DTA (UK)

If I were to hazard an educated guess I'd say that you have problems with either the coilpack connectors, injector connectors or the wiring loom leading to the above items. This is causing one (or more) of the cylinders not to fire when the engine is cold. Once it gets up to temperature the electrical connection is reestablished due to expansion, movement, etc. Not firing on all cylinders causes unburnt fuel to pass to the catalytic converters where it burns, causes the cats to overheat and hence produce the warning light on the dash. Solution: (1) carefully take off all the coilpack and injector connectors. Give them a clean to remove any oxidation. (2) if that doesn't help try wigling the wiring loom and/connectors with the engine running. You'll probably find the engine switching between firing on all 6 and less cylinders. You can get replacement connectors (with a small bit of loom) from MJP in the traders section. HTH Dan

Thank you very much gentlemen!

Go for a MX-5. Bought my wife one about 6 months ago (a 1998 Mk2 1.8iS) and she's loving it. It's the facelift model so no pop-up lights. Car has been spot on and completely reliable for the duration she's owned it (and she drives it hard). Looking at the service history (which was complete) the car has had no problems at all in the 8 years since it was originally bought by the previous owner. My suggestions are go for a 1.8 engine - the 1.6 just doesn't have the same pulling power (it's amazing the difference 200cc make in the "fun" department). The first of the "fixed headlight" models were built from the middle of 1998 and you can probably find a decent example on medium miles (say 70k plus) on a R-plate for around £4-£4.5k. I paid around £5k for a S-reg with 54k miles. There are two versions of the 1.8i car - the 1.8iS which is a 5 speed and 15" alloys; the 1.8i Sport which is a 6 speed with aircon and a few other mod cons and running 16" alloys. The latter is a lot rarer and usually £1k - £2k more expensive than the 1.8iS - in my opinion not worth the extra money. One word of caution - the boot space is puny and just about big enough to fit a weekend's worth of gear in if you go away for the weekend. Interior wise it is also quite small with not a lot of storage space. Don't make trips to B&Q in it and expect to put anything larger than a bag of screws in the car ;) A few month ago we decided to buy a hammock ( :rolleyes: ) on a whim. Despite the fact it came packaged in a reasonably sized box I had to put the roof down and put the box on the passenger seat. Drive home (leaving wife at B&Q) and come back to collect her. On the way home it started to rain and I (and the box) got very wet ... :slap: So, in conclusion - get your wife a 1.8iS and travel light! ;) Good luck with the search - I'm sure she'll love it. Dan PS - we drove a fair few MX5's and MGF's (even a couple of MGF-T's) and the Mazda was by FAR the better car. Everything about it felt alot better and robust.

Thanks Si, got your PM - will call you in the morning. Cheers, Dan

Guys/Gals, This morning I had McAfee point out it had quarantined a potential threat. Great I thought - lucky to have caught it. Deleted it from quarantine and thought no more of it until I noticed the little McAfee security centre icon in the task tray turned to "disabled". Tried to enable it again but nothing I do will enable the scanner again. I've just spent three hours letting the various virus, adware and spyware sweepers do their scan and nothing has been found. Does anyone have any thoughts on what to do next? I don't really want to install another virus scanner because I've only just bought the McAfee license. Could try re-installing it but want to try other (less time consuming) options first. Many thanks for thinking with me! Regards, Dan

No, not exactly. Just been and found some old stock. Got 9 identical covers with an internal diameter of 38mm which I don't know what they are for - hence the question.

Morning all! Could some kind soul with a manual Zed please give me the OUTER diameter of the stock cover that sits on the clutch oil reservoir. If memory serves me I think it was around 38mm but I'm not sure. And as I've got an auto Zed I can't go and check it out myself ... Many thanks for your help! Regards, Dan

Hi mate, Yes I have and yes it passed (two years in a row now). To be honest, I don't think the testers knew they were HIDs :) The headlamp washer rule and self leveling headlight systems is an EU rule which will eventually be introduced in the UK. But for the time being it is a grey area and there isn't any problem with having HIDs on a car without washer units and self leveling equipment. HTH Dan

Hi Trevor, As indicated by your photos, the square unit which houses your CURRENT indicators also house the side lights (UK Zeds don't have front fogs). I am not 100% sure as to what bulb fitment your side light is but I would hazard a guess that it is of type 501 just like in the JDM's. Your indicator bulb should be the regular twin pin bulbs. If you can confirm that your current side light is of type 501 (just send me a pic of the bulb and I'll be able to tell you) then you can fit one of our Ultra bright LEDs to match your HIDs. If I am right in thinking you are at some point going to wire up your 99-spec indicators in order to make them function as the new indicators then you will need new square light assemblies to replace your current indicator/side light combo units. The cheapest ones would be where they only function as fog lights (you'll need to build in a switch on the dash though), if you want them to act as fog and side lights then they are going to be more expensive. As far as I know, Luke at the ZCentre sells new light units. Have a chat with him about pricing and let me know what bulbs you need. HTH, Dan

Yes, in JDM's the square lights in the bumper are both fog and side lights consisting of two separate bulbs as follows: Fog: H3 55W (with bullet connector rather than spade) Side: 501 (aka "capless") HTH Dan

