Interior:
I found a place in Taman Mayang that does only interior work on cars. The minute i stepped into this place, the only cars i see are all classics! Old triumphs, VW Beetles etc. So since i got some time where i didn't need my car for the running around i usually do, I dropped it off at the interior shop and got the insides all done up! Roof lining, back seats, dashboard, steering wheel. The whole car, in and out is just black and yellow. I didn't realised i only had 2 colours i could use until the interior guy pointed it out... His pricing are as follows:
-Steering wheel refurbish: RM250
-Dashboard refurbish: RM800
-Roof lining ( taking off the old Proton PVC and replacing it with a black cloth ): RM600
-Changing the colours of the back seats from orange to yellow and black: RM500
On top of that, I managed to find real original OMP 4 point road harnesses from the OMP dealer at Johor. He comes down to KL frequently so i got it from him for RM750 if i'm not mistaken. As usual, getting customs to clear them were a big hassle...
My dad also brought back an aluminium number plate for my car, where the alphabets were not pasted on the metal but molded. It was a thin piece of aluminium so we had to go to the accessory shop to get the regular plastic plate glued to the back of the aluminium plate and then only managed to stick it on the car.
Total FOR INTERIOR ONLY: RM2900.
Now the juicy bit!
The exhaust manifold that i got with the engine, from the half cut shop was crap. So i was recommended to go to this exhaust shop in Segambut, Pakar Exhaust FIMA :) Very small place, one man show but this guy knows what he's doing! I got a used Japanese Manifold from him, FGK 4-2-1 for RM600. Less that 2hrs it was fixed on the car already, with no issues.
For some reason, I found out that I had fake NGK spark plugs that i've been running on since i first started the 4A-GE, and it was causing some misfiring issues. So i decided to invest in some Denso Iridiums, the same one that the Toyota Alphard uses. There is a higher performance iridium plug that Denso has, but I got this because the workshop was carrying this plug, and i know it won't be a fake since it has Toyota branding all over the box, i hope. But so far so good! :) So 4 new Iridium SK20R11 plugs cost me RM220.
The spark plug wire also has been giving me some problems, one of the wires' core had melted so at that time the workshop was trying to fix my misfiring problem and a quick fix for that one spark plug wire that was causing the misfiring issue is to replace it with a used but still functioning wire. I was doing a bit of research on the spark plug wires, it seems to have no benefit in performance but there is a benefit in spark delivery. My idling has improved with new spark plug wires and with the new iridium plugs. I went to Mun Lee, one of the biggest half cut shops in PJ, and they only had Ultra spark plug wires for the 4A-GE, and they are charging RM400 for 4 wires, not 5 with a trade in of your old wires. To me that was a rip off! SO i went online to check for wires, which brand suited the 4A-GE best. Then it hit me! The 4A-GE was a race engine that Toyota used last time, along with the 3S-GTE in the future. So TRD should have developed a spark plug wire for the 4A-GE and true enough, I found the parts catalogue and there was a spark plug wire set ( 5 wires) for the 4A-GE. Now the question was where do I buy them? I found a sit in the US that sells the TRD Yazaki spark plug wires, it costs USD$120 with shipping to US address. So i bought the wires and my grandma was coming back to KL the day the wires were delivered to her house so I managed to get them and installed on the car already! OH YEAH!One shot, did it all! :) My next aim will be getting a new ECU for the 4A-GE! With all the upgrades in performance, there is a slight increase in power but not alot. Hopefully if i change the ECU it will help. Camshafts from the half cut shops, difficult to find for the standard engine, the standard intake and exhaust camshaft should be 240, with standard pistons and con rods, the biggest exhaust and intake camshaft to use would be 256. Any larger than that, it will be difficult to run the engine on the road.
