Thread: 2000 GTP: Still Alive! New Trans?

Started building a relay harness for my headlights, but had to stop because GM headlight plugs are a PITA to disassemble. I'm going to go get some Ford plugs tomorrow from a parts truck and finish the harness then. I've got 10 AWG wire for the power to the relays and to the first headlight, then 12 AWG from there. Either way, It's over kill:


I'm building the harness to be easily removable, so if I'm on a road trip or something and it stop working, I can put the car back to stock to get along. I took an old 9007 bulb, broke the glass part off, and soldered 2 wires to the high\low pins of the bulb housing, then filled it with RTV since I ran out of Epoxy. That way I can just simply unplug the harness and plug the stock harness back into the bulb if something goes wrong with the relays. Here's a diagram I put together for FTC when I helped a friend do the conversion on his truck.

BTW, electrolysis write-up is still happening here in a few days. I needed something to clean the rust off of and I have something now...

Headlight project got side lined for a day or two, the OEM head unit took a poop. The display stopped working (it was NOT the lamp, tried that), and the CD player was hungry for a CD and ate one of mine. I went to the junkyard to look for some random stuff and ended up getting a Pioneer DEH-P4600MP with the dash kit, wiring harness, and SWI-2(steering wheel interface). Best part is I got everything but the actual head unit out of a Grand Prix, so I was able to plug it into my car in the parking lot. The junkyard Grand Prix had a JVC head unit and this Pioneer was just sitting on the seat with the GM harness already wired up, so I just swapped it over to the dash kit from the Grand Prix. I did pull it all apart when I got home and soldered all the connections and permanently installed the SWI-2. I ran the signal wire and power wire up the driver side pillar and over to the overhead console, grounded the SWI off of the map lights, drilled a hole for the IR emitter in between the 2 map lights, programmed it, and put it all back together. Works like a charm, I have MP3\WMA, and it sounds quite a bit better....all for $25 out the door.

I eventually plan on getting a much better quality head unit, but this will do for now, and the $25 was worth it for the SWI, dash kit, and wiring harness alone.

It was such a nice day out today, I decided to tackle the interior. I pulled both seats, the center console, and the carpet, and went to town cleaning EVERYTHING. I scrubbed at the carpet for about an hour, then took it down to my local car wash and sprayed it down with the pressure washer for about 5 minutes. It's hanging out to dry now, should be done soon. I think scrubbed every single piece of interior trim I could, I still have the dash and A-pillars, that's on that one. Basically anything and everything I have the ability to clean in the car is getting scrubbed. If I have time and gumption to do it today, I'll wash and wax the exterior as well, but we'll see how that goes.

Pretty much done with the deep clean, Interior is back in and cleaned, and the outside is done for now as well. I cleaned EVERYTHING in the interior, and shampooed the **** out of the carpet. It's not perfect, but it is a hell of a lot cleaner than it was. On the outside, I hand washed it, claybared it for something like 2 hours, hand washed it, let it dry, then waxed it, then did some cleaning on the rims, etc. The rims aren't perfect, they'll get more attention later. All thats left for today is clean the inside of the front window, and clean the mirrors. I don't think the pics do it justice, but you'll get the idea. Better pics coming tomorrow during the day.

This has been a good week and a half for the car, a week and a half ago it was still a yard ornament.


Over the past couple of days I've been putting together a system for it, since I have to have some descent tunes in my car. A friend of mine gave me a 12 inch sub box, a itty bitty 8 AWG install kit, and an old Bolt amp he had. From there another friend gave me a Sony Xplod 12 inch sub, so I had a whole setup ready to go.


After the install my Pioneer would not stop putting alternator noise to the sub no matter what I did, so I bought a Sony CDX-GT710 off of friend #1 for $10. Only problem with it was that the motorized faceplate had a stripped gear inside the movement, so when the faceplate moved it would make a grinding sound and move very slowly. It was better than what I had, so I went ahead and installed it. I normally despise Sony's products, but this one is okay, especially for $10. My main complaint is the poor excuse of an intermal amplifier it has. The sub, well, it's good enough for now, it'll get upgraded later as well.