I sell quite a lot of silicone and there are different "grades" of the stuff. The stuff you see being sold by Smithy, me, ebay, Demon Tweeks, etc is all (usually) three ply silicone hose. This is manufactured specifically to be used with air or coolant. Put oil or fuel through these and over time the hose will be eaten away from the inside out - so no good. Very small quatities of oil in with the air shouldn't be a problem but large quantities are. If you want silicone hoses that work with oil, fuel or other corrosive liquids then you'll have to go for farmaceutical grade silicone which effectively quadruples the price per meter of hose. My suggestion for the oil pipes is to stick with OEM Nissan hoses - these are created for this particular use and will last another 10 years if you replace them. As for vacuum tubing - that's a whole different kettle of fish. Vacuum tubing is extruded from one piece of silicone and is ONLY useable with air. No coolant, oil or fuel should ever be put through vacuum tubing. HTH Dan

Sorry folks - according to my wife it is all my fault :wack: See, I washed my car yesterday afternoon and that guarantees rain. I also waxed the car and we had quite a lot of wind overnight as a result. Just be happy I didn't wash, polish and wax the missus' (car ;)) as well - God knows we'd all be up to our knees in snow! :wack: Dan

Yep, I'm your man for these :D! I can supply colour coordinated side lights (£17/pair) and slightly whiter fog lights. Unfortunately nobody makes halogen bulbs that are rated at a "true" 6000K. I say "true" because there are some manufacturers that claim their bulbs are rated at 6000K but having tried them myself I can confidently say that they only get as far as 4500~5000K, so still not white enough. Have a look at the attached pics I took of my own car. It has a 6000K HID kit in the dip beams, Ultra bright LED's in the side lights and Xtreme white fog lights. The fog lights look quite yellow in comparison but when compared to stock bulbs these are quite a bit whiter. So in conclusion: Side Lights: £17.00 Fog Lights: £11.00 Postage: £1.68 Total: £29.68 Fog ligths are in stock, Side lights coming in early part of next week. Regards, Dan

Thanks very much Steve - the one I've got is not too bad after trying it out nicely but the crease down the middle is quite nasty. Appreciate the new one mate! Absolutely agreed, I've had the unenviable task of getting something similar organised and I must have aged at least 20 years in the process ... ;)

Got mine on Saturday. Unfortunately Mr postie felt the need to fold the calendar in half and jam it in the letterbox with about 20 other envelopes where it sat (in the rain) for over 4 hours. Upon coming home I found a rather sorry looking pile of soggy mail sitting in the door (don't mind the bills getting ruined but the calendar was a real shame). Dried it out and it is now looking half decent. With regard to quality and content, the paper quality and photography quality is very good. Perhaps I may suggest getting twelve cars together and getting them professionally photographed for next year's calendar - just give that extra bit of professional look to the whole item. Other than that I tip my hat to those involved in the production of this item - a job very well done! ATB Dan

Again ... slight hijack of this thread ... so apologies up front. Splitting the headlights and giving them a good clean up is absolutely recommended, whether you're installing HIDs or not. However, painting the inserts silver/chrome or chrome plating them is only good for aestetic enhancement - don't be fooled into believing that this will enhance the light output one bit. The light from the bulbs is either refracted (dip beam) or reflected (high beam) by the lens and reflector respectively. Emitted light should not be reflected by the silver/chrome insert as this will cause scatter and disrupt the beam pattern. Hijack over ... ;)

OK - here is the definitive answer (I sell these so know what is what ;)): If you're fitting HID's, for UK and JDM Z32's the dip beam needs to be H3 fitment, high beam is H1 fitment and fog lights are again H3 fitment. The 9005/9006 reference is for US/Canadian Z32's and WILL DEFINITELY NOT fit a JDM/UK/Euro Z32. There is usually some confusion regarding H3 and H3C bulbs but this is only relevant if you're replacing the bulbs with regular halogen bulbs. In that case if you have a JDM Z32 you'll need H3C bulbs for your dip beam. If you have a UK Z32 then you need H3 bulbs. If you are installing a HID kit then both JDM and UK Z32's need to have an H3 kit fitted. All the connections for these bulbs will be there so there will be no guessing which wire connects to where. If you're still after a good kit, and decide not to go for David's (Legrath) then give me a shout and I'll sort you out with one of our kits. Hope the above has been helpful in one way or another. Regards, Dan

Go and get in touch with Eric (Lymon on this forum). He runs DTA-Motorsport in The Netherlands and is probably the person with the most knowledge about these cars in Europe. He works (tuning & maintenance) on cars which are coming in from all over Europe.

Is that Tony Lack's old car? Always liked that one ;)

This is correct.

Tom, It is not possible to permanently make alterations to any of the maps on the ECU - for this to be possible you'd need a write function. Or, if you're feeling very flush you can buy a Zemulator from the US and hook it up to our ConZult. That way you can make permanent changes as the Zemulator overrides the ECU chip. However, using our ConZult you can adjust various parameters on the fly and use that to create a custom map (which can then be burned to an eprom). HTH Dan

Yeah, I'm aware of those facts and tried a few methods but with no effect. Will go out tomorrow and give it another go. Can someone confirm that this mod also works on UK spec Zeds please? Thanks! Dan

I would have thought that this is possible. I don't have direct experience with this but I do have a customer who's got a Fiat Stylo Abarth and he's had a duplicate SIM card made which he sticks into his in-car telephone (a nifty device linked to the stereo). So his phone rings when he's out of the car and his car rings when he's driven. Perfect solution. HTH Dan

I've got H3C's in stock priced at £15 per PAIR plus £1.50 postage. Give me a call on 07044 016586 and I can get a pair off to you asap. By the way - you can use the H1's in your car's main beam ;) Regards, Dan

Hmmmm ... that's interesting because when I tried doing that it didn't work for me. Wonder why? Then again, my car is JDM so there may be a difference in where the bulb housing is earthed.