CPhillips93

Invidia Gemini exhaust fitting As some of you may know the OEM exhaust on my zed was rather worse for wear; it had started to rattle and was just outrageously loud... not in a good way! So courtesy of Adrian at Torqen I got hold of a Invidia Gemini. I went for this because of what I had heard from both countless viewings of exhaust clips on YouTube and opinions on here. As the car is a daily driver it was important that whatever I got needed to be bearable day to day as well as for any long trips that I will inevitably end up doing! I also thought that seeing as the y-pipe was probably shagged from driving onto my girlfriend's drive, the Invidia would be a perfect replacement straight out of the box. First things first, being an OCD sufferer I wanted to coat the tips in some Gtechniq C5, so wiped them down with some eraser:- Even the girlfriend was excited to help And the finished article coated in C5:- Ready to be fitted I got cracking on Saturday morning bright and early (couldn't wait any longer to fit it!) at the usual place of my cousins garage. However I shortly realised after jacking the car up and getting her on stands that this was not going to be as straightforward as I had first hoped. This was one of the four bolts that needed to be un-done... As you can see the bugger was so rusty it was essentially welded on there... so I took a trip down to my local mechanic that I use for my MOTs So I let him attack the old exhaust with a grinder! First came the y-pipe to centre section joint which came off with ease. The harder part was grinding off the y pipe/cat leaving the bolt intact which Roger did very well! After this the rest was simple... just popping the exhaust off the hangers and removing it. At this point I was so fed up of the old thing that I forgot to take pictures of how bad it really was. Essentially it was leaking from the centre pipe to backbox joint... because the centre pipe had completely rusted away from the joint . You can just about make it out in this picture:- Whilst we were under the car Roger noticed a bit of surface rust over the back half of the car, which he kindly offered to coat in Waxoil so I got cracking with the wire brush:- So to the fun part But I am very pleased with the exhaust, great noise... very close to OEM - perfect for me! I am also very impressed with the build quality, certainly getting what you pay for... a lot better than the Scorpion that I had on the 182. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an exhaust, I know it may seem quite a bit of money at £800 but by time you buy a Scorpion or Cobra and a y-pipe to match your talking similar money anyway! So next on the list is the zed's first MOT in my ownership... wish me luck Comments and suggestions welcome. Conor.

Big thanks to Adrian for a great service - my Invidia Gemini exhaust arrived today and despite me being ridiculously impatient, he was very helpful! Would definitely use you guys again

Look what arrived today Cannot wait to get it fitted this weekend!

Thanks mate, I am glad it's interesting, never sure if I am being to meticulous with the posts thanks glad you like it Will be ordering an Invidia exhaust hopefully very shortly as my exhaust is leaking and is making the car sound like a wet fart !

The zed has a leaky exhaust so I am after the above, preferably from the cat back. Not particularly fussy but don't want anything OTT like the K1. Just testing the water to see what's available. Thanks Conor.

