Thread: 2003 Corolla S Install (lotta pics)

thanx for the comments guys~! I was actually thinking about getting one of those black magnetically mounted antennas, and putting it on the outsite... anyone had any good experiences with those?

oh, and yea I was thinking about building one for the other side... although CapitaineFritz is doing one via fiberglassing... I think I'll wait to see how his project turns out, and try it that way... rather than start with plywood/mdf

bulgogi777

Great work, I can see that you put a lot of time and effort. Nice to see another Corolla, better to say, more Corolla owners with this idea. When I joined this site and search for corolla...the results were 0...

However, I currently live in Ecuador (South America) and my Corolla is from Venezuela, few things are different. I am about 95% done with my project, I will be posting all my project this weekend.

Once again, great install...congratulations, I like your project a lot. I just love the way you put the screen, it looks very nice

By the way, was it difficult to replace the dash light with the blue leds?

Is that keyboard wireless or wired?

How is Centrafuse? Is that the only front end you use? I am currently using MediaCar, however I am planning to test some new ones that came out so let me know about centrafuse.

And last, great install!

Hey Brutal, thanx for the comments~! Yea, there's only a few of us corolla guys here on this board... but it seems to be growing

The dash lights are a bit of a pain to switch out. I bought some blue leds that have a forward voltage of 3.2 ~ 3.8, which is typical of leds that you can buy. So you have to put a resistor in line, so that it can operate off of the 12v accessory line. If you look at the bulb holders for the lights, you can see that they're held in via a small wire that wraps around and contacts the holder to get the voltage. So I just used a very small gauge wire to emulate the wrap around and soldered the led and resistor to the wire. The only thing is that since the leds are directional, it's kinda hard to get an even light across... but it's decent. Now, the really hard part was behind the A/C controls. There is basically two bulb sockets for that part, and I lost one so I could only use 3 leds behind that part. I actually taped foil all in that white A/C control holder to reflect the light around better... but it's a little uneven... it doesn't look too bad though, I actually think it's decent. (but you should probably use 6 leds with both sockets if you do it) It's 3 leds per socket each in series and a smaller resistor than the single led scenario... phew! long winded answer, but I think you get the idea. Meticulous pain

The keyboard is a part of the gyration wireless combo (mouse/keyboard), and that blue box thing near my wifi antenna is the receiver. It fits perfectly into the glove box. The reason it stays up like that is because there are these tabs that stick out the top of the keyboard... and I just cut two slots in the back of the glove box, so it sits in there nice and tidy

As far as the frontend, I originally used frodoplayer, but switched because I liked the integration that centrafuse has a little better. It might be a toss up between the two new versions though... I'll probably use whichever one comes out first - v1.3 or take 4.

Anyways, hope that helps, we corollans got to stick together, lol

SickVette, There is a 50A fuse for the main power line is in the engine compartment... you can see it in the pic where I point out my isolator. I know it should probably be as close to the battery as possible, but I'd already wired that 4 gauge from my first install attempt in a different configuration. So I just left it up there... That wire basically goes to the distribution box which has 3, 4G inputs and 2 fused 8G outputs. The fused outputs are my amp and computer. I use 2 of the inputs as a "connector" for my battery cable (the one from the engine compartment to my optima).

beautiful