Meeting My Music Needs in the Tek

Today i ordered a Harman Kardon Drive + Play accessory for my car.




I hear it is the best iPod accessory out there and it is also very much safer than a normal iPod. It comes with a little screen you can mount up by your windshield so that you dont have to look down to change the song, very convenient. It was like $200-300 when it came out but on amazon it is only $40! What a deal huh! I am going to wire it directly into the car and so the quality will be a lot better than just a FM transmitter..

i HATE fm transmitters. Its ridicilous- we can put a man on the moon but we cant make a decent FM transmitter. I much prefer just a cassette adaptor to a transmitter. They are ancient of days but still work like a charm. Thats one of the things i wished my tek had: a cassette player. Or at least a CD player that played MP3 cd's rather than the 18 track normal audio CD's. I can stand them for a while but they are starting to drive me crazy... so limiting! (and im sooo spoiled by the iPod/all 30 gigs of library in my palm). So this drive + play thing should be sweet! Unfortunately it will the screen is in blue but i have been in contact with a current owner and tekker (of the AFC) and he says it should be easy to mod that color to red. However the clicker wheel thing is a different story. But i suppose that will be lower down and so i wont worry that much about it. Well im off to a missions trip for awhile- when i get back: time to look for a pro tinter for the windows and installation of the drive = play!!

Continuation of Interior Lighting Mods

After going to the twinkees game today I got back and decided to work on ze' batmobile... So I grabbed a trusty needle nose pliers and went to work. I was losing daylight and so I just replaced the mirror lights with red. Now the most of the interior lighting is red, just missing the back dome lights (the store did not have any).. I also grabbed my camera and took some photos:

left side:


right side:


mirror/map lights:


all of the interior

Second Mod- Interior Lighting

So my second mod.. After numerous postings and "i do what?" threads posted on AFC I found out what light bulbs to buy in order to transform the interior into a more Gotham City atmosphere... I went to Advance Auto Parts today (open on the fourth i know?!) and bought a 2 packs of #914 bulbs (2 in each pack). I went to work this afternoon and replaced the the foot wells under the dash in front. It looks wicked! I tried to remove the lights in the rearview mirror but it didnt work very well. Also they did not have any bulbs in red to replace the dome light in back =(.. I also took apart the center console and replaced the shifter bulb which had burned out.. It looks great, oh and happy fourth!

First Mod - Changing the symbol

Thus begins my modding.. Today I had a great epiphany.... There are loads of people who modify cars and their 'teks and so in the words' of Bono, I will follow.. My idea is mod my tek is... drum roll......





Batman's Batmobile...

I used to play with Batman action figures as a kid, I had tons and I even had massive batcave. So the interior lighting is already red (well just the gauges) and with the outside being black, it has the beginnings of the esteemed Batmobile. I also did my first modding to it; I covered the red pontiac emblems with electrical tape- making it black. The difference is monumental and I cant get over how wicked it looks!

before:



after:



It is not perfect but you cant tell at all until like 2 feet away..

It is the first of my modding towards making it the Batmobile. The other few mods I have done have just been done to 'accessorize' it.. I added a mega-mirror (gives wide angle perspective to rear view mirror), bought a sun shade, bought a comfy steering wheel cover and an air freshener...

My list of future mods:

Tint the front windows
replace steering wheel horn cover with bat symbol
seat covers (potentially one with bat symbol, other black)
put bat symbols in the fog lights
darken turn signals in front
darken tail lights
black rims
bigger tires
buy the pontiac HUD
get a chrome or black fuel cover
and maybe get it lowered and body kit

most of this is funds pending..

Photoshoot

Today I did my first photoshot of a car. I like photography and my tek and so i combined them into a few hours of fun. I did a little HDR (which turned out great) and its now my wallpaper on my computer. Other than that the shots were not amazing, but black is hard to photograph. Oh and I forgot to mention that I washed it and waxed before. Note to self: Always use Nu Finish when waxing a car. I was scared because I heard that black does not wax well. Well the Nu Finish worked like a car, I would totally recommend it all!





check out some of my shots...






HDR:

First Wash

Today the tek was washed. We were doing a carwash at church to raise money for our mission trip to Arkansas this summer and so everything was in hand for a good ole wash. I did it after we were all done, and only I was allowed to gently give it a good scrub-down...

The Buy

First Entry: So I drove over to New Ulm to look at a Black 2002 Aztek. It was priced at $7000 but we were looking to haggle them down. It looked in really good condition and was just the base model (although 'base model' in tek-speak means loaded with nifty extras others dream about, ie a cooler that is in the center console and you can remove!). I thought about buying a rally, but they are just not worth the extra cha ching right now and I want to get a fully loaded tek when i am older...
So anyways we drove up (after hours of research and staying up late in the library) and after much debate, bought the car. They were real sticklers but we got them to drop the price down to $6200. We even had to speak to the manager guy, who reminded me of John Candy. So I wrote the check and drove it home! (check out the photos I took at a Subway lunch stop with my cell phone... oooo such great quality) It feels great to fully fund such a wicked car by myself. I am going to take great car of her, weekly washes and such.. In fact when I got home I spent about 2 hours detailing the inside of her with a wet rag and dusting her off..
24 hours of owing an Aztek = Totally diggin' it!!