Newbie rebuilding a Xenon Blue '05

[Rob]

My baby is DONE...and I am LOVING her!

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[oyealiz]

My baby is DONE...and I am LOVING her!

Very pretty!

 

[graytoad]

Even though you joined recently: based on all your posts etc I feel like I am way late on saying hello. Looks like you have a neat project on the go. I started by looking at your most recent post with all the pictures and realized what you are up to. Glad to see a bashed up XLR being resurrected!

When I decided to buy an XLR I decided to get a newer one as I figured it would be easier to find a cream puff. Then when I discovered the '09 and compared what made a '09 different I decided I 'needed' an '09.....just so I could have a slightly different one. Henry Ford said you could buy a Ford in and colour you wanted as long as it was black. I feel somewhat the same about red: cars come on many colours but I gotta have red. After hanging around with this crowd and seeing the other colours in a group setting, Xenon blue is amazing too (my second favourite)......but then again its hard to not love a shining black......and you gotta love a spotless white! (or maybe that is my second favourite?!?) Face it: the XLR looks great in all the colours!

Anyway, welcome and congratulations on the transformation of your XLR!

BTW: you got to excuse my spelling - I am Canadian....colour vs color

 

[AL_Jazz]

Thank you! I feel welcomed already and am happy to contribute. I am enjoying this vehicle more than I have enjoyed any vehicle in quite some time. Still can't wipe the grin off my face and it's been a couple weeks...

 

[AL_Jazz]

Last week I purchased a set of Loyds Mats custom embroidered floor mats off ebay to replace the worn factory originals. The brown santa brought them today and I installed them this evening. Wow, what a difference. They fit perfect, the Shale color match is spot on, and the embroidery looks good. I almost want to keep the originals in for daily wearing and keep these for special occasions I will shoot some pics tomorrow in the sunlight so you can see how nice they look. I will have to recommend them to anyone wanting to replace their factory floor mats.

 

[oyealiz]

Last week I purchased a set of Loyds Mats custom embroidered floor mats off ebay to replace the worn factory originals. The brown santa brought them today and I installed them this evening. Wow, what a difference. They fit perfect, the Shale color match is spot on, and the embroidery looks good. I almost want to keep the originals in for daily wearing and keep these for special occasions I will shoot some pics tomorrow in the sunlight so you can see how nice they look. I will have to recommend them to anyone wanting to replace their factory floor mats.

Funny, the brown truck was just by here dropping off my Lloyd's mats, too! I ordered ones for the xlr and my c7 vette. Will try to get them put in tomorrow.

 

[05 GRAND DADDY]

For the time being that's exactly what I do I just put them in just for car shows, when I get a chance think I'll order a darker color though for daily use!


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Dan & Wendy
"05 GRAND DADDY"

 

[oyealiz]

My sister in law had a very weird medical condition years ago and darn near died while the doctors scratched their heads. After they finally figured out what was wrong, and she lived, she said if she buys something she likes, she doesn't save it, she uses it, or wears it, right away! I decided then that I was going to do the same. My shale mats are in the car, for better or worse, for all the time.

 

[05 GRAND DADDY]

My sister in law had a very weird medical condition years ago and darn near died while the doctors scratched their heads. After they finally figured out what was wrong, and she lived, she said if she buys something she likes, she doesn't save it, she uses it, or wears it, right away! I decided then that I was going to do the same. My shale mats are in the car, for better or worse, for all the time.

Like I was saying I do a lot of car shows so I get a lot of wows on the mats looking like new! And the original mats are in good condition yet so why not use them for daily use until I purchase a darker color that will not show every little bit of dirt!


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Dan & Wendy
"05 GRAND DADDY"

 

[AL_Jazz]

The '05 has the two-tone interior with the lower part of the dash and door panels shale and the dash cover and top of the door panels in a darker brown. Mine is going in later this week to have the worn seat bolsters recovered in the darker color giving it two-tone seats to match the dash and door panels. The reason I mention this, I am wondering if Lloyds would make me a pair of floor mats in the darker brown so I could carry the two-tone theme down into the floors/carpets also...

 

[oyealiz]

The '05 has the two-tone interior with the lower part of the dash and door panels shale and the dash cover and top of the door panels in a darker brown. Mine is going in later this week to have the worn seat bolsters recovered in the darker color giving it two-tone seats to match the dash and door panels. The reason I mention this, I am wondering if Lloyds would make me a pair of floor mats in the darker brown so I could carry the two-tone theme down into the floors/carpets also...

I'm sure they will. You just go on their site and pick what you want.

I love two tone seats. I had my c6 Vette seats done two tone before I ever brought her home.

I think that's a great idea since your bolsters actually need recovering anyway!

 

[05 GRAND DADDY]

So...has anyone wondered what it would be like to replace the dash in an XLR?

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I don't recommend it, but if you have any questions about how to do so...just ask me.

But...totally worth it...

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I suppose it's maybe to late now, but the 04-05 had a heat problem with the console area especially on the driver side a long the side & the top where the shifter is it gets very warm almost hot! They some how repaired this on 06 and up! I notice it more in the hotter season and on long trips as the heat rise from underneath I ceramic coated my exhaust and had heat shield put on lower tunnel area with little help. I assume it needs to be installed on inner area around the tunnel underneath the shifter area! Since what I tried didn't stop it. I'm still looking for a solution if anyone figures it out.

