Damnation: The Cynos Project

Left with idle thumbs regarding what to do next, and wishing for the devil not to make play of them, I thought it was time to turn the attention to the interior of the car, in preparation for stripping the wiring loom down. This primarily involved the rather tedious task of removing the dashboard - in essence only held in with 4 bolts, but made all the more "intensive" by the wiring loom being attached at hundreds of different points of the dashboard...




Anyway, after much perseverance, I was eventually met with its removal, not without a few scrapes and cuts; the the A/C controls proving particularly troublesome, as well as endless mountings for the wiring loom and switches and whatnot. In its removal, I found a mysterious little device attached at the passenger-side of the dashboard:



It looks like an amplifier of sorts, with four 3.5mm jacks in the side, it wasn't plugged into anything though, and the wiring was tied up. I then set to removing the damned firewall matting, which I attempted to remove the first time I attacked the sound deadening in the car, 3 years ago - this necessitated the removal of the whole blower/condensor/heater assembly from the bulkhead, which in short, was a particular female species of dog. Whilst there, I decided to strip out the internals of the condensor, and to my surprise, there was a lot of mass in it (as you'll find out below) to remove - score. Getting that out of the way, I turned my attention to removing the pedal assemblies in order to remove the aforementioned matting; lost an accelerator pedal bolt, in the process. Alas though, it was easy enough, and the matting was out.



Adding to the previously removed items from the engine bay, the final weight losses are as tallied below:
- Sound deadening strips; 178.1g
- ABS ECU; 381.7g
- Mysterious Amp device; 223.7g
- Condensor internals; 2022.8g

Combined with:
- Crash beam supports & hardware; 1920.0g
- Charcoal canister; 475.7g
- Front ABS Sensors; 384.2g
- Miscellaneous metal bracket at Radiator opening; 48.6g

That totals a grand weight saving of 5634.8g/5.6348kg - not exemplary by any means, but that's 5.6kg on menial no-effort objects, and doesn't include the Firewall heat/sound matting I removed as well, a good 6kg on its own, will confirm **turns out it was 2.8kg**, for a new total of 8.4348kg, or just under 1% reduction. Another plus, the nifty NST Adjustable camshaft pulley? A full 3.0g lighter than stock! I cannot wait to reap the benefits of that intense reduction in rotational intetia! [/nauseating sarcasm]. Combining the above reductions, with the stripping down of the wiring loom should hopefully make a worthwhile difference (numerically at least) to the mass of the car, as well as bringing some much needed order and re-organisation of the interior ambience. I am also tempted to cut-off the passenger side of the dashboard, but in a rare fit of sensitivity, I considered the effect this could have on any potential passengers...but in the end, its not their car, and they'll get more leg space.

The day before I also installed this - a purdy Moonface Magnetic Gearbox Drain bolt:


I also went and picked up this little item yesterday:


That's a master cylinder from an AE1x1 Levin, and is at least twice the size of the Starlet/Paseo unit! I should hopefully be installing that today, and re-assembling the brake pedal assembly with it. So with that, I have nothing much else to do currently, other than having the wiring loom stripped down, cleaning/painting the engine bay, perhaps indulge in some processes like lightening the flywheel, then its off to finishing the assembly on the engine, assembling it to the gearbox, and finally putting it in its rightful place in the car!

Oh the days go by..