HiddenWomble

we got a CSV in the front, it was cramped and she was a lot happier when she had a back seat, but it did work. so i guess it depends on the size of your 4 legged friend

random google result for scale

https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/gallery-czechoslovakian-wolfdog-trained-to-search-for-missing-dogs-1-3684513

also i got mine on autotrader and searched the nation not just locally, would up driving from kent to wales.

oh and make sure you get good tyres, mine came with a set of no-names that were so slippy in the wet a ford fiesta on a safety tyre left me for dust on a slip road! now i'll never get anything less than A rated wet braking.

building on the above, each engine revision also raised the red line, roughly 6.5, then 7, then 7.5. the dipstick on the DE is a pain to get to, it was moved in the HR. the OEM oil gallery gasket for all HRs and the early 370z engines were paper and over time crack. the new OEM part is reinforced and should be good for life. with the 350z you can tell if the gasket has gone as the oil pressure will drop. a warm idle is normally about 30psi, though nissan specs do let that go down to 15ish before it's dangerous. with the 370z they get a oil temp instead of pressure so there is no clear sign the gasket has cracked, scary stuff! when it goes oil is leaking inside the engine then back down to the sump, so checking oil level does nothing.

the HR has 308hp from the factory, at about 140K miles with a new gallery gasket i had mine dynoed, it has the invidia gemini exhaust and stock intake. first run was just over 300hp and after a tune 313! now that needs a large pinch of salt as all dynos are different, but just being that close to 300 after so many miles shows you how good these nissan engines are.

for me the biggest pull was just the red line, cos there is no way my butt is going to notice the difference between 280hp and 308hp after 5 years of what every was left of 130hp on my mazda mx3. but the mx3 had a high red line for a 1.8L engine of 7K, and i just didn't fancy having to shift earlier. also 40mph in 1st and 70mph in 2nd is a wonderful thing on the slip roads! i don't know what the gearing is like for the DEs though

also when i got mine it was my daily and i racked up 30K miles in the first year. i now have a volvo too because the zed is not a practical car with a big dog and a wife who loves camping! but it was perfect when i was single and didn't need to haul stuff about.  

there is one negative for the HR, they tend to kick like a mule when you're slowly changing speed, like in stop start traffic. there are various explanations but a common one is a bad factory ecu map, which was my excuse to get it dynoed in the first place

and finally, if you want to mod the DE is sooo much cheaper. there are a lot more of them on the roads and the after market parts are often half the price for DE stuff than HR stuff. so if that is a passion then the DE might be the better choice.

but if you do decide on the HR then have a moment of weakness and snap up a DE, you're still gonna love it

5 hours ago, covertfox said:

Every chance you just hit a greasy bit of road or a minor diesel spillage of course! I inherited pirellis Pzeros on my 350z and they break away very easily in the wet, looking forward to trying something different when they're worn out. was planning on going for yokohama's but just brought a set of Rays off a guy who swore buy the Michelins he had fitted on them. 

watching the vid Eco appears to be matching speed to the car ahead which had no troubles with the bend. could be a combination of rubber that's not brilliantly sticky in the wet to start with (though obviously good enough for 3 years of comfortable driving!) and the tread being at the point grip starts to fade. at about 3mm a tyres behaviour will start to change, sure it will be legal for a lot longer, but it won't be as grippy as before.

my zed came with a set of rubbers from a manufacturer i'd never heard of before. i was getting wheel spin in the wet at 70mph in 3rd gear. i too slipped a bit on a roundabout while following another car at normal road speeds. oh and i also had a ford focus pull away from me on a slip road, he was driving on his space saver spare wheel and still had more grip than me!

in the dry it was fine, but as soon as the roads got wet i had to drive like there was a tall bag of chinese takeaway in passenger seat.

i did a lot of reading and the michelin MPSS came out tops. the difference was night and day. suddenly i could floor it in 2nd on a wet road and the zed would grip and go. since then i've made sure my other cars have tyres that have a wet braking A rating. the new michelin MP4S takes over where the MPSS left off (or MPS4S if you have larger than stock tyres).

yes they cost, but unlike days of old a sticky tyre no longer means a quick wearing tyre. the MPSS was a dual compound tyre with sticky stuff for the corners and harder stuff for the straights giving them a surprisingly good life span. the new MP4S tyres have several compounds building on that idea.

also be aware that at about 3mm tread even the expensive tyres won't grip as well as they used to. and when it's 5deg outside they will grip less, but then i expect you'll be cruising about at normal speeds like in your vid when it's cold like that.

so hopefully you'll get some safer performance out of the new tyres, but maybe look at saving up for some of the best tyres for next round?

