The mud left on my car after ripping around in the Mud at the duchess county fair. People with 2WD need to keep out of the mud and people with 4WD/AWD need to learn how to drive!
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Wanted to clean up the front of my car, and get that pesky NY front plate off that nice shield grille.
Didn’t want to pay the $100+ for the real mount.
I ordered a tow hook off the net for around $30 and went to work.
I put it into the bumper and marked the line of the car with a welders chalk.
Clamped it up.
Got the saws all out and cut it about a 1/2″ from the bumper line.
All done cutting.
Ground it down nice and smooth.
Done with the grind
Used a large drill to drill 2 holes in the hook.
Tapped the holes the correct size for the small bolts I had.
A bad photo of the tapped holes.
Got some strips of aluminum flashing I had around and built a frame.
Attached frame to tow hook on car.
Day 2, Painting:
Painted the exposed end of the towhook with black rust proof paint.
Painted frame with same paint.
Frame mounted.
Plate mounted v.2
From the top
I still need to order a delete for the front. I would be fine with keeping it gray but they only make the gray delete with chrome strips. So I may just suck it up and go with the all black grille & delete.
Car wash
After searching around the web for options to hook my iPhone to my A3 I decided to go with a spec.dock. It is basically what I saw a user on vwvortex.com build for ~$200 and a bunch of hours of work for $300.
The kit includes a small unit that connects an iPhone dock to a Audi or VW radio, and the two appropriate wires specifically for my A3. An instruction booklet was also included for the unit and spec.dock provided me with tons of installation literature including car specific instructions with photos, they really make it idiot-proof and easy.
My first attempt to remove the Audi Symphony II Radio was a failure. Audi does not supply the owner of the vehicles the small metal tools needed to remove the radio. I called a local car stereo place in upstate NY (Toads Stereo in Cairo NY) whom I have dealt with in the past and were always real good, the guy there told me that they didn’t sell them, but you can order them online. He said they usually just fabricate them out of metal though instead.
I looked up the shape of the keys online and attempted to cut them out of sheet metal with tin snips. I was unsuccessful in my attempts and ended up ordering them(like $12 online? maybe less..) , but after seeing them and using them I realized how the release mechanism inside worked and had I positioned my fabricated ones better they would have worked fine.
My Stereo Before I Removed it
Stereo Removal Tools In Use
Stereo Out
Got the Stereo out!
Had to remove the trim around the shifter and the Ashtry.
Trim Around Shifter
Removed 2 T8 screws to remove trim behind ashtray.
Removing T8 Screws
Got the trim out
And then I stopped taking photos.
But I got the all the wiring run from the ashtray to the glovebox where I was leaving the unit and back to the stereo, but soemthing was wrong. The plugs that were in the images of the pdf that spec.docks had sent showed 3 colored plugs that could be connected to be one larger plug (Think Voltron) but instead I had one large black plug (Think Batman?) which clearly included my speaker wires, so that had to stay plugged in… spec.dock was closed so I left all the wiring in and put the car back together.
I called specdock to order the adapter plug i needed and the guy there told me that if I didn’t need to keep the function of my Satellite Radio that i didn’t need $50 plug and that he woudl just sent me the adapter wire for free, nice.
Two days later Voltron was plugged in and everything is working sweet. I also got a dock entender cable and a car mount for my phone incase i need the phone for navi, watch video, or use Dynolicious (sweet iPhone App).
I’ll get some photos and finalize this in a few days.
Qik Stream