I have been off work since last Tuesday, after having to come home following not feeling at all well. In fact, I haven't quiet felt myself for going on 3 weeks now. It all started with a migraine, which persisted and eventually turned into a headache. The following day I felt the same, and as the weeks went on I just didn't feel great with this constant bad head.
Anyhoo I was taking prescribed medication to try and combat the migraines, a drug named Naproxen. I was taking the recommended dose each day and as the first week went on I was starting to have weird dizzy spells, where I felt a bit disassociated and like I was having a panic attack.
As I work in a hospital, my colleagues got an obs machine and took my blood pressure, and it was something like 177/110. One of the friendly doctors upon our ward checked me out and recommended I go home, so that is where I have been.
I have managed to get in and see a friendly GP, and she has prescribed some blood pressure tablets and I have to go for an ECG and bloods, just to try and get to the bottom of why I have been feeling so off. Turns out, Naproxen is really bad at raising your Blood pressure, as is Ibuprofen.
So this week I have pretty much been taking it easy, even cutting down on my daily cycling, only doing around 5 miles per day on the turbo trainer.
On to my Abarth. I ordered some sound deadening, some stuff called Dodo Mat. I got it from Amazon, ordering it one day and it arriving the next. It was lashing down yesterday, well I think it was, that is another thing that is affecting me my concentration and memory.
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| Dodo Mat sound deadening |
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| Dodo Mat |
Well today, as it was sunny, my dad and I removed the door cards from the Abarth, and we fitted the sound deadening. We had already had the driver's door card off, last week as the wee car has an annoying rattle coming from somewhere, I actually think it's the driver's window.
The door cards come off relatively easy, there are a couple of covers to remove, one chrome one that goes on the interior door handle and another that is like a small rectangle shape, and this is in the door grab handle, where the arm rest is positioned. Once you get these off, there are 3 Allen head bolts to remove, and then you have to try and use something to pry the door card from their plastic retainers. My dad had a proper type of tool, so the cards came off fairly easy.
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| Door handle cover |
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| Other cover in handle |
Once the door card is away from the clips, you have to remove the cable that operates the door handle and on the driver's side the power window switch connection. From there I used a hairdryer to heat the soft door membrane, you need to keep this intact as much as possible. We got it off so far then just peeled it back, just needed enough to be able to get access to the inside of the door skins.
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| Door Card Removed |
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| Door catch cable and power window cable at bottom |
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| Heating up membrane, just watch you don't stretch it too much |
The first sheet of Dodo I heated with the hairdryer, however, soon discovered that it became so sticky that I couldn't get it in place correctly without it sticking to something. The best method was to just measure the sheet of deadening with the backing on, trim it if necessary, then only peel about an inch of the paper backing off and sticking that inch in place, then remove the rest of the backing as you work the sheet onto the door skin. As it was a relatively warm day, the sheets stuck no problem. We used a combination of a roller where we could roll the sheets and where we couldn't just a firm bit of pressure, until the deadening was in place and secure.
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| Became way too sticky |
Oh! By the way, I bought a pack of 12 sheets of Dodo and I think I had about one sheet left over after doing the doors. I have ordered another pack of 12 so that I can do the boot. One pack comes in at £25 from Amazon.
As you can hear in the video, it doesn't half make a difference to the sound of the car when tapping on the door.
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| Steering lock |
Oh! And I also ordered a steering lock from Halford's so popped down to pick that up yesterday. It's a sturdy bit of kit I have one for my VW Beetle GSR, it won't stop a serious thief, however it is a good deterrent for the opportunist, every little helps in this day and age.