 

[05 GRAND DADDY]

The '05 has the two-tone interior with the lower part of the dash and door panels shale and the dash cover and top of the door panels in a darker brown. Mine is going in later this week to have the worn seat bolsters recovered in the darker color giving it two-tone seats to match the dash and door panels. The reason I mention this, I am wondering if Lloyds would make me a pair of floor mats in the darker brown so I could carry the two-tone theme down into the floors/carpets also...

I'm sure Lloyds will be able to help you but they probably only have their options of colors choose from but I sure you could find one close enough to suit your needs!


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Dan & Wendy
"05 GRAND DADDY"

 

[AL_Jazz]

I suppose it's maybe to late now, but the 04-05 had a heat problem with the console area especially on the driver side a long the side & the top where the shifter is it gets very warm almost hot! They some how repaired this on 06 and up! I notice it more in the hotter season and on long trips as the heat rise from underneath I ceramic coated my exhaust and had heat shield put on lower tunnel area with little help. I assume it needs to be installed on inner area around the tunnel underneath the shifter area! Since what I tried didn't stop it. I'm still looking for a solution if anyone figures it out.

...do you know if the heat is coming from the exhaust? Next time I drive some distance in mine, I will check for heat in that area, but I have not noticed it previously. I don't know what kind of heat shielding you had installed in your tunnel, but I think I would do a header wrap on your exhaust (ceramic works well and keeps a set of headers from glowing, there is still a lot of radiant heat) and use this heat shield matting to reduce any radiant heat you have coming up through the tunnel. I have used this type product on some custom rigs firewalls when we had headers, turbos, or over sized downpipes getting too close. Works great, but I would suggest some rivets or screws to hold it in place. As far as on the inside under the console area, you can always use a DynaPad material to seriously reduce the heat and noise through the tunnel. If I ever have the reason to pull my console again, I am going to pull the seats and carpets and line my floorpans and console with it. Works wonders.

 

[05 GRAND DADDY]

I would think the heat is come from exhaust and motor heat. When I had the rear end dropped to change the disc in the rear gearbox (another issue they had on the 05 if you turn your wheels full turn sharp and they feel like they are gripping, grabbing like a 4X4 locked in, that's really rear end disc slipping, I thought it should of been are recall) I had them drop the exhaust and took it and had the ceramic put on everything from the resonators back to just before the mufflers. The heat shield padding that I used was from Jegs.com and I had him install it while they had the exhaust & rear end dropped out he applied the heat shield on the tunnel plate and up the sides of the inner wall as far as he could go. I bought extra large size to do under the trunk area on the heat plates also because it gets very warm in there to, this all help some but the heat still rises up at around the gearshift area so that's why I was thinking of covering that area either inside under the console or like you said behind the carpet area on the side where your leg touches the console it's really only noticeable on longer trips on hotter days or even longer trips on cooler days it still gets quite warm on the leg! For now we use a towel to lay against it! It would be nice to know what they did after 2005 where they fixed the problem from 2006 and up? Don't know if they used a heat shield or something like that to fix it but since you had yours apart already at the console area any thoughts would be well appreciated! Tthanks and have a great day!


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Dan & Wendy
"05 GRAND DADDY"

 

[64rdc19]

Looking forward to hearing how your AppRadio4 install went and how well you like it


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[05 GRAND DADDY]

Looking forward to hearing how your AppRadio4 install went and how well you like it


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Me too! It maybe an upgrade I'm interested in! Still need to know if I would want to go back to the original system for maybe selling reason or whatever reason will that be possible to do?


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Dan & Wendy
"05 GRAND DADDY"

 

[AL_Jazz]

Me too! It maybe an upgrade I'm interested in! Still need to know if I would want to go back to the original system for maybe selling reason or whatever reason will that be possible to do?

Yes, everything done can be undone in less than an hour to go back to the stock unit since none of the factory wiring harnesses or mounting plates are modified. The only soldering work is in making the adapter harness (pigtail) that goes from the factory harness to the radio. You buy the female side (which is made into the rear of the stock radio) and then solder those wires to the corresponding wires that come out of the plug supplied with the head unit. That adapter is the only actual wiring done. Once you unplug the female side from the factory dash harness, you can plug the factory harness back into the original factory head unit and it will function as it did originally. The longest part is pulling the side pillar trim down and un-installing the mic and wiring depending on how you ran it. I removed my lower dash panels and ran my mic wire up through the dash, behind the side trim panel, and then clipped it to my sun visor 8-10 inches from my mouth. Works well and people can hear me clearly.

 

[AL_Jazz]

Looking forward to hearing how your AppRadio4 install went and how well you like it...

Install went great, and now that I have been using it for several weeks on a daily basis, I do really like it. I have learned a few things about how I use it:

If I am just jumping in and headed to the store or even sometimes to and from the office, I don't take the time to plug in my iPhone. I just leave the phone in my pocket and let it connect to bluetooth automatically and either continue with an audio book I am listening too or start listening to Pandora. I can still make and receive phone calls over bluetooth with no issues. If I am wanting Navigation or Siri, so I can send and receive txt msgs via voice, I will connect via USB and the integration into CarPlay works very well. I find I rarely connect via HDMI unless I am playing with the DashCommander or showing it off to someone that has not seen it before. I run it at Cars and Coffee on Sat mornings and people seem to like looking at it.

I have found a few quarks though. If I am listening to Pandora via Bluetooth and then plug into the USB, it might take it a couple minutes to make the connection and start playing the music again. If I am impatient I can usually kill the app on my iPhone and when I restart it everything works. I think it is a glitch in the AppRadio software. A future firmware update will hopefully fix that annoyance.

Over all, I could not be happier and think it is an upgrade I would most definately recommend to anyone that drives their XLR regularly.

 

[AL_Jazz]