What did you do to your Sky today?

Painted my front calipers.

Upgraded the brakes! Definitely worth every penny!

Bought it a new garage companion

Nothing today, took my CEN (Certified Emergency Nurse) exam today and passed. Something I've wanted to take for a number of years now but was put off by the difficulty, a lot of people I know who took it failed. But tomorrow...

JohnnyG said:

On the downside, when I got back into the garage, I noticed that the speedometer backlight was flickering - one of the LEDs I installed acting up! Grrrr.... Luckily, dash is still half apart so not too much work to extract but now I have to recalibrate the dials putting it back it. Pain!!

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I'm almost done doing the 6500k white light LED conversion that rjgramps has a thread on. Only thing I didn't do was the gauge cluster. I took it apart and then realized that the back of it was yellow, not just because of the bulbs behind it. So last night I was finally able to take it for a drive to check the placement of the dials. Matched up pretty good, but really don't want to do that again. I feel bad for you.
I did find that having HPTuners was helpful to make sure they were spot on though.

JuGo said:

Upgraded the brakes! Definitely worth every penny!

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Looks good!
I will be doing the same thing tomorrow. Pads, rotors, new powder coated calipers, can't wait. Figured while the car is up I might as well also put on my sway bars, end links, and adjustable coilovers. Well, maybe in the next couple days. Also have fuel injectors and a turbo to put on. That's not even counting replacing the rest of the dash. My car is going to be all torn up tomorrow.

JuGo said:

Oh wow! That’s cool! I’ve been thinking about the turbo for a few months now. What brand are you installing? Is it a whole turbo kit or did you buy all Parts separately. I do have Coilovers already and I was looking the DDM Works sway bars! Let me know how difficult the turbo install and sway bars were?

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I have a Redline, so I was just replacing the turbo with the RPM upgraded turbo. I looked at a couple of the other options, but most said they were not compatible with the Sky. I asked ZZP on their discord about the other turbos, and even with the fitment issues I may end up going that route in the future, but wanted something more bolt on to start.

I put the sway bars on today. The front were really easy. You just lift the car, remove the end links and a couple bolts on each side and it just drops out. Install is just as easy (although I haven't put the end links on yet).

The rear is a real pain. So I removed all of the bolts holding it in place, but I wasn't able to remove it, the exhaust was in the way. So I removed the Solo exhaust hangers and let it sit on a bucket and tried again without any luck. I ended up also disconnecting the tie rod end and that gave me enough room to get the old sway bar out and the new one back in again.

I still have to put in the adjustable end links in. The old boots are a little torn up looking, not horrible, but I'm happy I'm replacing them. I have to figure something out so I can install them with no tension on the bar, but with the tires on the ground, but in a way that I'm able to still reach the bolts...

JohnnyG said:

Yeah, I put a picture of the stock backside of the gauge face on the RedLine a few weeks ago. It is screen printed right onto the back. Knowing I could buy a new "clear" face from BlackCatCustoms if needed, I took Goof Off to it and it does dissolve it, but its not fun. Makes quite a mess as all the black is screened on too. But got it done and the results are great! I used white LEDs and added blue colour "gel" filters to get the colour I wanted consistently across all the various bulbs in the car.

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Do you happen to have any pictures of the what the back looked like and how you did that? I want to do pretty much the same thing you did but in white. I was afraid that doing anything on the back side would make it look awful, but yours turned out great.

I replaced the rest of the LEDs everywhere else already, the dash are the only ones left.

Over the past three weeks I've been busy with the car, inside and out. In addition to the parts mentioned above, I also installed new pads, rotors, calipers, and brake lines. The brake lines ended up leaking in the rear, so I put the stock ones back on.



Picked up some new calipers from summit that were already powder coated. Spoke to a couple places around me that offered powder coating, but the cost for the new ones weren't too much more, well, not counting shipping and the core charge.



It's weird because the leak seems to be coming from under the rubber boot. If it was the bleed screw or the banjo bolt than it could be blamed on me. Both of the banjo bolts for the fronts ended up snapping off while being torqued down, so I had to get new ones. Luckily the rears did not snap, because the one's from Advance Auto and Autozone that said were direct fits, were about a 5mm too long.

