1981 Safari wagon thread

Easter

We went up to visit family for Easter, and they have a beautiful historic cottage that they think was built sometime around 1860 or earlier. Their garage and property is beautiful, and they also have a barn that is about 100 years old next to their property. Since I had the car detailed for the weekend, I figured it would be a good time for a photo shoot.

 

Coming along great, Z! Good job on the headliner and sun visors. I had my headliner done at a shop shortly after I got it, but forgot to ask him to do the visors, too. No holes, but the fabric's kind of saggy.......

 

Beautiful car. I love the green.

mike

 

I took the car in to have the windows tinted. I got the windshield done as well, just to help keep the dash cover from cracking and fading.
I got 50% on the windshield, the lightest, and 25% on the rest of the windows.

My wife thinks that 25% on the front two doors is too dark and that the car just looks like a scary drug dealer car. She's willing to give it a couple weeks, until after we get back from out trip to Milwaukee though. I told her that if, after the trip, she still doesn't like it, I'll take it back in and have them re-tint those two doors at 35%.
I only have the one picture so far. I haven't seen what the car looks like in the sun, since we've had nothing but rain since I got it back.

 

I am a tint fan! I think it looks good!

 

Before I had the windows tinted, I took off the rear trim so the guys could get the tint all the way to the edge, and when I put the trim back I won't have a strip without tint around the edge of those back windows.

One small thing turns into another small thing, which turns into another, and you're left with a big job, right?

Well, since I had that trim off, I figured I might as well paint it. Once I painted the back pieces, I had to start painting the ones further up too.

 

Of course, since I had the trim off, I thought I might as well see about replacing the speakers back there. The ones I have work, but for all I know they are original to the car, and I would think that speaker technology is a whole lot better 33 years later.

Since I had the back ones off, I thought I might try and see how hard it would be to take the dash cover off to replace the ones up front. Only one of those were working, so they definitely needed replacing.

After reading horror stories about how difficult a dash cover can be to take off, I was a little worried, but I shouldn't have been!! 13 easily-accessed screws, and the cover slipped right off with no effort at all.

I wish I had some way to make a mold of this thing so if/when it cracks I could get a new one 3-D printed...

Now my question is, what do I replace those speakers with? I'd prefer the same size, just because I really can't get anything bigger in there. I know I won't have the same quality of sound I COULD get with amp, bass, bigger speakers, etc, etc...
I'm just looking to keep the car stock-ish, not heavily modified.

Anyone have any recommendations on brand of speaker? Anything to really stay away from?

I have 4" x 10" in the back, and 4" x 6" in the front. Kenwood? Pioneer? MB Quart? Or does it really not matter that much for such a simple system?


Thanks!

 

I ended up ordering a couple pioneer speakers off Amazon. The reviews were all really good, and everyone agreed that they were not performance speakers, but they were better than the stock ones. We'll see how I like them when they get here.

Here's what I went with.
http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-PIOTSA4675R-TS-A4675R-3-Way-Speakers/dp/B00A0M0PXA/ref=sr_1_1?s=car&ie=UTF8&qid=1400247777&sr=1-1&keywords=4+x+6+car+speakers

and

http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-TS-A4103-2-way-Speakers-Pair/dp/B000067INH/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1400247319&sr=1-2&keywords=4+x+10+car+speakers

I figured that for $100 for both pairs, I couldn't go wrong.

 

Well, the rear speakers were a little thicker than the stock ones, so the back speaker trim is bulging just a little. Aside from that, the speakers sound great!

 

I ran out of paint about halfway through painting the trim, and couldn't get to the store until the next day.

I had half a can of rustoleum clear gloss, so I decided to see what it looked like on the trim. After I tried it on a small trim piece, I had to do everything, it looked great!
It gave the trim that shiny "just got detailed" look, and I figure it can't hurt to have an extra layer over the paint. I know it will get scratched off over time, and spray paint is terrible at staying on the vinyl For now though, boy does it ever look fantastic!

It's a bit hard to get a good picture tonight, I'll try again tomorrow in the sun and see if I can get one that shows how it shines.

 

Looks great Dave!

 

X2, nice!

 

Nice job for sure

 

Drove up to Indiana to the in-law's and the car drove like a dream. Now that I've experienced a tinted windshield, I don't think I'll be able to go back!

Once I got up there though, as I was parking the car started giving a little shudder. I was worried I had fried the fuel pump because I was almost on empty, or maybe I had clogged the fuel filter.

I took it across the street to a buddy's garage, and as he was helping me check the filter, he noticed I had a spark plug wire that had physically separated from the boot at the distributor, which was odd, because the plugs and wires were only a year old.

After putting on a whole new set of wires, we continued up up Milwaukee the next day, with no more issues.

I have to assume that I had a bad batch of wires from the factory, because not only did that wire come apart with seemingly no reason, but my gas mileage got much better. with the old wires, I was barely able to squeak out 260 miles, almost all of those highway. I was on fumes by the time I made it to the gas station. With the new wires, I made it 285 miles up here, and I still have almost a quarter tank of gas!

I'm kind of excited to fill up and calculate what my exact MPG is now.

 

I knew that my MPG was not right. When I replaced all the wires, I found that there were 3 plugs that hadn't been tightened down all the way, and I was having a little blowback.

After fixing all the plug/wire issues, my mileage jumped from about 9.5 city, 12 highway to 14.5 city, 18 highway!