave the car to a different mechanic to look at, and he fixed the problem. Turns out, one of the pins had gotten bent or disconnected somehow. He put it back together and fixed the timing, and that was that. The problem got a little better, but it still failed emissions. The only thing left to do was a new engine.
Then, while all of the mess with the interior was going on, I found this huge scrape/dent on my car when I came out from work!!! Wow, someone must've been going too fast backing up or something to do that. Fortunately, it is a company-specific parking lot, and it is guarded. So, she couldn't get away (we have assigned spots). So, she left a note on my car.
Here's the damage on her car (you can see my car and the red car next to me in the reflection). She was backing up and didn't see my car SOMEHOW. lol. Anyways, she wrote me a fat check for $650 since that's what the repair estimate was. But, I do all of my body work myself and I get the entire car painted for $200 so........... well I would fix it later on my own time lol. I used a brush to paint on some random blue paint (it was supposed to match but it was waaay dark). At least it wouldn't rust (see later pics of after).
Dang, seems like everything's going wrong! One of my fog lights popped out on the terrible Baltimore streets.... and I didn't notice until I heard the scraping noise and got lots of weird looks from pedestrians lol. Oh well, guess I should replace these anyway....
In July 2009, I decided it was finally time to customize my head lights. That meant that I'd need another pair while I was working on the chrome ones. Fortunately, Jamall85 had a pair of the same head lights (except in black) that he didn't need, and he was willing to meet up and give them to me. SO I had black head lights for the first time. Here are some OK pics:
I didn't really like it, since the fogs and grilles were still chrome. So, I tinted the fogs with a light film, so that they blended a little better. It helped, but it really cut down on the light at night. Night pics:
I managed to find a brand new OEM carbon fiber hood locally, so I brought it home (lol). You can also see how I tried to paint over the scrape/dent on the doors..... so much for that paint matching!
mmmmmm carbon fiber!! lol. This is before I cleaned it up. It looked much nicer than the old hood I had. I did not install it immediately, though, I wasn't done with my old hood.... this one would wait for a while...
Well, I finally got the mess with the computer figured out... there was a bent wire connection lolz. So I didn't need to replace that thank goodness. So I could put my interior back together. In doing so, I replaced a couple more of the interior parts with stock pieces in preparation for painting it all black.
I also added the small storage bin between the seats. It looked better instead of a hole in there, and it kept the dust off of my sunglasses lol. It also had a carpet in the bottom, so the glasses didn't get even more scratched up. My other new pieces included the coin tray, shifter surround, upper and lower center dash panels, power-mirror corners, and cluster surround bezel. I also put a carbon fiber vinyl over the cupholder/storage bin to see what a screen would look like.... I liked it.
Two more night pics of the interior (the only difference is the center dash panel, the buttons are stock bulbs, and I put a blue LED strip behind the temperature symbols):
Well, so much for buying all of those new Corolla dash parts, because I decided right then to swap the interior to the Prizm one! I didn't have much choice after ruining my dash by painting it wrong (see page 7 ):
So, rather than get another Corolla dash or fix this one, I decided to go ahead and get all of the parts I needed for swapping the Geo Prizm dash into my car. It was a big success! See page 7 for details on swapping the dashboard.
Boy, I love the interior now that it is all black! Every last piece was repainted, and this time, the blue spray paint wasn't used at all lol. Notice all of the differences with the new dashboard. Doesn't it look cleaner and more modern? As far as I know, I'm the first and only person to make the dash swap. Who will be the second??????
The center dash panel is my favorite difference. It is nice and round, and it has knobs for the temperature controls instead of sliders. I put a dark tint over the temperature controls so that they'd be black and shiny (click left pic below). I put LEDs behind each symbol, and they shine through the tint fine. I wired them so that they turned on with the key turned, so that the LEDs automatically came on when I needed to drive (and see the symbols lol). I removed those dumb pedal covers later. Also, this dash doesn't have a radio slot.... just the double-din spot underneath. It was perfect for my new 7" touchscreen ! This thing is great. It is super simple when off, it is just a screen and a row of buttons on the bottom that light up blue. Very clean. It installed very easily in the factory brackets and the wiring kit I had from my previous radio, which I don't need anymore, so it's for sale . This screen plays DVDs, CDs, MP3s, SD cards, and it has bluetooth, GPS, etc. It has everything I needed and more. A best buy for sure.
I painted all of the door pieces black, looked great. The blue LEDs provided all of the blue that I needed lol.