Whiteline lower compression arm bush fitting So those of you that have been following this thread or who have read it recently may know that the zed's recent P3 service flagged up two issues to be rectified with the car; passenger side compression arm bush had 'debonded' and the exhaust was leaking. Now the latter is not something that needs to be done immediately but it was always something that I wanted to change anyway so if anything it was a good excuse . However the compression arm bush definitely needed my immediate attention as for the last couple weeks the knocking was becoming unbearable, I really don't know how I didn't notice it before... must have been me listening to my music too loud . So after some discussions with Zmanalex and Ewen at Clark Motorsport I decided it was probably best to go for some aftermarket polyurethane bushes. If I am going to change something may as well change it for something better! I went for the Whiteline bushes from Ewen (great service by the way!) as opposed to Superpro in the end as the Whiteline ones seemed to be an easier option as they are a 'push in' fit. I got some time to fit them this weekend and basically followed the instructions in this guide - http://my350z.com/fo...ng-install.html This package arrived:- Which included 2 bushes (in halfs), 2 small washers, 2 large washers, 2 seating cones, 2 ball joint nuts and a sticker! I also purchased a set of split pins as it's also advised that you change the split pins on the ball joint (picked up a set of 150 from Toolstation for around £2.50). First things first get the car up in the air and on stands. Once I had the car up the first thing to be removed is this plastic cover:- Which is held on by 10mm bolts and two plastic pins. Once this is off the next item to be removed is the front underbrace. As mentioned in the above guide it's good practice to be liberal with the penetrant spray as I found the bushes were corroded to the stud/chassis. So after leaving the nuts soaking for a while I broke out the air impact wrench for the big 19mm nuts and the Makita impact driver for the smaller 14mm bolts on the frame. Weapons of choice and voila:- Really heavy frame, make sure you avoid being underneath it when you remove the last nut/bolt! Next step was to remove the split pin from the ball joint nut before removing the nut. Rather mucky nut:- With that remove it was really just a matter of removing the 19mm nut. To stop the ball joint spinning in place I used a g clamp to push the ball joint into the seating cone like so:- Genius idea right ? Again I used the air wrench for this one. So with this nut off and the frame off, both arms were able to be pryed off with the drivers side bush intact... the passengers side bush required a little motivation with some mole grips :- and the passenger side looking... well, worse for wear to say the least Unbeknown to me this had caused some damage on both the arm and the frame:- So regardless of the damage with the passenger side arm out first I cracked on with removing what was left of the bush which was the metal sleeve. After sawing carefully through the sleeve I punched it out:- Leaving... a nice gap for some nice new bushes . The next bit was the easy bit, 'pressing' the new bushes in. My cousin has a fairly solid vice on his bench which we used as the ghetto press:- Once the bush element of the kit was pressed in all that was left to do on the arm was to insert the metal sleeve through the middle of the bush. Plenty of copper grease was used on all of these parts as I didn't want anything to be squeaky or rubbing at all. Side by side of the OEM and Whiteline:- The driver's side was a little more difficult due to the fact that the OEM bush was still intact but a drill and patience soon made short work of it! With both arms ready to be re-fit I took off the original seating cones that were still attached to both ball joints. These were quite hard to remove and unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the method but I used one of these pullers to remove it which can be picked up for about 20 quid:- So the reassembly is just a reverse order of the removal. I followed the image below for all the torque settings of the nuts and bolts on the frame and also as a precaution used some thread lock. I also enlisted the help of my cousin to get the frame back on as it's such a pita for just one person. Also, don't forget to replace the split pins after torquing up the new nut on the ball joint! Some nice pictures of my nice new bushes! No more knocking ! And surprisingly no noticeable difference in comfort/noise which I thought may have been affected by the difference in stiffness of the bushes. I now just need to get the car tracked just to ensure that the tracking isn't massively out of whack from having no bush to having a nice new one . Would definitely recommend the polyurethane option to anyone out there with dodgy compression arms, very impressed so far! So anyway, thank you for reading, comments and suggestions welcome! Conor.

