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The next items to come under scrutiny was a couple of simple cosmetic issues.
The cigarette lighter (these days sometimes called an accessory socket) was
not functioning. Inspection of the fuses showed that one had blown.
Unfortunately, the labels were all in Japanese. After scouring the Internet,
I managed to locate a translation.
This confirmed that this fuse was indeed the socket. Unfortunately, the fuse
blew immediately upon replacement. Starting at the socket end, I disassembled
the console to discover a white wire attached that did not look stock. Tracing
it back under the dash led me to discover that it lead back to an after-market
Turbo Timer tucked away under the dash! I was not told of the existance of this
by the previous owner. I wonder if he knew it was there? Unfortunately, it does
not seem to work, damn. Thinking that as the Turbo Timer didn't work, it was
a possibility that it could be the problem. I removed the Turbo Timer
completely, making a further discovery that it was connected via a commercial
harness, rather than being hard-wired (hmmm, keep that for later...). While
still in pieces, I again replaced the fuse. This time the fuse didn't
immediately blow. Ah hah! I found the problem. Wrong! After reassembly, the
fuse again blew. This had me scratching my head for a while. I re-checked all
the wiring and made sure that the socket wasn't shorting out on something
when re-assembled, but nothing was obvious. Eventually, I realised that one
thing I did do after reassembly was plug the lighter back in. Yep, you guessed
it, the lighter wasn't an original unit and was poorly designed, shorting
out the positve and negative contacts in the socket. The solution (as I don't
smoke) was to simply throw away the lighter. Now my hands free phone kit works
fine.
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The second cosmetic item was to cover the two holes left in the parcel tray
when the previous owner took out the speakers that were mounted there. I
thought the best solution was to buy a couple of flush mount speaker grills
that are used for mounting speaker in ceilings. I had seen these listed in
electronics catalogues, but none of the stores local to me had them. While
picking up some replacement fan belts for the car, I decided to drop in to
the Car Hi Fi installers in the next shop on the off chance that they might
have something suitable. I was in luck, they had some Pioneer grills that
were in their bin that would foot the bill perfectly and I could have them
gratis. Perfect!
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