What is life without some DIY? I find stuff to DIY everywhere I look. Be it the cars, the home, or other痴 property! I致e been inspired to do so by living in England for a whole chunk of my life, where having a well-stocked garage full of tools and car detailing equipment is the norm.
I致e managed to find time to DIY in India as well, even in a super busy professional life as a urologist and laparoscopic surgeon.
To add to my garage, a Tiago petrol AMT was chosen last Diwali. This was to fill up the void left behind by the most favourite car of mine- a 2009 Jazz. It met its end with a write-off accident 2 years ago.
The Tiago, although the top variant, was lacking many creature comforts like an auto-dimming IRVM, armrest, parcel tray strings, parking sensors, ambient lights, ventilated seats, massage seats, and heated seats.
The DIYer in me was ready to rumble! This car inspired me to start recording and uploading to YouTube. Before this, I was writing up threads on TeamBHP exclusively but now I am going to do both.
This particular thread is going to focus on a compilation of brief summaries of possible mods and how to do them.
I will start with the most recent modification which is an auto-dimming IRVM from the 4th gen Honda City. A similar mod was done on my wife痴 Ciaz over a year ago and I had written a detailed thread on it:
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/diy-d...rs-6500-a.html (Upgraded to an auto-dimming rear view mirror for Rs. 838 | EDIT: Honda hikes price to Rs 6500)
This thread and two more previously took the internet by storm!
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/diy-d...uti-swift.html (DIY: Installing an Auto-Dimming IRVM and Digital Clock & Temperature Display in my Maruti Swift)
The unbelievable cost of Rs. 422 on Boodmo soon became a few thousand rupees due to overdemand.
https://boodmo.com/catalog/part-76400t4rj11-12566131/
I wanted the exact same mirror for my Tiago but no way in hell was I paying Rs. 7000 for it. Enter Vineet from Kar DIY. He managed to source this part for Rs. 2300 in Gurugram and I bought two. One was shipped to Ashton Castelino in Karnataka for his future plans on his parent痴 car. Do check out his YouTube channel and similar TeamBHP handle. He does much more, and professional work on cars!
Unfortunately, the installation wasn稚 a part swap like on the Ciaz, as the mounting bracket/button wasn稚 the same. I had to source one of those two and paste it onto the windscreen. Araldite worked well. It is holding up strong and mind you, the mirror isn稚 lightweight.
The Tata original accessory kit for an auto-dimming IRVM contains a mount adapter. This is near impossible to source separately in the aftermarket and hence I had to resort to a separate pasting of a mount button.
Vineet from Kar DIY has the adapter from his original kit from TATA. After some three-way discussion with Ashton and Vineet from Kar DIY we致e figured out a solution- to engineer it on our own. Either 3D printing or milling it from aluminium. This is a work in progress somewhere in Bengaluru and if it works, it will be produced in batches of 50-100! What a saver!
The rest of it was standard installation. Using a mini fuse tap for the positive piggyback in the fuse box and a wire thimble to the chassis bolt for the negative/neutral.
A mini-type fuse tap was again sourced from Nexdigitron, as did I for the micro type for the Ciaz. Unfortunately, you have to buy a pair.
https://www.nexdigitron.com/products...pr_seq=uniform
Please go through these self-explanatory photos for more clarity. Also, this YouTube upload is on the same.