So today I finally round to getting my freshly painted interior door handles/satnav insert. As you may have realised by now I am very thorough and although most of you probably know how to remove these I thought I would post the step by step (give or take a few steps!) guide of how to get the buggers off First I started with the passenger side handle, which requires some interior plastic removal tools like these - http://www.ebay.co.u...=item4871b99ec0 - these are so handy especially seeing how easy the interiors are to attract scratches, a 10mm socket, an extension and a ratchet socket wrench. Firstly remove the silver insert on the upright handle revealing the two 10mm bolts here:- And here:- Which leaves you with this:- Where you can use the plastic tool or whatever weapon of choice to lever the handle/armrest off. I didn't take any pictures of the removal of the driver's side handle or the satnav insert, as the drivers handle is literally a repeat of the above (mentioned in my very first post of this thread) and the satnav insert is removed by prising out with a credit card (mentioned in my aux hack post)! I was then left with the two scratched handles and insert:- To remove the window switches etc, there are several tabs attaching them to the handle like so:- The easiest way I find to remove these are to use an old credit card to prise them off one by way, just take it easy as the tabs attached to the handle are often prone to snapping if you bend them too far open! This then leaves you with some empty handles and your insert ready to be sanded (I used some 240 grit to start with) like so:- To get the best possible finish I took the handles and insert all the way back to plastic as I probably would have found it difficult to get a good finish bearing in mind how deep the gouges are on the drivers handle. It will take a while but unfortunately prep is key with painting stuff like this, especially with plastic. Regardless of what colour you go for you must use plastic primer otherwise the paint will simply react and cause a bad finish. The plastics back to plastic! In the 'booth' getting the first few coats of primer:- Ideally once you have finished with the primer stage you should give the primer at least 24 hours (probably longer) to harden and cure before you start sanding ready for your chosen paint colour. I left my plastics 'baking' overnight in the shed I went to work with some 1500 grit sandpaper, wet sanding the primer coat and applied an initial coat of satin black in my make shift booth:- And after a couple coats they were looking like this:- Again, you should leave the paint at least 24 hours if not more before you start sanding the final coat. I bought from Halfords satin black paint, but in hindsight I probably should have bought the matt finish as the satin came out a little more glossy than I was expecting. I thought I might be able to take a bit of the edge off so I wet sanded the plastics with some 2500 grit to take the edge off them a little and also to get a more smooth finish:- Which as you can tell worked a bit:- And did this to all of the plastics finishing off with a bit of rubbing compound leaving the painted plastics like so:- I'm not 100% happy with the finish but the handles particularly are miles better than they were before, the scratches definitely cheapened the look of the interior. The handles will do for now until the OCD kicks in and I attempt them again, but they will do for now. I have also managed to find the route out the cause of the suspension advisory on my service healthcheck and will be ordering the parts soon to cure that problem, shout out to ZMANALEX for his help I am keeping an eye out on eBay and on the sales section on here for any exhausts that are going to rectify the leak. Ideally I would love to have a brand new Invidia system but unfortunately the budget doesn't permit that sort of spending . Anyway, I hope that you find this helpful/informative! Comments and suggestions welcome. Conor.

http://video.citnow.com/vxYS32-b-5b Not sure if that link will work but it's what Nissan provided me with.

This weekend was the zed's first service of my ownership and unfortunately it had to be the big one - a P3! As I have probably mentioned in here somewhere I really struggled to find somewhere to get it serviced; West End Motors in Bodmin wanted far too much money and we don't really have many independent specialist in Cornwall. As a last ditch attempt I thought I would give Town and Country Nissan in Truro a call and was very impressed. I spoke with Mat (for anyone reading this in Cornwall in need of a service!) who advised that if I provided all my own fluids they would charge £195, which I thought was very reasonable! In actual fact, it only took them 2 hours in the end which meant that I was only charged £156, even better . Unfortunately however it wasn't all good news. On their 'Visual Healthcheck' of the car they have noted that both the nearside front lower suspension tie arm is de-bonded and the rear exhaust joint is blowing. Happily the latter of those two is not too worrying, my 182 always used to be leaking . However the suspension part is a bit of a worry, especially seeing as the service guys advised me that this bush was so bad that it was effectively resting on the subframe. I have posted this in the suspension section of the forum hopefully to get some advice as to what part(s) I may need and the difficulty of the job, as Town and Country have quoted me £385.42! I am going to try and get the car up to take a look myself either Thursday or next weekend just to size up what's going on. Regardless, I am very happy with the service Town and Country provided, would definitely recommend them to anyone round here! Just a shame that they had to find broken parts, but at least it gives me an excuse to get a nice new exhaust I have also managed to find time to spray my interior handles and panel just in front of the satnav that had suffered some damage... watch this space Comments and suggestions welcome. Conor.

Ah that's cool, was planning on getting the car tracked shortly anyways! I should be able to, won't be till next weekend now or possibly Thursday :/ The Nissan guys did say that they would send over a video but haven't received that just yet. I will try and get some time to get the wheel off and hopefully get a photo!

