First things first, welcome the new garage mate: Oliver! Soon to be 3 month old Blue Merle Australian Shepard.




Back to the basics: fresh oil



Next project was to run the wiring for my paddles, the electrical pins are in the mail so I figured it would be good to get the wiring done. I started by removing the wheel so confirm the M-sport paddles are configured like other M-sport paddles with resistors ...and they are. M-sport owners on other chassis remove the resistors to create a simple switch, others add additional resistors but in the spirit of KISS, I will explore a coding option I read about which will allow communication, if now then I have the other more permanent options to explore.




After some poking around I decided to run the wiring in this manner from the SZL; through the fire wall just above the dead pedal, from just under the brake booster out another grommet to the driver wheel well, up and over the transmission, and back to the electrical connector. There might have been a more direct way but this was fairly easy to access and the wiring is away from all the hot items on the passenger side.


Grommet above the dead pedal


View of the grommet below the brake booster


Thread the needle


In this pic you can see the wire ran behond the wheel liner. Wiring is tucked away as I wait for the pins to arrive.


Next project was aligning the rear tailgate which was pulled over to the passenger side. Using NewTIS I found the instructions for aligning the gate and played around with the loosing the bolts which connect the hinge to the body and the gate, it was a pain and didn't really work. To access these bolts you had to remove the spoiler.


Here is before



It isn't perfect but the most beneficial adjustment came from correcting the latch catch. If you lowered the tailgate down manually to where it was almost shut you could see it was pretty straight but then got all crooked when latched, DOH! I should have paid closer attention, removing the spoiler and playing with the main hinge wasn't necessary SMH. I also noticed the passenger side "bottom-out pad"? was about 5 millimeters higher so I brought that down to level. Maybe it was raised earlier to eliminate tailgate rattle? We shall see.


Here is after, not perfect but much better



Added some fresh felt tape to the latch catch.


Last project was fabbing up a PCV delete plate which will eventually house a bulkhead fitting and allow me to run an oil catch can. Just as others have done I used 1/3" aluminum hacked it up with an angle grinder and a Dremel. Considering my lack of metal fabrication experience and relatively primitive tools I am happy with the outcome. I bought a small vented Mishimoto "style" OCC but I know the Provent is the go-to for the M57 with a few internal mods. TBH the Provent is huge and looks like hell so I will see if I can get satisfactory results for another style OCC, if not then I will revert to the Provent and it's unsightly "do they really need to be this large of a diameter" hoses.







Good enough!


Keep it clean!