Another Newbie in Kent

A

Addick

Just acquired a 2004 1.5 SE 5 door and wanna say hello
First area for me to address will be the lousy front door speakers - will my smart and punchy 17cm Kenwoods fit in the standard door fittings and does the door trim come off/on easily enough? How deep is the standard hole?
Next is the gearknob & gaiter - my gaiter is tatty and chafed, how straightforward or otherwise is access/removal/replacement. I've also got a ripspeed carbon fibre knob which might go on in place of the standard one if that's easy enough to remove - is it just on a thread that can be unscrewed or is it gonna be worse than that?
Last (for now) will be jettison the ghastly orange side repeaters - lengthy research has turned up just about no options - what have any of you used to replace the standard blemishes - I don't wanna get involved in risking dinging the wing getting it off or ending up with something stuck to the body I can't then get off when the bulb blows. Anybody using LED's in their sideflashers and which would you recommend/disregard as duff.
 
Welcome along.

Gear knob will either just screw off or you will have to cut it apart then use heat and some sort of strap wrench (if you are lucky mole-grips might be enough) on it to break the glue between the inner brass ring and the stick. Anything between easy and a royal pain in the arse that will take four years off your life.

Once knob is off gaitor base should unclip and you can pull the whole thing up and off the stick. Remove gaitor from base, attach new one and put everything back together.

Did this today on my N15 to remove a carbon knob (not a fan of unneccessary carbon) but because it was aftermarket it just unscrewed easily.

Getting sidelights off is easy, slide them firmly but gently backwards and they release and pull out.

Any universal stick-on sidelights will do in a pinch, just cut and splice the wires. You could search eBay or scrappys for genuine ones but you might find connectors don't match those on your car (my two phase 1 N16s had different ones) you'd need the car-side connectors to replace the current ones.

LED bulbs are less likely to blow than incandescent bulbs but are polarised, you have to fit them the right way round so test before final install.
 
The guys here advised me that the gear knob on some models is both glued and screwed.
I seem to have been one of the lucky ones with mine as it simply screws off albeit a little stiffly.

I ordered a new leather gator myself for my 2003 there the other day.
I hasn't arrived yet, but once it does and I fit it, I'll post here how it went.
I do have the Mechanic's workshop manual for the N16 and apparently to remove the plastic housing around
the gearstick and gator, there is a small tab indentation sort-of at the front of the gator lip. If you think of it as the closest part of the gator to the Hand brake. That little tab indentation is for a flat-head screwdriver to slip in and lever the gator-surround out.
The manual illustrates this and also shows the use of a cloth around the tip of the screwdriver to avoid causing any damage / scrapes. As I said, I haven't done this yet, but if you wanna wait 'til I have done it myself, I'll post how I got on here.
 
When I removed mine to sort out the stereo I just pulled the back of it just before the handbrake and it pulled out, then all you have to do is disconnect the cigarette lighter if it's the part I'm thinking of.
 
The thing you do with a screwdriver is to remove a cover to get to a bolt for the housing around the gearstick and handbrake.
No need for that just to get the gaitor off IIRC. The base of the gaitor should just clip into that housing.

Edit: sorry misread your post. You could be right.
 
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