Cruizn' Clarion X

Yesterday was Cruizn' Clarion and It came and went so fast I wish it was everyday!

It was so wonderful to meet many other PT lovers like myself and it was also nice to be able to get tons of great ideas for future mods.

But enough talking, heres some pictures from cruzin clarion of Pickled Petey and Arcane with a description here and there. (There arent any pictures specifically of other PTs as I dont have permission from the car owners to post them here on this blog!)

Arcane and Petey sittin side by side. If you look closely between us youll see the ricers started getting jealous of all the PT's and started calling all their Ricer buddies in their hondas to have their own mini show! HAHA!

Pickled Petey started out in a crappy spot all alone, so no one really saw him. But next year hell be right in the center!



ahh yes... I love my nicely painted UIM!

The tires and calipers are one of my favorite parts of the whole PT.

That outlet looks so awesome. Thanks Morkeste!

We moved the subwoofer around so people could get a look inside the box. I love this angle as it shows off the car nicely.

Morkeste and Arcane won a Peoples Choice award (WOOT!), and while I didn't I still left feeling like a winner! Hopefully in the next year I can get to know some of the people there so I can socialize more. Im looking forward to going again and I cant wait to see what I can do in that time!

Finishing Touch!

In the rush to get ready for Cruizn' Clarion I have tried to do as many little projects as possible! Ive flushed and drained all the coolant and added fresh new Zerex coolant, as well as done several small painting jobs.

Included in those jobs was my hatch struts. These things were all rusty and were in need of some serious love. So I went to Lowes and got the torx screw to remove the struts. Whilst my Fiancee, Emma, held the hatch up I unscrewed the struts and we closed the gate carefully.

I proceeded to sand the struts till they were nice and smooth and I cleaned them off very well. Since I had tons of left over caliper paint I decided to use it on these struts. Thus they are now painted red! It adds a nice sporty look to them overall and im very glad I decided to paint them.

Another small painting project was my reverse lights. Ever since I got my new tail lights the reverse lights just stuck out too much. To fix this issue I lightly misted them with VHT Nightshades until they were a close match to my replacement tails.

Heres a picture of the struts and the finished reverse lights.

Among the biggest thing I had to get done was the power inverter. With help from my friend Morkeste we managed to wire up my car to have AC power with the flip of a switch! Pretty sweet right?!

To do this we had to first find some nice locations for the outlets. I picked out under the radio and on the cargo net cover. The inverter is in the cubby where the cargo net goes.

Once that was figured out we had to dremel everything nicely. Morkeste did an excellent job making the install look super clean.

Along with running the outlets we also decided to install some LEDs in the center console (soon to be expanded) as well as installing my Amps volume knob. So without further wait, heres a picture of everything installed.

Yes your eyes dont decieve you, theres a new shifter knob on the car as well, and I love it cause it makes shifting seem so much more smooth versus the old cue ball. Also I love the location of my switches! If you look below the radio you will see the outlet in the center. It looks like it belongs there. Once again Morkeste did an excellent job there.

Now its time to sit back and wait... Cruizn' Clarion is in Two Days!

Wheels Just Keep On Turnin'

One of the most important things to do before clarion is to get my wheels looking nice. Currently I am unable to afford nice rims so I took the easy way out by painting the rims I have.

Heres a before shot of the rims

Now in order for these rims to look good I needed to do this the right way. The rims were cleaned throughly and sanded until they were no longer shiny. The paint I used is made for rims and once applied correctly and cleaning off any overspray on the tires the rims turned out wonderful!

Of course while the wheels were off I decided to paint the calipers as well. This was fairly simple and the paint I picked to paint the calipers was a red color.

Once the calipers were painted just right and the wheels dried I went ahead and put everything back together and the final result was so perfect. It really makes Pickled Petey look so much more different.

When I go to clarion Ill get any stray overspray off, as well as shine up my tires!

Pickled Painting

Cruizn' Clarion has lit a mod match under my butt!

There are so many things to get done before the event later this month and hopefully I can get it all done by the event.

So today I decided it was time to do some magical painting under the hood of the car.

So heres a photo of what everything looked like under the hood before I did anything.

Now to paint everything I need to I had to remove the Airbox, Vanity cover, and the Upper Intake Manifold (UIM). To remove the UIM I had to unscrew plenty of bolts and odd wiring harness'. So I decided the best look for the engine would be red. Putting the vehicle back together was fairly simple and the finished result is certainly awesome!!

