Just back from a week staying at Forest Holidays’ Strathyre cabins in Scotland and I have to say the Elgrand was absolutely perfect for the trip.
With the rear two seats removed there was more than enough room for four of us and all our luggage (even enough room for three girls’ shoes and clothes!).
It pulled well and had no problems with the hills we encountered, either going up or coming down them.
Over the course of the whole journey it averaged 8.6 km/l, which is about 24mpg. Pretty good for how much weight it was hauling.
Parking was easy with the rear reversing camera.
So overall I’m really pleased with it and it was the perfect vehicle for the trip.
After going through the wiring diagrams in the JPNZ workshop manuals and also trawling through the Elgrand OC forum I found that the super woofer needs a power feed to the amp which drives it.
Luckily there’s a wire in the rear speaker connector which supplies it with power, so all it needs is connecting with the amp turn on wire coming form the Pumpkin head unit.
Some soldering, crimping and taping later the sub is working again, and it’s working fine with no strange noises like before it was re-foamed.
I found time to glue the new foam onto my super-woofer today. It was simple enough and I was very careful to get it lined up on the cone exactly.
Once the cone had dried for a couple of hours I painted the speaker chassis with glue where the foam would touch and delicately pushed the foam straight down on to it. I placed a piece of thin carrier bag over it and put a roll of masking tape on top, luckily it was exactly the same size as the foam. Added some weight and went off to wash the bus.
Later on I removed the tape and plastic and the foam was down lovely and flat. Here it is plugged in and installed again.
Hey, guess what?! Yep, not working. Not a peep out of it since installing it again. I know that the last time I tried it I still had the Japanese factory MD player in it. I’m not sure if anything is sending sound to the rear amp…hmm, do I need to connect the Pumpkin’s Amp turn on lead to a wire somewhere?
Most of the rest of the day was spent washing it (for the first time since I’ve had it). It’s come up ok so far but areas like the tail-gate are covered in tiny specks of what looks like rusty metal which is leaving orange stains behind. Needs more clay bar and polishing. Fitted new wiper blades too.
I set about the headlights with Peek metal polish and they’ve come up really well. Wax was applied to help them stay like this for a while.
In this photo only the middle light area has been polished:
And when the lights and grilles were done (see the garage’s ‘repair’ lol):
Later on I spent some time in the head-unit’s apps getting Google and the Play Store logged in, including installing my favourite app *cough* which I’m hoping will work well enough with the built-in GPS. Once I get ‘Bluetooth GPS’ app installed I want to try connecting my Garmin GLO high-accuracy GPS receiver and see how much faster than the built in receiver it is (my bet is around 10x faster). That’s if the Pumpkin allows setting ‘allow mock locations’..
More accurately, it’s finally on the road! Today has been one of such mixed emotions.
Hopefulness
This morning started, like every other day for weeks, with thoughts of ‘oh I hope the dealer gets the V5’. So I texted him just to see if he’d had an update from the DVLA.
Excitement
He apologised that he had, but he just hadn’t let me know. Finally! It wouldn’t be long before I would know the reg and could get plates made.
He sent me a scan of part of the V5 which should let me get the plates. I wasn’t 100% hopeful though as I know how much harder it is now to get plates made as you need the V5 and a driving license.
I’d tried to insure it on-line but due to being an import they needed to check a few things over the phone. They would call me back later.
Apprehension
After work I went to Halfords and thankfully the guys there agreed to make plates even though I had a copy of the V5 and not the real thing. They’re not supposed to make plates from copies of the V5. A massive relief though, and a big thanks to the guys there for their understanding.
...Relief
Later at home I taxed it for a year and had a call from the insurance company…20 minutes later it was insured! So with the new plates on and a bit of charge in the battery (I’d run it down by playing with it over the weekend) we were all set to take it out for it’s inaugural trip (to get some fuel)!
I love it, absolutely love it. It’s bigger than I’m used to (hey, I drive a Micra ffs) but I used to drive similar sized vans when I was younger so it’ll soon feel normal. It’s quiet, it’s comfortable, has great all round visibility and pulls like a train. Cornering is pretty good too. I actually can’t wait to go to work in it tomorrow.
