Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Toyota Avanza enhancement - D-pillar reflector

To further accentuated the rear profile of your Toyota Avanza, you can install reflector onto its D-pillars.



This will make the car's high body become even more visible, especially at night or in the rain. It will make the rear view of the car looks even nicer, as well as able to increase the safety factor from being accidentally "kissed" by the car behind.

You can get these D-pillar reflectors from car accessories shops, such as Brothers, JE Automart, etc. Now, it is available in UMW Toyota too.

Skim coating the walls to be painted with Pearl Glo

If your wall isn't smooth enough, consider skim coat it with a layer of plaster to make it really smooth and looks nice from every angle.

Skim coating is important especially if you plan to paint the wall with Pearl Glo paints, or to install wall paper on it. Uneven wall will look wavy and not nice when painted with shiny paint or installed with wall paper. The effect is even maximized under the light.

During renovation, I had done skim coat treatment to all the walls downstairs of my house (excluding those in the kitchen with ceiling height tiles) before applying the ICI Pearl Glo paints on them. That had costed me for a few hundred ringgit only.

Toyota Avanza enhancement - seat locking system

The Toyota Avanza 1.5 provides versatile seat configuration. Both its 2nd row seats are foldable, and of course, its 3rd row seat is also foldable.

It is found that once you fold down the seat, you need to slam it pretty hard to lock the seat back in place. If the seat is not locked back to the car floor properly, it might flip up when you step on the break of the car later.

A simple modification to the seat lock position can enable the car seat to hook back easily to its place. Now, instead of slamming the car seat to lock it in place, you just need to gentlely push it downwards, and it will hook back firmly with a "click" sound.

The trick is to lift the rod of the locking system a little bit higher with washers. You'll need 2 washers to lift each side of the rod. As there are altogether 3 foldable seats, you'll need a total of 6 washers for this modification.



Just unlock and remove the rod from the car floor, put the washer in, put back the rod, and fasten the nut. Then, test the position by locking the car seat.

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