Sorry for the uneven lighting! The new paint job makes the under the hood area really stick out and look custom.

I'll Make A Man Out Of You Yet, Pickled Petey!

Finally!

Today after about 2 weeks I finally got my new Flowmaster Exhaust System in. I got a really great deal for it ($125 Shipped) and only paid 60 bucks to get it installed. I paid the guys under the table (theyre somewhat a local down home shop) so they were willing to do it for alot less than the over 130 bucks everyone else locally wanted...

Alot of folks have been wanting to know what this exhaust sounds like and if they should buy it for themselves. Well this exhaust system is exactly what I wanted in my PT, A Close to stock loudness but with a bit of a meaner tone to it. This certainly accomplishes this. The resonator on it keeps the noise down and without it the exhaust would be very loud. The muffler is a Flowmaster Series 50 Delta so it could be pretty loud without the resonator (and give me a nice drone in the car to drive me nuts, search youtube for series 50 flowmaster if you want to hear it raw)

The one thing I dont like is the giant exhaust tip! 3.5 Inches! I feel like ive got one of those honda tips on the exhaust! Its so big that it melted a nice spot for itself in my bumper!

So first heres a video of the sound comparison... My voice has been changed to keep the secret identity of Dill well hidden! HAHA!

Please Note!!! While I attempted to record a inside sound of me on the highway driving, all the sound ended up being was road noise... Seriously this exhaust is loud when you want it (High RPMS) and quite when you need it (low RPMS)

Not Bad Right?

So here's some pictures of the PT during installation. I blotted out the men's heads cause I was taking these photos without them knowing and also since they did this under the table it protects them a bit as well!

So the process was simply remove the muffler, which was simple.

Step two was to break out the big toys and heat up a seriously rusty bolt then go nuts on it with a crowbar until it broke off...

Step 3 was to hang the resonator and the following pipe

And that was it! Now time to admire the work from a lift, I loved seeing how nice and rust free Pickled Petey is!

So now I'm all ready for Cruizin Clarion (Almost!). Speaking of Cruizin' Clarion...

Pickled Petey had a chance to meet his old neighbor and darker, speedier counterpart, Arcane. Arcane is a friend of ours PT and it so happens that the PT used to belong to a neighbor of ours who recently traded it in. (Its a funny story really how we ran into each other, although not literally)

Heres the two of the buddys hanging out together in a parking lot (Cars just love to congregate there!)

Well thats all for today! Im looking forward to doing more to Pickled Petey and the Catfish soon!

The Catfish's Eyeballs

The Taurus (AKA The Catfish) just got its first real bit of love today, some shined up headlights!

Ive done alot of work to it the past few days getting it up to par. Most of the work will be done sometime this week!

I fixed the hazy headlights using 3m's headlight restoring kit. Basically I sanded all the uglyness away and polished the headlights into like new condition! I did the same thing on my pt back when I got it, but man these lights needed them worse!

So Heres a Picture! If you need to know which is before and which is after then you need glasses.

In news for my PT, Im prepping the car for its new exhaust! A Flowmaster Catback exhaust made for the PT. This'll give the car a deeper and slightly louder tone without making the car stand out too much like a riced out honda.

I Can't Wait To Get This On And Upload a Comparison Sound Clip To The Stock Exhuast!

The Pickled PT's Sister

So my great friends Kevin and Becky have a 1996 Ford Taurus GL that theyve been trying to get rid of. But somethings the matter with it, Its spewing coolant everywhere which is causing it to overheat!

After almost a year of it sitting at their house and it not selling they decided to give it to us as long as we paid the transfer fees for it.

So we decided wed take the risk and get it so we could have a second car for emergencys or something.

So alas heres our new car on the day we got her (about two weeks ago, I didnt post it on here cause I wanted to make sure I could fix the problem before I started doing things to it)!

Besides needing a good cleaning and fixing the issue and the rust on the hood, its in great shape. Only has about 79,000 miles on it.

So I joined a website full of taurus owners and we quickly narrowed the issues with the coolant exploading down to...

Tank
Cap
Water Pump
Rust
Head Gasket

I was able to fix the issue by giving it a new cap. When the coolant is under pressure its boiling temp is raised therefore the old cap wasnt holding the pressure and the coolant would "boil over"

While I was fixing the issue I went ahead and drained all the coolant and put in a new thermostat! Doing this job made me feel like I am learning alot about cars!

So since the day that I got the Pickled PT's sister I have done quite alot to her. So now along with my PT on this blog, you all get to see me work and fix issues with this car too!!