Banpei's two door panda Trueno from Japan

[banpei]

Good point!
Maybe I just need to invert them?

[decryphe]

Black with golden highlights could work as an inverted color scheme. Some dark bronze/black combo (non-inverted) would work better, though - with your silver panda, you can choose almost any (dark) color to match with it.

The texture is really what makes these wheels so pretty, so something two-tone is a must in my opinion.

[banpei]

Thanks for the suggestion!
I'll try to photoshop that and see how it would look

[banpei]

During the drive from and to Cologne, the Pioneer TS-44 speakers I recently installed started to annoy me. When the engine isn't running, they are fine. There's a lack of bass, but it's fine. However, when I'm driving 100km/h, all the bass gets lost as my exhaust is much louder. All I hear are the mid- and high tones. I described it to R.ave as these speakers giving a similar sound as the cheap speakers you got for free when you purchased a computer in the late 1990s.

When I was browsing Auctions Yahoo, I found a cheap set of TS-X11 speakers. The ad said they were working, I placed a bid and then was confronted with very steep shipping costs. It turned out that the TS-X11 speakers are made out of aluminium and weigh about 5kg each.

They arrived today!



They definitely need some cleaning as they were clearly used in a car that was smoked in regularly.

To give an impression how much bigger these speakers are, this is one next to the TS-44:



So my long list of projects just got extended with another one.
1. Create brackets for the Cibie fog lights
2. Clean up the interior parts and install them
3. Restore the rear seats
4. Sand/paint/polish Celica Supra wheels
5. Clean and install Pioneer TS-X11 speakers
And I probably forgot two or three other onging projects...

[banpei]

To indicate how massively indestructible these Pioneer TS-X11 speakers were built, here's what they look like on the inside:

As you can see, the aluminium housing is about as thick as the valve covers of the 4AGE!

Unfortunately, when I opened the second one, I was greeted with this:

One of the tweeters has broken during transit. From what I can gather, the magnet can just be stuck on the back of the tweeter and I keep my fingers crossed it will still work. If not, I'll have to find a tweeter with the same specifications. With some luck, the tweeters that used to be on the parcelshelf have the same specifications.

Anyway, I took them apart and cleaned them thoroughly:

I had three buckets of brown water, and they have cleaned up a bit. I almost felt like being the guy from Odd Tinkering, but alas: no Ducktor in my bucket.
These speakers are far from perfect: there is pitting on the coating of the speakers and some of the emblems also have scratches and marks on them. I don't really mind these speakers not being perfect, my goal was to get rid of the smoker's smell.

Tomorrow I'll put them back together again and test the sound quality.

[The Doctor]

I think I had a set of tsx-11s a long time ago. They where good!

[banpei]

I can vouch for that!
Did you mount them in the Chaser and then leave them in there when you sold it?

I reassembled the two speakers and hooked them up on our old stereo system. One of them has excellent sound, but the other has no sound at all. Coincidentally, that's the very same speaker that had the broken tweeter. I don't think the broken tweeter has anything to do with it, as then I would have heard bass and midrange. It also has a lot of foam padding on the inside, so it couldn't have been playing havoc on the board either. What I suspect is there is some loose connection that is caused by me taking it apart. So that's for another day to test and try out.

Edit:
I also dropped by my garage today as I had to use the Trueno as backup daily. As I was already there, I decided to see how easy the paint could be removed from the Celica Supra wheels. I tried with 240 grit and 600 grit.
240 grit:


600 grit:


The conclusion is that the paint on the lip of the wheel is only a thin layer, while on the spokes of the wheel it's a very thick layer. I'm now doubtful whether to have these wheels blasted/dipped to start with a clean sheet or whether to take the orbital sander and use force on the spokes...

[banpei]

I have made a decision on the Celica Supra wheels: I'll try the orbital sander on the spokes first and see how much effort it takes to remove the paint and whether there is another layer below this one. I can always have them stripped if it's too much effort with the sander.

About the TS-X11 speakers: today, I took the non-functioning speaker apart. All of a sudden, it burst back into life, and the tweeter worked fine. However, the midrange speaker did not. I tried looking at what's wrong with the midrange speaker, and it looks like one of the thin wires on the speaker doesn't make contact with the driver. One of them is fine, but the other isn't. All three speakers are complete units that can be swapped.

Normally, I would be able to fix this by soldering a new wire. However, the wires are inserted into the dust cap and then probably soldered right behind the dust cap to the cone. To make it a bit clearer, this is what the complete unit of the midrange speaker looks like:

As the wire goes through the plastic frame, removing the frame to get to the dust cap already requires desoldering the wires. Then, removing the dust cap might also damage the good wire underneath. This is not a repair I'll be looking forward to.

Replacing it with a (new) speaker with the same specifications will also be an issue: there are no markings on these speakers, so the specifications are not known. I could replace them with some random speakers that would roughly fit the size, watts and resistance of the overall specifications. However, then I would have to replace both sides, and it could change the way they sound drastically. It would probably ruin the looks of the speakers behind the grille as well.

I found a replacement module for sale on Auctions Yahoo that has been tested. So I bit the bullet and ordered the part. Hopefully, it will arrive in one piece.

[The Doctor]

I just found out mine where the TSX-10s, it's been a while since i've had them!



Never should have given them away

[banpei]

The TS-X10 is similar to the TS-X11 with very similar specs!
Who was the lucky one?