So today I had a P3 service done on the Zed. One of the two advisory notes on the visual healthcheck was NSF lower suspension tie arm de-bonded (the other was rear exhaust blow, great excuse for a new one ) I have tried the searching on here and on Google, but I can't seem to get a definitive answer... can somebody help please? What part should I be looking for? And is it a job that I can do in the garage? Nissan have quoted £385.42 but I am hoping that it isn't quite that much Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks mate Thanks Exactly, when it's simple and cheap there is no reason not to... and of course the OCD is a motivating factor

UPDATE - POST 2 of 2 I then got a bit bored of cleaning the zed (believe it or not!) and turned my attention to finally getting my hands on some spacers! In the end I managed to get both 25mm and 30mm spacers from people on here. When I got both sets they were both in need of a good clean up and so the routine went as follows. Bath and scrub in some Gunk degreaser:- Once that had been rinsed off, I enlisted the girlfriend to wire brush the surface corrosion:- 50/50:- Some of the more serious rust had to be attacked with some 240 grit sandpaper:- All masked up in preparation for spray:- In the 'booth':- Sprayed initially with etch primer:- Baking in the sun:- After a couple coats of gloss black:- The finish isn't the best on these but it will do. I really just wanted to make sure that the spacers were black just to suit the inside of the wheels. I thought it would also be clever if I used the remaining bit of C5 I had to seal them:- Then to the fun part... fitting them! A few photos of before:- I whipped the wheels off one by one and made sure that I used plenty of copper grease as these buggers love to fuse with the wheel/disc. Rear one on:- And on goes the front:- Some after shots:- I am very happy now with the way the car is looking, it has a few niggly things that need to be addressed (interior door handles etc) but other than that the zed is nearly there . I have also managed to find a decent price for a P3 service down at Town and Country Nissan in Truro, so once I order the fluids, filter and washer the zed will be booked in for that. I have some ATE Super Blue fluid left from the Clio, does anyone have experience with that in there zeds? I have managed to get OEM coolant, oil filter and sump washer so I am now just waiting on oil and possibly brake fluid, depending on people's opinions of ATE! Also, being as anal as I am, I ordered some clips for various plastic items as I noticed that the brake fluid reservoir surround was missing some. Before:- Excuse the dirty bay, I have been meaning to give it a good clean for a while After:- I will definitely sleep better tonight now ! Comments and suggestions welcome. Conor.

UPDATE - POST 1 of 2 It's been a while since I updated this thread and I have been busy with a few little tweaks since I last posted. Over the last couple of weeks I managed to gather a RDX stubby aerial, 25mm and 30mm spacers as well as other service related items (boring!). So onto the RDX aerial... And fitted:- Definitely smartens up the rear and I personally haven't noticed any difference in radio signal whatsoever, it is an absolute must on the zed in my opinion, especially seeing as the OEM aerial makes the car look like it's receiving long distance radio messages I then spent the next week or so cleaning the car and just enjoying it whilst I looked for spacers. Since I attempted to machine polish the zed I wasn't 100% impressed with the finish I had produced, so I had another dig with a Chemical Guys Hexlogic blue pad and Menzerna SF4000 to refine the paintwork a little more... Results:- I gave the car another good clean last week, and also managed to use this:- Of late the air con in the zed has been rather 'pungent', and after a little bit of research it seemed likely that there was mould/mildew in the system where condensation builds up and is left to stew. In order to stop this, the air con should be turned off before you reach your destination and hot air blown through the system to try and clear out the condensation. A week later the sanitiser and this 'technique' seems to be working well so will have to keep a nose on it ! I also ordered some Auto Glym HD Wax at the same time on offer from Camskill... at £26 I don't think you can beat it! I think these pictures do it justice... IMO it's a very good wax, durable, provides a glossy finish and the water behaviour is fantastic. I definitely favour it over Dodo Juice Blue Velvet which I have been using previously. Comments and suggestions welcome. Conor

As the title suggests, after a pair of 30mm spacers - not particularly worried about make. Conor

As the title suggests the Zed is due a P3 service this summer, but other than West End Motors in Bodmin I am not sure of where to go... I don't particularly want to have my wallet raped by main dealer prices... anyone down this way have any suggestions? Conor.