In addition to the brakes, sway bars, and LEDs, I also removed the interior to add in a little sound deadening material.



Most of the dash is still out, but I have the carpet, waterfall, drivers seat, radio, and HVAC controls in and working. When I first installed the controls, I had them about 180degrees off. I had the AC on full and it was heat, so I turned the dial to hot and had some cold chilled air come out. Whoops!

I picked up an HHR mirror also and installed my garage door opener into it. I ran a power wire for the autodimmer while most of the dash was out, but I still need to wire it to the mirror itself and the power source.

I also did an oil change and replaced both belts. They looked like they were in decent shape once they were out, but had no idea if they were ever done, so figured might as well while the car was up.

I'm planning on getting the rest of the interior back in this week,hopefully with no spare screws. Then I have some adjustable coilovers I was going to install while the car was up, but my appointment with Detroit Tuned is not until mid June. They are going to corner balance and an alighment, so I'm looking forward to that. They specialize in Minis, but are able to do other cars as well. The company that made my adjustable end links used to be about a half hour away from me, and the owner recommended them. Don't know if I would have found them otherwise. But because that is a month away and I have an autocross event on the 28th, I don't want to mess with my alignment any more than I already have lol. So those will have to wait until at least the 30th.

Lettering the tires.

NGalaxyTimmyo said:

Do you happen to have any pictures of the what the back looked like and how you did that?

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As you know, stock looks as below. I used a commonly available product called "Goof Off" and a bunch of shop towels to dissolve the screening on the back. Just put a few drops of Goof Off on the towel and wipe. If you do try this, stay as close as you can to the white and yellow sections. You will get some black smeared across for sure but just wipe it carefully. Honestly, I think you can safely strip the entire backside - black included - without ill effect, but I didn't want to get the Good Off on the front side in case it started dissolving that too. I did some very careful testing of the front and it was inconclusive, although it definitely doesn't come off as easily as the backside. The result will be white which is just what you're looking for.


I don't have any pics of it stripped, but here's one with the colour filters applied. As you can see, the backside is not pristine, but none of that shows on the front. The result was better than I expected, really. Looks original! I ended up cutting out the DIC window and adding a blue filter to that too. Was nerve-racking but I managed not to screw it up

NGalaxyTimmyo said:

hopefully with no spare screws

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I ended up with ONE! Bugs me

Thank you JohnnyG, I ended up trying the same thing and it worked great.



I used a bit of masking tape and a sharp blade to cut it out. The good off worked really well for the white, but wasn't doing too much for the yellow. I ended up using some acetone and it was gone in minutes.



The gas gauge has some imperfections so far, I think I used too much pressure with the acetone. I'm wondering if some very fine sanding would help with the rest. It doesn't look like it's noticeable when I hold it up to light though.



I still have to replace the LEDs in the gauge housing and then I want to do something about the orange gel, I have some light gray to replace it.

JohnnyG said:

Sweet! I had some concerns too about the way my face looked on the back but none of that has shown on the business side of it. The gauge cluster looks brand new. For the panel LED, I used the same 1/4 turn bulbs I used for the HVAC controls - just removed them from the plastic carrier. They are 12V so perfect for the gauges.

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I replaced the bulbs last night with the same 6500k white LEDs I put everywhere else, wasn't too bad.
With the acetone I used it ended up melting the plastic a bit so it was uneven, you can see in the back photos above, especially on the gas gauge. This was noticable on the other side too, so I ended up taking 400 grit sandpaper and evening it out a little bit, looks much better.



Also cut out the DIC orange, which was a whole lot harder than I thought it would be. I used the light gray gel to replace it, as seen above, but I kept getting some waves in it. After about 4 attempts to get it perfectly straight, I ended up using some really thin plastic sheets that I use for thermalforming to act as a backing for it. It helped a lot and I'm happy with the way it looks, well, at least in my garage.




Now I just have to figure out where my gas needle and the dash will be ready to go back together.