Mavurik

This summer I've taken the time to work on my protege. I'm leaving for Japan and the car will be going to my younger brother, so I figure I might as well have fun with it and fix it up and in the end my brother gets a nicer car. Whew, this is a piece of work. The interior looks like crap, the window tint is all bad, the exterior paint is chipping on the top, there's a dent on the front right corner from when I hit a car. However, I know I can transform this car to kick *** in no time. So far the focus is on interior. I have pictures of the whole process, before and after, so you guys can see it later. Basically I'm transforming my interior from light grey (or whatever those colors are) to black and silver. I'm putting in new carpeting, painting everything possible and dyeing where needed. I think the for the seats I'm just going to replace the fabric with new fabric. I'll have a full list of the things I did later. For now I have a few questions:

- Is it true that MX-3 door panels fit the protege door panels exactly? If so, could I still get things like power locks and power windows?

- I've searched around and haven't found anything. Is there a tutorial around here for installing power locks and power windows? How difficult is it? Should I even bother?

- If I took the fabric off of the seats and replaced it with new fabric what is a good way of attaching that new fabric?

- My right corner light doesn't stay lit when the car is on, however it works fine when I turn on the blinker. The other light is on at all times while the headlights are on and when blinking. What's wrong with my right corner light? I think it could be because I have damage on that corner but then again it makes me wonder why it would only work when the blinker is on.

Those are all of my questions for now. I'll reply later with images of what's going on and more feedback. The results are going to be amazing.

Mavurik

bump... nobody wants to help?

torpedan

thinking of the door size diffrences just doenst seem to fit for that idea..

UCSBgeek

The doors on a 2 door (MX-3) are usually longer. Why not just take stuff from a protege LX with power locks & windows?

Your side bulb is probably just burned out. There are 2 filaments on it, a dim one for the "parking lamps" and a bright one for the turn signal. The dim one is probably just fried. Easiest test: replace the bulb. If it still doesn't work, call the doc in the morning (j/k, post back if it doesn't)

devl323

Sounds like you might have wiring problems there as well

UCSBgeek

I doubt it. Read my reply above

devl323

Thats what i was referring to...... the way it sounded to me is that the left corner light is on at all times and not responding to the indicator while the right one was only responding to the indicator.... thats why i thought wiring.
Could be that both bulbs need replacing

UCSBgeek

Oh... well the wording is a bit ambiguous... my interpretation was that one corner worked normally, and the other one only lit up for the turn signal. We'll have to wait for Mavurik to respond to find out

demoninvictus

search search and search again, heres what i'm thinking, search for a junkyard in your area...search for about 10 or 12 within 25 miles of you and call each one up and ask if they have a 90-94 protege LX.. if you luck out, you can find one with a black interior...that will give you the carpet, the seats, and the dash paneling you might need, might make your steps a little easier. my best suggestion is if you do find an LX with a black interior, just unbolt the doors and slap them on your car, swap the dash, console and seats, and then give the car a nice paint job and you're fine.
peace

devl323

Hey and if the motor is OK with less than 100K miles and its a stick LX, lemme know.... need that BP and tranny

Mavurik

Well, me and my friend have been working on the Protegé for a couple of days, basically all day long. Today we went to a junk yard and looked for some parts but we ended up paying $20 for stuff that didn't fit. Plus, there was only one protege (a protege GT shockingly) and it was stripped almost bare. All the other cars had all the good parts missing. The good thing is, I got a corner bulb that works so now the problem I had earlier is gone. It was because of the type of bulb. I still need to get new headlight bulbs though. Can anybody recommend some good headlight bulbs? I want them to be as bright as possible but street legal.

Part 1: We took out all of the seats, and misc interior parts so that we could remove the carpet. Spent time cleaning the gunk that was under the seats, wiping down metal, etc. The trunk (no carpet) had oil sitting down there for a long time from some spill so there was a lot of oil to get out. We took care of that with some degreaser. The only problem is, that circular hump that sticks up in the middle of the tire seems to have a layer of oil about 1/4 an inch thick on it. Everything around it is perfectly shiny but that part. I STILL don't know how I'll fix that. I'll probably just try to scrape it off somehow because that seemed to be the only thing that was working. I'll post a picture up soon. The console was already removed (I was sanding it) and then by the end of the day we put the seats back in but left all the misc interior parts out (for painting). It feels weird driving with no carpet.

Part 2: Our original plan was to buy a huge roll of carpet from pepboys and cut it to install the carpet but it didn't look like it was high quality and had a weird texture to it. I'm just going to order a molded carpet later and then buy extra carpet and cut it to fit the trunk area (once I clean that hard oil). The next thing we did was buy some black vinyl paint and some trim paint. We sprayed some interior parts with it, minor things like the covers that go over the bolts that hold the seats in. I'll have pics up later. We also went to the junk yard today. I'll never go back to that place. It was called Pick and Pull. They hella ripped us off. Charged us $10 for an old dirty shift ****. The only cool thing was it was a shift **** but with metal attached underneath it so it seemed like when I put it in my car it would be kind of like a 7 inch extension and much easier to shift gears with. I plan to have a black/silver theme going on the inside. I'm going to paint the vinyl dash part black, paint the black strip thing with the air vents silver, and paint the console silver as well. I'm not going to paint the air vents silver though because I want them to stay black. Basically by the end of this the entire interior will be black and silver. I planned to put new fabric on the seats and make the middle of the seats silver and the edges black. Everything will look REALLY nice once this is finished. I can't wait to see the finished result with the black/silver theme and new carpet. AAAA!!! This is going to be such a transformation. It's really hard to explain all of this so I'm kind of relying on pictures. I'll post them as soon as I get them up.

Mavurik

Part 1 pictures can be found here .

Loundarp

if you want a black carpet try to find a mx3 with a black carpet, it fit perfectly in the 90-94 protege and 91-96 escort.

Mavurik

I've decided to keep the same doors. After going to that junk yard and finding one completely stripped protege, I doubt that I'll find anything I'll need. I've decided to keep the car stock. I'm getting excited looking at the parts I'm spray painting. They all look so new and perfect. I haven't even sprayed a clear coat on or anything. I can't wait to post pics of the interior once it's finished. What do you guys think of the pics so far? It's going to be quite a transformation.

devl323

Just FYI in case you weren't sure.... re: the pics titled "seatbelt WTF" 1 & 2, those are the seperate front seat lap belts (that people rarely use) since the 1st gen proteges had the automatic main belts..... on the front seats (the sides facing the doors) you'll find plastic loops (usually broken ) that those belts would feed through for ease of use....