Pingu2

welcome from a (the?!) fellow south east chilli and rays owner!

must say that the reception IS better on the original aerial; I have noticed an improvement recently having to put my original back on after someone pinched my stubby (not as exciting as it sounds!)

hmm - dont make the mistake I just made.. of looking up E8 on wikipedia.org it's a whole different universe..

my Nismo is now clearing customs and should be delivered tomorrow!

have just ordered a 3g phone too, along with Web'n'Walk plan from T-mobile - I had a burning need to be able to get weather forecasts on the move.. and have people be able to track me on google earth in realtime! This will also enable me to get traffic reports, internet radio and so on. went out for a drive this morning to test the system and it worked great - the bluetooth solar powered gps unit gets a fantastic signal seemingly wherever its placed (in fact it wasnt fixed and it flew off the dash onto the passenger seat and was still receiving 7 satellites..) and is able to communicate with the bluetooth adapter while its still locked up in the glove box thing. The PC is nearly silent with the glove box closed - certainly you can't hear it unless you sit still and listen. Have bought a 4 port usb hub which will go in the center phone cradle compartment. one problem I have atm is that Hibernate isn't really working for me - the gps doesnt reinitialise its COM ports correctly on resume.. so I have reverted to shutting down 45 sec after engine goes off - this adds about 15 seconds to the boot-time of the system but that's OK - I don't like to get in the car and dash off anyway (got to let it warm up a little!)

Well I have spent a few hours today taking the car apart, drilling holes in it and putting it back together - I now have a functioning car PC! I have replaced the BOSE head unit with a kenwood dpx501u double-din with AUX input wired up to the original BOSE speakers. I have placed a 7 inch touchscreen where the sat nav cubby is normally and routed the 3 cables (power, vga and usb(for touchscreen) down behind the radio where they join up with the power/ground/ignition wires and from there through the center tunnel and back into the glove box behind the passenger seat - I had to cut out a small hole in the glove box liner tray to pass the cables through into the glove box. The PC is an Epia SP13000 with slimine DVD drive, 40 GB hard drive, 512MB slimline RAM and all the normal ports; it's running windows xp and the shell I am using for the car PC is Centrafuse (this is software designed for a car touchscreen system). The PC is powered by an M2-ATX board, which is specifically produced for powering car PC and can handle up to 150W load. The M2-ATX supply can survive engine cranking and allows you to specify startup and shutdown delays (ie I have it set to start the PC 5 seconds after the ignition power comes on, and shut it down 45 seconds after it goes off - the PC then goes into hibernate ready to resume exactly where it was when you next start the car). The PC has a bluetooth usb adapter which connects to bluetooth GPS and OBDII widgets.. the GPS enables me to have touch screen sat nav (using Destinator, built into Centrafuse), and the OBDII enables me to monitor various engine parameters and diagnostics (it plugs into the OBDII port just below the fuel cap release button). I also have a USB wireless keyboard with a little joystick-mouse thing - don't intend to keep it in the car but it's their if needed. Finally there is wireless LAN via USB again - this will enable me to connect to home network and sync files and also to connect to local hotspots. I have taken a few pictures which I will post later. The part that's left to do is to fit the screen into the dash properly - atm its just lying in the empty space where the nav cubby should go! This is reliant on me finding a 2003 nav cubby..

oooh so orange!

yep reckon so -)

yes the door mechanism was changed completely - with the first model of the cubby it's much easier to remove the back of the cubby and fit a screen..

Yeah that contains the part (and more) - but it's 2004 model thanks though

unless you're spending a lot on the amp/speakers then an optical hook-up wont make any difference - phono connectors are perfectly good! if you are using aftermarket amp/speakers and head unit then no outlandish adapters should be needed and you will be fine with letting the audio shop supply cables.. you might want to check with them that they can get hold of a DIN mount/facia for the 350z though.

hmm not sure why you mention optical connection between mac and head unit - you will be able to connect them up with standard phono cables surely if you are intending to replace the bose amp with your 4 channel amp you mention then you wont need the PAC adapter - but you will I think need new speakers.. not sure about that as I havent looked into replacing the bose amp, but I believe the bose speakers run off a strange impedence.. but you should check that one out!

should do yep - you will need a DIN mounting kit (metra 7402 or equivalent) the adapter to the bose that you need is like: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/PAC-AOEM ... enameZWD2V

yes

hmm possibly - or they can probably order it at least - best to ask em in advance!

Yes if you have a 2004+ (well last half of 2003+) model then you will have a newer cubby that has a more complicated mechanism for the door that will make fitting a screen a pain.. the 2003 cubby had a simpler door mechanism and was in fact composed of 2 main parts - the back part can be taken off the 2003 cubby and the screen fitted easilly into it.. to make the screen fit into the 2004+ cubby you would have to cut away a large part of the cubby (ie just behind the front plate of it) and mount the screen to the front, then fabricate a bracket to attach to the screen housing that would in turn attach to the door mechanism.. of course an alternative would be to do away with the cubby and fabricate (or have a shop fabricate) a custom housing for the space that the cubby now occupies to hold the screen.. although I think this would be more expensive and harder myself (especially if it was to incorporate a covering door, which is a good plan for security reasons in my view)..

yes you need a head unit with aux in - you will also need an adapter to run between the bose amp and the head unit if you have the GT(bose) setup.. you can look for a PAC-OEM converter on ebay is best bet if you need to do this.. I ordered one from the states and it works OK, was a bit of messing around with the wiring as I didn't get a harness adapter kit (you can get one of these to make it easier if you dont fancy fiddling around with wiring schematics!) the head unit I have gone for is a double-DIN one - the kenwood dpx501 but its more like 200 quid than 100.. I didnt want a single DIN one though, I am sure you can find a cheap one for 100 somewhere..

as that post also says, the 2003 nav door makes installing the screen easier.. but need to find one!

the cubby part number is 68520M (its on section 680) I believe the cubby that was made up till july 2003 is best suited for installing a 7 inch screen in, but when I enquired at the dealer today they said they couldnt get it.. see post in Phat 350z thread.. give me a minute and ill upload a shot of the tech diagram for the part.. I am going to look into ordering it from the states..

OK - I went to the dealer just now and had a chat with the parts guy, seems he can't order the part I need.. He found the right part number (which I dont have with me right now) but his product sheet for that part only went back to 07/2003 and the part was unchanged until 2005.. I think if we want the 2003 version of the cubby then we will need to order it from USA as it was phased out before/when the 350Z was first sold in UK.. if anyone knows differently please let me know!! (I will post the part number here later)

Don't know yet Ash, will tell you tomorrow!

yep already done - only 5 quid or something but thats 2 pints down the drain

that's my thinking too..

hmm vortech installation requires a new bonnet?