2 hours ago, The Bounty Bar Kid said:

Content not found 

it's in the "350z & 370z | BATTALION Z | Sponsored by TORQEN" group, open to all zed owners and the admin (adrian from torqen) approves new members fairly quickly

Only reason he couldn't claim his award is because the truck was empty. But they got within 6cm during one brake test!

Hi all,

I wanted to run this past the group as I believe the zed drivers actions are an embarrassment to us all

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BattalionZed/permalink/2376815089102750/

For those not on facebook here is the original quote

Quote

PE04RGY if you are on here
If this is your car you need to have a look at your driving skills as well as your speedo

If you want to go along the m6 doing 42mph that’s fine
But get yourself in the left lane (lane hogging is an offence and will get you points)
I gave you a polite flash to tell you, you think brake testing repeatedly a 44t Hgv is a good idea too (it will also get you a points too, or worse when someone decides they don’t want to be as responsive on the brakes as you are)

I have all the footage for you if you would like to view your stupidity, take this as a warning as police will be very interested in things like this if you’d like to try it again.

A HR may be worth remapping regardless of performance, it tends to have issues from the factory when doing very gentle speed changes at low revs (think stop start traffic). The DE will benefit from some air mods before a remap, the HR less so as the stock intakes are very competitive by that point in the engines evolution.

Be aware that a pops and bangs map will shorten the life of the catalytic converter.

Good luck with the car hunt

Not quite sure if this is the same, but the HRs are known for their kick at the low rev range. It's easy to trigger this behaviour, let the car pull you along in 1st on idle, then try to accelerate as gently as you can. You should find somewhere between 1K and 2K it will kick like a mule, as if it went full throttle for a split second, after that it's nice and smooth. So getting stuck in stop start traffic on the motorway is a common situation to really bring the problem to the front. In higher gears it's a lot less noticeable and the exact spot it kicks at varies so maybe you are letting the revs dip low enough for it to do this when you get back on the power after a corner?

The common fix for this is an ECU remap as the stock map has bad figures for the exhaust cam timings. There are some other fixes reported too but the remap seems to be the most common fix. Check out this thread for a good collection of info:

I had my HR remapped and the kick faded into a much smoother lump (for a comparison it used to hurt my partners back before the remap). It has since returned but I've been chasing down some other gremlins in my ageing zed so I don't think mine is a good example of the norm and given it's not hurting my partner I don't think it's as bad as when I first got the car.

As for the remap, the bulk of the cost in that is getting an uprev licence for your engine, once that is purchased you're then just paying for the tuners time. So if you get the bad behaviour fixed now, and later decide you want to mod the car it will be a lot cheaper to get it on the dyno for a 2nd time

aww, now i'm really missing my black zed with the nismo kit. it's in the garage at the moment for a few bits.

if you have the rev up keep a very close eye on your oil levels. many rev ups are known to drink oil fast. need to work out if you have a drinker or a sipper. it's not a problem, just something to be aware of and take care of.

I don't understand what trade terms means, but i think claiming not to offer a warranty because it's a sports car feels off to me. Warranty or not, I believe traders are liable for certain faults after selling a car. I suggest you swat up on your rights in that regard. I'd then take their get out of jail free card as an indication that they will try to weasel out of any responsibility. So you might want to start with the assumption you'll have no protection and treat it like buying privately. Make sure to do a background check on the car too.

We have some great buyers guides on here, so take a look about for some more info.

If the garage is called Junction 17 then check out the sticky post in this forum section before you buy.

Make sure to put some money aside should it need some work (like if you need to put better tyres on, wheel spin in 3rd on the motorway is NOT how the zed is supposed to behave!). 

Good luck!

try https://vehiclematsuk.com/nissan-350z-tailored-boot-mat-2003-2009.html

I got a new boot mat from there, went for 600gm standard carpet and got a red/black stripe trim. feels nice and thick but there are many much thicker options if you want. looks very smart

I guess it depends what you want, to buy a zed in near perfect condition and hope to avoid any expensive maintenance costs, or to get behind the wheel now and pay a bit extra to get any issues resolved.

my head said wait, but my heart found a zed 4 months before i'd hit my target on savings. i wound up getting a cheap zed and putting a lot of money into doing it up. i'm not gonna say that was a wise choice, but as i have good cash flow it's a choice i've not regretted.