+1 If you are willing to split I will take the 25mm ones.

Thanks, at first I was looking at black and grey Zeds but in the end I went for this colour and have been very impressed... in the sun and at night it is a totally different colour, I thought it was a flat blue when I first saw it in pictures! I used Gtechniq C5 which is alloy wheel coating, but it is the same product as Gtechniq C4 which is a permanent trim restorer. You can pick it up off of cleanyourcar.co.uk or any other detailing website for around £22 (15ml), which may seem like quite alot but it does go a long way and you will struggle to find anything that works as well! To put it into perspective, I have used nearly all of my 15ml bottle but managed to do all four wheels inside and out, the windscreen scuttle panel, both front wiper arms, rear wiper arm, the wing mirror surronds and the windscreen seals. I haven't used this myself but if it is anything like Megiuars Endurance tyre gel I wouldn't use it on any of the plastics on the car. It contains silicone, so when it rains or the trim gets wet it can leave streaks on the car .

Thanks mate, all on the iPhone too Thanks But it has got a long way to go, still a few things that I want to fix and improve... I even saw on a 350z page on Facebook a Zed with an alcantara wrapped boot, so definitely going to tamper a little more So on Friday I picked these up from the Post Office:- My £1.04 Cosworth Filters , which turned out to be in unused condition - bargain! Over the weekend I set about replacing whatever the previous owner had put in at the Zed's last service (OEM filter as it turns out!), which actually turned out to be a very simple task, the Mrs' even had a go ! The state of the OEM filters:- The left airbox also managed to suck in a small tree Side by side:- Oddly enough it looks as though the two OEM filters are a different shade, perhaps two different filters? Nevertheless, in went the Cosworths. Not sure really the difference they will make and I did think that these would be foam style filters that would be washable, but it turns out they are paper. For £1 though, how can I complain! I also managed to get the weather for a decent clean, and following illogikal1's advice I decided to also use the remaining bit of C5 I had left on the various plastic items on the car. In particular, my wing mirror plastics were looking rather worse for wear:- As you could tell they were slightly faded and had also been a victim of some polish flicking up from the DA. So I taped up the surrounding painted areas just to avoid any over-application and wax removal in the cleaning process:- Clean and ready for C5:- 50/50(ish):- And after that photo was taken I got a bit carried away and forgot to take any final shots, but ended up doing the scuttle panel, front and rear wiper arms, and the windscreen surround. Definitely leaves the plastics looking like new! Not sure now what's next for the ol' girl, I am really struggling to get hold of some 25 and 30mm spacers (if anyone could help that would be appreciated), the OEM exhaust is just, well, meh, but I guess a P3 service is paramount. We shall see... Comments and suggestions welcome. Conor.

Thanks, appreciate it Got to look after it, it's the best colour after all !

I think I would be quite tempted to use it on the windscreen scuttle and the wing mirror plastics. I can imagine it's going to last a while though, just so annoyed that I didn't leave it overnight ! Something to think about I suppose, quite keen to do it myself to be honest. Where's the nearest specialist to Cornwall?

Thanks, I wasn't entirely sure at first that shadow chrome would work, but it definitely suits the car! Thanks Thanks luckily my cousin has good taste in cars and in colours Thanks I did think that it would, just didn't want to waste the little bit I had left especially seeing as the car (and me!) was getting soaked at this point . What do you think of C5? Forgot to mention in my last post that I also managed to pick up a set of Cosworth drop in air filters for £1.04 on eBay on Sunday, which are being delivered to my door at a measly sum of £4.99! Very pleased with that eBay find, I just hope they arrive in decent condition, but at £1.04 I can hardly complain ! Not sure really what's next for the Zed, it's really crying out for spacers and other totally not needed (but wanted ) modifications but at the same time it's due a P3 service this year, so I am at a bit of a conflict as to whether I should do this myself and save a little money or get it done with Nissan to maintain it's FNSH . It's something to consider, but I am sure it won't slow the zeditus . What's the general consensus on here, I take it everyone would prefer a car with FNSH?

