Daox's 2003 Matrix Build Thread

[tasdrouille]

Re the darkness of the pics. I used the 80/20 trick a lot in the past. Adjust brightness to 80 and contrast to 20 in the Gimp. It really lightens up.

[Daox]

The latest update here is not a mod to the Matrix at all. Over the holidays I brought home a freecycled flatbed scanner. The used scanner will be used by my wife to scan her time sheets for work. This will allow her to not have to drive to her workplace every week to drop them off. This could possibly save quite a bit of miles and gas as her work is on the far side of Milwaukee from where she normally works.

[MetroMPG]

Nice!

[Daox]

I think I mentioned a while back, the plug of my block heater had been drug on the ground and the prongs were pretty shot. So, after seeing Ben Nelson's nice Marineco plug in for his Metro I had to get me one of those. I ebayed one and took some time tonight to install it.


Here we have the patient for tonight.




Here is the damage done.




I wanted to put the plug in an easily accessible location. The hardest part here was finding a relatively flat surface. This place worked out perfectly. A 1-7/8" hole saw and a few seconds and we had this nice hole punched in the bumper cover.




Next, I cut and stripped the heater's wire. Thankfully the ground was marked and was easily identified on the Marineco plug. I also added dielectric (conductive) grease to everything to prevent help prevent corrosion on the plug and leads.





Last but not least was to tuck it in and tighten things down. It just fits in there, but it fits nice.

[Deezler]

Wow I didn't know they used that much salt in WI.
Your engine is bathing in the corrosive coating also. yikes.

Get to the the car wash!

Nice Marinco plug install, gotta get me one of those.

[Tango Charlie]

Slick!
You just made my 'to do' list longer...

[cmittle]

Minnesota a lot of salt as well. Luckily I live just a few miles west of Minnesota, and South Dakota uses mostly sand with a pinch of salt on their roads. When I go to my girlfriends parents house my car gets this luxury as well

[Daox]

GenVibe owners requested pics when the snow cleared. Well, its not clear, but the wife did run the Matrix through the car wash today. Here are some zoomed out shots of it.




All tucked in ready for warmth in the morning.

[Chris D.]

where did you get that plug in setup? very stealthy..

is that a block heater or something else?
any info on that?

[Daox]

You can get them at your local boat shop. However, I don't have a real local shop (no place on the way home), so I ebayed mine.

Marinco On-Board Charger Inlet 150BBI - eBay (item 370094352737 end time Feb-04-09 06:35:35 PST)

It is just wired to the block heater.

The block heater itself is just the OEM optional Toyota block heater.