Here are all of the lights lit. I put my LED strips behind the vents, around the cigarette lighter, and behind the buttons. You can also see my new Prizm tachometer gauge cluster. There were no mods available for it, so I simply put blue LED bulbs behind there, which worked nicely. Sadly, my cool Corolla gauges are now for sale because I can't use them lol.
And some more night pics of the interior, because NO one has it like this. These lights all come on with either the key turn or the parking light (night driving mode):
And these add the door/trunk lights to the mix. The door lights turn on when any one of the doors open, and the trunk lights turn on when the trunk opens:
Next, I made a few significant, yet cheap/simple, changes to the exterior to help it along in this transition period... still trying to make the black head lights look good.
Nothing goes better with black lights than more black lights. LOL. I had heard great things about VHT Nite Shades , so I ordered a can to try out. I decided that I would use it to tint the tail lights first. Since they were cracked, I already had a new set in the works, so I figured I could use the red/clear tail lights as a test....
This was the result after painting the top 2/3 (the previously red stuff) black.... and boy, black it was.... I went too dark for sure! It looked awesome, though!
Wow, my brake lights weren't bright anymore!!! Still bright enough, though, especially turning on from a completely black area.... oh well.... but I did learn that this stuff works very well and is so easy to use. It has a comfortable spray nozzle, and you can apply it nice and think without it running or anything. Goes on nice... you just need to get it even, which is easy to do on the lens. I definitely recommend it for tinting lights.
I then finished it up by blacking-out the bottom and sides of the clear part to get a better look (compare this with the previous pics). Looked good!
I then used the tint on the upper grille mesh and the chrome surround.... this time though, I just did a light tint to make it darker. It blended a lot better with the head lights, but I still didn't like the fog lights and the lower grille. Nevertheless, the tint worked great on the mesh and the chrome trim.... more win!
So, I took off my fog lights, pulled off the tint film, opened them up in the oven, and painted them black with the VHT as shown in this pic. Black-housing fogs!! Cool! Wow, these looked soooo much better! I needed another pair of fog lights anyway, so again, these were a test pair. I really loved how these came out. Check out page 6 for the DIY !
After installing the lights, I tinted the lower grille mesh to match the top. Now it looked good! The fog lights were a perfect match tothe head lights, and the grilles didn't stand out anymore. Looked really clean!! The VHT tint worked very very well when sprayed directly on the chrome surface of the fog light. Since the tint is transparent, the end effect was a black chrome. It was just as shiny as before, just darker (see page 6 ).
I put on this awesome steering wheel/airbag from a 2005 Celica / Corolla S!!!! It was an adventure to figure out how to change a steering wheel, so I added a new section on page 7 detailing a DIY steering wheel change. I also added a DIY airbag reset to the same section.
I'm currently working to finish my custom head lights..... check out page 6 for progress ! They will be blacked out similar to the fog lights. They will have 3 CCFL halo rings, as shown here. The outer lights and the three inner dots will all be white LEDs. The high beam and low beam are being replaced with quad projectors for a mean look. They will be topped off with custom eyelids to solidify the mean look.
I've got this super electric blue carpet in my garage awaiting install..... it will compliment my black dash very well and be like my blue head liner. (yeah, that is my new CF hood still in my garage lol... still haven't installed that).
This is an example of the blue carpet installed with a black dash... mine will look something like this.
I'm looking for the 1997 Corolla/Prizm dash panels... these are a direct fit, you just need the panels and the window switches. I already have the switches, now if only I could get the doors lol..... mine will be all black, except I think I'd make the carpet electric blue....
Yes, I am planning to swap the engine. But not just any swap (you should know by now that I don't do what everyone does lol). This is the supercharged AE101 4agze engine. I will also be converting to a 5-speed manual transmission and stronger axles. I'll need it, because when I'm done with it, I plan on having 250 HP and 18 psi of immediate boost. As long as I can get all of the logistics worked out, it should happen sometime....
I've still got this hood to put on.... but I'm going to put a Subaru Impreza hood scoop on there to spice it up (wait, you weren't supposed to know that lol).
I picked up these Matrix coilovers on Ebay for $100 shipped.... not bad! I guess I will be lowering my car LOL..... IF I can't figure these things out. Any help is appreciated!
What do you think of a blue hood? I don't think I like it...
OR, what about a carbon fiber trunk?
something like that....maybe not.
I'm also planning some other wicked body mods.... but those are top secret ;)
I do have plans to lower it a little....
That is all for now. If you have any questions or comments let me know in my guestbook! Don't forget to rate!