Update Finally, after weeks of deliberation and attempting to prioritise what I was going to do next to the Zed, I listed my 'old' Rays on eBay in order to recoup some money to purchase my cousin's old Rays from him. Ideally, I wanted to simultaneously buy and fit 30mm/25mm whilst I had the wheels off but unfortunately this didn't pan out... Nevertheless, I eventually found a buyer for the wheels and therefore needed to get them swapped over with the new ones. Now me being the 'OCD' type I wanted to make sure I did this right, which meant purchasing some Gtechniq C5. I have always been quite keen to use this, especially seeing how well C4 works, but have always been put off by the price tag (£23 for 15ml !). However, considering Gtechniq boast that it lasts 1-2 years it seems like good value for money, right ? C5 requires an absolutely immaculate surface to bond to and therefore the most important part of the process is the cleaning. The wheels I bought were finished in shadow chrome and didn't seem that dirty at all, mainly dust from storage:- So I started with the usual routine, rinse them, spray with Bilberry Wheel Cleaner whilst agitating with a ValetPro brush on both the inside and outside of the wheel:- With this done on all four wheels, it was then time for my new favourite product Trix (despite the awful scent!):- Again, this was washed off and the wheels were taken into the garage to prep for the coating. It's essential with this type of sealant that the wheel is 100% dry, and so I used the air compressor to get the water out of all the nooks and crannies:- The wheels still showed some sign of previous sealant above, but also showed some heavy marring as well The next step therefore was to try and remove some of these marks. When I had the Clio I picked up a handed drill attachment for headlight correction, and so I utilised this in combination with Gtechniq P1 to try and get the best finish on the wheels. Shiney Finally, the last step was to ensure that the wheels were free of any oils or polish residue and CarPro Eraser was used to remove any oil/polish left on the wheel:- Now for the fun part ... The coating comes with four 'application pads' (probably better described as cotton pads!), which they say you should dab the product on and apply to the surface. I found this bit particularly difficult, as the sealant is clear and is very difficult to see where you have applied. As a result I probably ended up using too much . I ended up setting up a little work station in order to try and catch where I had been:- Once the product has been spread, any excess should be removed immediately using a microfibre. It is also essential that any pad or cloth are replaced quite often as the product forms 'crystals' which can scratch the finish! And some afters:- The results speak for themselves, but I am very pleased with C5. Leaves a glossy finish, very easy to apply, and if it really does last up to 1-2 years it is well worth every penny of it's £23 price tag. I was rather generous with the application on the first wheel whilst I got used to it, but I still have around a quarter of the bottle left and that's having done the inside of the rim too! Depending on how this holds up, I would definitely recommend it to others . After I had done all this I left the wheels to cure inside for a little while before I tackled my dirty arches! Predictably, the arches started rather filthy and so I used a combination of Auto Glym Wheel Cleaner and Bilberry to clean the arches and the Brembos, then finishing it off with Auto Glym Wheel Sealant to coat the Brembos (wasn't entirely convinced that C5 would cope with the heat so used something cheaper!) and Auto Glym Tyre Dressing for the plastics:- I didn't take many pictures of the arches as there isn't much to see and shortly after this photo the heavens opened which was not what I wanted . Unfortunately, Gtechniq state that the coating must be left to cure for 12 hours before getting wet, serves me right really for not thinking ahead and sealing the wheels before they had to go on! Regardless, I cracked on and got all four on and C5 was already working:- This was a little disappointing after spending so long getting the wheels ready for the product I may probably now shortened the coating's lifespan, but hey-ho we learn from our mistakes! However, I was very pleased with how the wheels sat on the car - they are big improvement over the standard silver Rays (please ignore my finger in the first photo ):- Just need some nice new nuts and some spacers and the wheels will be perfect . Comments and suggestions welcome! Conor.

Also does anyone have 25mm spacers going?

Anyone have 30mm spacers available?