I was feeling ballsy today and decided to tear into the new head unit to see if I could do anything about the movement problems. I ripped it all apart and found a 13 tooth gear with 3.5 teeth left. The gear itself was a 2 tier gear, so I had to improvise. I found another 2 tier gear in my stock CD player, and it had a 13 tooth gear that was the exact size I needed. Problem was the 2nd tier gear was to small. I ended up cutting the 13 tooth gear off of both of the larger gears, and combining the 2 good gears together. Let me tell you, this was easier said than done. It was all worth it though because it's FIXED! It works like brand new, no problems at all now. I know it's a cheap HU that isn't that good to begin with, but I'm pretty proud of myself, lol.


Anyways, pics:
Head Unit:

No Flash, the color between stock and the head unit isn't too far off:

Sub, tomorrow I'm cleaning the carpet in the trunk like I clean the carpet in the cabin. This setup is just to get me going, it'll be upgraded...a lot:

I still have steering wheel controls with my SWI-2 steering wheel control interface. It's from the 90s, but it still works and is a PITA to program. It basically turns your steering wheel into a remote control for an after market head unit. You use the remote that comes with the head unit to program the SWI-2 then you have to mount an IR emitter somewhere for the SWI-2 to send signals to the head unit like a remote. I chose the overhead console, since it always has a clear shot to the head unit:



Oh yea, I had to put a new window regulator in the driver side front door today too, but that's done and pretty self explanatory. Next big hurdle for me will be figuring out this damn automatic climate control, I have no temperature control over the driver side, but the actuator and blend door are fine. It relearns and moves the actuators fine when I perform the relearn, but won't move when I adjust the temperature.

you are doing a great job with the car!

Originally Posted by Austins01GP

you are doing a great job with car!

Thanks man, You have one of the most awesome Z's I've ever seen.

For once, nothing happened to the car today, I just drove it a bit. I did do some research and digging, I found a melted wire going to the cruise control brake pedal switch, the pink wire. I've done some research on what the pink wire does, and it looks like it runs from the in-dash fuse box to the pedal switch, on\off switch on the column, and the cruise module itself. I'll start by pulling the fuse box and replacing wire from there to the switch, and then move on from there.

Just finished, replaced the pink wire from the fuse box to the column and to the pedal switch. Cruise works like a charm now, another things to scratch of the list.

Originally Posted by Booba5185

Thanks man, You have one of the most awesome Z's I've ever seen.

For once, nothing happened to the car today, I just drove it a bit. I did do some research and digging, I found a melted wire going to the cruise control brake pedal switch, the pink wire. I've done some research on what the pink wire does, and it looks like it runs from the in-dash fuse box to the pedal switch, on\off switch on the column, and the cruise module itself. I'll start by pulling the fuse box and replacing wire from there to the switch, and then move on from there.

thanks alot man!

and some good info about the cruise, mine doesnt work/ didnt work, if they dont total my GTP maybe this will fix/be my problem

If it's wiring related then this diagram should help:

If you need instructions on how to pull a certain component out of the car then I used this:
http://www.grandprixforums.net/servi...ree-81286.html

Now also keep in mind that my pink wire was melted from the brake switch to the main pink wire for cruise. When I bought the car, the PO had a wire leading from the brown wire of the cruise to the white wire of the cooling fans. Why did he do this? No f*cking clue. With it set up this way, hitting the brakes made the cooling fans turn on. Problem with that is cooling fans were pulling all the power they needed through that pink wire, which is NOT designed for that much current. Too much current+too small of wire=melted or even fire. The idiot even put a 25 amp fuse in the fuse box for the cruise circuit when it only needs a 10.

Oh yea, headlight relay harness is just about done, I just have to mock it up, cut some wires to length, buy and inline fuse and some connectors, and install it all. I made the harness to plug into the stock 9007 plug so if something ever goes wrong on a road trip or something I can always revert back to stock very easily. Pics of it all later today.

Headlight relay harness is in and hooked up, install went VERY SMOOTH. Hooked up 2 wires (+12v and ground), plugged the stock harness into the relay harness, then plugged the headlights into the relay harness, done and done. It's still day light out so I can't see the difference too much, but the color of the lights is definitely whiter. Remember I still have halogens, not H.I.D. Pics:

Driver side headlight ground:

Passenger side headlight ground:

Harness crossing over radiator, I'll dig more loom out later and run it behind the dog bones:

A week later and she's still pretty clean:


I'll try and get some comparison shots with one side stock and one side on the harness later, when it get's dark.