Could you put some numbers to that? might help the resident gurus shed more light on the potential issue

Zmanalex knows zeds inside and out, as do Kaiser Motors. You've had a transmission specialist look into it, maybe the next step is to let a performance nissan expert look into it? There are other traders on these forums in the south too, though I believe the best of the rest are more focused on modifications and performance than maintenance (shoutout to Horsham who tuned my zed!). I don't know if the others would go as far as rebuilding a gearbox but I know Kaizer would. Someone might correct me on this  (we are lucky to have excellent trader support on these forums).

So I'll give another thumbs up for http://kaizermotor.co.uk, they might be over 4 hrs away from you but they are expert nissan mechanics with a focus on the performance cars and an hourly rate that's very reasonable.

Have a chat with them, by all means point out your post vid as Sly is on these forums. I'm sure they will help you run through your options.

Just gonna drop this here as food for thought...

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?sort=sponsored&radius=1500&postcode=ct161qs&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly New&onesearchad=New&make=NISSAN&model=ELGRAND&minimum-badge-engine-size=3.5

6+ seats with the DE engine. now you can continue paying a high fuel bill and treat all your friends to a 0-60 of 6.5 seconds

was looking at one of those for a 2nd car but struggled to justify doubling my fuel bill.

I have the invidia gemini which sounds better than stock when you stamp on the noise peddle but is also nice and calm when cruising round town or on the motorway, so i vote you change exhaust before you sell the zed!

PM also sent

got my HR and hot idle was about 30, while i had it that dropped to 15, which is still safe by nissan spec. stayed stable like that for quite a while. but i got the gasket done anyway and sure enough a bit had cracked. hot idle is now back up to 30psi.

my zed was over 100K when i got it and now has 160K. sure it's a cost most HRs will need at some point, but for the smiles it's put on my face well worth it. 

just keep on servicing her, 160K miles here and still going strong. got her upreved at 150K and she'd only lost 8 ponies from the factory, then they managed to cram 13 more ponies in  

if you have the HR be sure to check oil pressures as at some point the oil gallery gasket will fail

I too wanted to replace a fibreglass v1 nismo with something more plastic based. in the end i went with a stock bumper and a lip. i also had a custom grill put in by @taras@RT-Performance, they cut the plastic bars out and mounted the mesh in place. my baby looks quite different now to when i first got it with that cracked in half fibreglass bumper!

Yeah, don't go making any "investment" purchases based on 1 car left, it's a big data set and has it's fair share of flaws. This is what the website has to say about their data:

Quote

 

How accurate is this data?
As with all large government databases, there are errors in this dataset (especially since quite a lot of the data for older vehicles is based on paper records that were originally maintained by local authorities).

The most common error that crops up is vehicles that don't have exactly the correct model variant recorded on their V5 registration document. For example, a special edition Peugeot 205 Gentry might only have Peugeot 205 recorded on its V5. This can lead to some model variants appearing to be rarer than they actually are.

The key to understanding whether or not the data is accurate for your particular model is to check the model name on its V5 registration document. If it's not what you expect it to be, then it's likely that the DVLA statistics for that model aren't very accurate!

This happens more often with older vehicles, especially for those that would have originally been registered in the 1970s and earlier.

 

I'd have thought SORN would be excluded, but it turns out they are included, so the data includes cars stored in a barn to be found decades later :). it excludes cars from before SORN was a thing, and the data from pre-electronic is of course very sketchy.

It is a nice site though and the zed seems to be ageing very well

there is a great website for looking up such info, check out

https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?utf8=✓&q=nissan+350z&commit=Search

have fun browsing about and searching for all sorts

you can pack the rubber cover that houses the springs with something (eg pennies or preferably something with a big of give like a rubber grommet). that will in effect make the springs a little longer allowing them to push the boot clear of the catch. 

if you search on this forum for the "penny trick" you'll see some pics and a proper guide for it. as you probably already know the springs just come off with a twist, so no tools needed

to confirm what the others have said the button should make the boot clear the catch, but it won't open without  you lifting it. 

was that dyno result at the wheel? seemed very low to me. gotta love the burble though when they first got her started