The Fast and Quite Chilled Actually

No Clayton, this is the only Copen I've had, the pictures from the advert were accurate. Any changes since were my doing, I replaced the boot with one that had a spoiler, replaced the wheels, exhaust and various other bits, this thread is just a list of what I've done so far.

 

Last of the aluminium button mods and the most difficult for me. All I had to do was get a neat 16mm hole in some 22mm aluminium buttons, how hard could it be?

...well...drilling was a pain, because the buttons are too small to grip safely, too flimsy to clamp. More or less the same problem with grinding. Finally I used an 8mm hole punch meant for leather to punch a central hole, by whacking it with a lump hammer, to make a hole so I could fit a proper screw-down 16mm sheet metal punch in there and cut a neater hole. Which I then ground the edges of down, and finally polished the front.

I'm sure a better tool selection would have helped, but hey, I managed it eventually.

Nice shiny emergency button surround.




And the Roof light, Air Con and slider knob covered. The slider knob is square and a 16mm hole would have left the edges barely on view, so that one I just drilled a small hole in. I also packed that one with double sided tape to secure it. The 3 round buttons are a very good fit, I put them on to see how they looked and had to prise them back off with a screwdriver. I glued them anyway just to make sure they stay in place, but you can probably just slide them into place.

 

Self-Assembly Stainless Steel Seatbelt Guides

Firstly, these do not fix the seatbelt retraction. At all. They are very shiny however and my spirit animal is a magpie.


Materials:-

From sea screw marine hardware:
2x Chainplate 8mm Holes 19mm x 205mm Long £5.56 each
Stylish Bridge for 45 to 50mm Webbing in 316 Stainless £5.20 each

Fastenings:-

4 x M6 x 16mm flange button head allen screws
4 x M4 x 16mm countersunk allen screw
4 x M4 heaxagon nuts
4 x M4 flat washer
4 x M6 flat washer




Bolt the webbing bridge to the chainplate with the seatbelt running through first, then bolt the chainplate to the seat's existing holes.

Easily done, seatbelts still don't work though. Ah well, cosmetic upgrade.

 

I thought I had an easy mod, it turned out a little more work than I expected but still fairly simple. I spotted a set of these aftermarket knobs on a Japanese Copen and the black ones matched my buttons perfectly. They're cheap and shipped from china, but the ones I got seem actually really good quality. The outside is anodized knurled aluminium filled with clear ABS, a polished ring and then a disc of black ABS glued or set into the clear top which lets the light shine out between the edge of the black ABS and the polished ring and through the cut-out notch 'pointer'.



Unfortunately, the only ones I could find that looked like the right fitting, turned out to point the dial in the opposite direction and the fitting was also slightly too short. After checking, I found out the guy in Japan had to do some work to fit them. Sigh. Out with the Dremmel again.

I took the old knobs off, they have a roughly cylindrical metal clip inside a plastic casing. I carefully prised that out using an otherwise useless random bit of metal on my leatherman (hoof tool? no idea) and the needlenose pliers. Then, I drilled (ground actually, because I had a grinding stone the right size and no drill bit unless I went out in the cold) the fitting of the new knobs out just wide enough to jam the metal clips in.




Since the plastic fitting was too short on the ones I bought (buy a version with a longer middle bit since it doesn't matter what the fitting shape is) I only drilled in partway so the metal clips stuck out and lengthened the fitting to the same length as the original.
THIS IS IMPORTANT - when you put the metal clip into the new knob, remember to line it up with the pointer on the dial face. The wider end of the fitting faces the pointer, look at your original dials to see what I mean.
I then stuck it in place with some unibond power epoxy, applied using a little stick instead of the supplied scraper because it's a lot easier. Dip the stick, twirl it in your fingers like you're gathering spaghetti on a fork and you have a neat little ball to dot on and spread.



There's plenty of room on the outside of the clip so no real need to keep it neat, just don't let any epoxy go inside the clip.




Probably took me about 15-20 minutes of actual working time all together although I faffed around a little experimenting and checking things so a couple hours spent, worth it though. They slid on fairly easily and seemed to fix firmly in place - I left the epoxy to dry for two hours before I fitted them and I'll leave them alone for 24, but they feel solid and look meant to be there in my eyes.







Now I need to wait until it gets dark so I can see how they look lit up!

 

At night -

 

They'd probably come out better, I am pretty cack-handed when it comes to lines and curves, artistic stuff. Those aluminium button surrounds are slightly off-round if you look closely and I used a spirit level to get the metal clasps stood up straight in the heater control knobs because doing stuff by eye always ends up a little wonky

If you're truly worse than me at DIY, which would be hard, you can actually buy them from Japan already 'made' by a guy over there - he's asking £34 buyout for the converted dials though, that's a rip off honestly, you can get the dials for £5 or less and it's not that much work to swap the metal clip over from the standard ones. Though I guess he has to buy standard ones to get the clips out of...there's also shipping and maybe vat, I don't think it's worth buying them personally but I'll link them anyway. Shop Yahoo Auctions and buy from Japan - ZenMarket.jp - Japan Shopping & Proxy Service

My advice if you're totally not comfortable with doing it yourself, buy the stuff and find a local handyman of some sort to do a better job than I did in a fraction of the time and for less money than the shipping from Japan

 

Package has arrived from Japan, goodies! It'll be a few weeks before I fit most since I need to do other stuff first, but the LED wind deflector is a couple of minutes work, so I popped that on this morning. Then spent the day twiddling my thumbs waiting for it to get dark so I could take a picture.