Here's some comparison shots, but my camera doesn't really do it justice. The relays made the same bulbs about 25% brighter, at least. Here's a comparison of the stock headlight connector on the right and the connector I rebuilt on the left:

Here's the comparison of light output, passenger side is on a relay, driver is stock. You can see a bit of difference in the pictures, but like I said there is a much bigger difference in person:




Here's low beams:

High beams (lows stay on with the highs):


These aren't new bulbs either, they were on the car when I bought it.

Over the past day or so I've been tinting the tails and clearing my front corners. Looks pretty good, I think my passenger side tail light might be a bit darker than my driver side, but it's not bad at all. I ended up using 2 coats of VHT, and 4 coats of krylon clear, which krylon clear SUCKS, I'll never use it again. Front corners cleared easily, 10 minutes in the oven at 300 degrees and they came apart really easy. I needed some new bulbs in the tail lights, and they are the same bulbs that are in the front turn signals, so I just bought some amber bulbs for the front and put the old fronts in the rear. Pics:
Corners:



Tails, I'll get better picutres tomorrow:

Coming along real nice.

Long night for something so simple, lol. I rewired the DRL's to run the parking lights instead of the headlights, changed the fog lights to turn on with the head lights instead of the parking lights, rewired the fog lights to stay on with the high beams, and rewired the antitheft system to blink the parking lights instead of the head lights. Previously the fog light's relay received it's +12v trigger from the parking lights. This means that if your fog light switch is on and you turn your parking lights on, your fog lights turn on. Since I rewired the alarm to blink the parking lights, and rewired the DRL to use the parking lights, my fog lights would be blinking with the alarm and would be on whenever the DRL's are on. I normally leave my fog light switch on all the time so they come on at night with the headlights. I wanted to change the stock configuration, so the fog lights came on with the headlights, not the parking lights.

This was all actually pretty easy to accomplish. I cut the tan wire going to the DRL diode, and cut the brown wire going to the fog light switch. I ran a wire from the fog light switch (used to be the brown wire), and connected it to the tan wire that used to connect to the DRL diode. I then ran a wire from the diode (used to be a tan wire) to the brown wire that originally connected to the fog light switch. Confused? Let me confuse you some more. To make the alarm blink the parking lights instead of the head lights, I cut the yellow wire coming off of the relay, and connected the relay to the brown wire (used to connect to the fog light switch). Here's a little pic:


As far as getting the fog lights to stay on with the High beams? That was easy, bend pin 85 out on the fog light relay, then ground that pin.

I decided that the tail lights were too dark so I sanded it all off and started over, that was a lot of sanding. Now they are all done and tinted again, and much brighter and more shiny. I haven't had a chance to see then during the day yet since it was night when I finished them.

Sorry for the horrible pic, I had the exposure on my camera set wrong...really blurry. This was parking lights and reverse lights:

I just ordered these:
10pc 2 LED 1W T10 LED SMD CAR Side Wedge Light Lamp Bulb 2825 194 168 W5W White | eBay
2 Xenon White 1 72" 42mm 2W High Power 211 2 578 LED Bulbs FOR CAR Interior | eBay
I ordered this last weekend, it's already on it's way:
15 SMD 30cm White LED Flexible Strip CAR Truck Motorcycle 12V Waterproof | eBay

The strip will be for the trunk, the 194s will be for the interior and license plate, and the 42mm will be for the map lights. I'm thinking of running some wire from the front kick panel to under the seat and connecting some 194s up under there so that the floor will be lit everywhere.

Great work man ive always loved white cars and i love everything on your except the grand prix in grilles. It just fills it to much imo ide put gtp the right side only if anything and plastidip those rims will make the car look 1000x better. But nonetheless keep up the great work.

Thanks man, I'm kinda mixed on the Grand Prix on the front grille as well, but if it comes off nothing else is going on. Not sure on Plastidiping the wheels either...I'll look around at some pics and see what I can find\think.