Joely P

I continued to bash my head against the block paving today, although troubleshooting has brought the scheduled maintenance task of a brake fluid flush, forward by a whole year!

That looks fantastic Lee [emoji41]

I certainly can’t feel any but if I manage to get the car on a shaker plate tomorrow, I’ll be sure to pay attention to those too. At least 4 different people have had a good rock to assess the wheel bearings so I don’t hold out much hope! I have a new wheel bearing in a Nissan bag in my arsenal too so it’ll never make it that easy for me! [emoji1]

Although it doesn’t do it all the time, I also had the same thought to eliminate the possibility, nil fix. I had the pads out today and could move each piston in the caliper fairly easily, they’re smooth as silk! I rebuilt the calipers with a genuine Brembo rebuild kit about 10k miles ago so I didn’t expect to have issues but I had a good look to eliminate them. This is what I’m leaning towards now. I can get access to the shaker plates so I’ll pop over them them tomorrow and see if the tension rods move. There’s certainly no play in the lower ball joint, the steering ball joint, the king pin bearing, the upper arm bushes and the lower arm bush so if the tension rod isn’t the culprit, I’m torching the car! [emoji1] (after I’ve spanked another £500 on discs!)

Can’t you fit one and see what it looks like? [emoji1]

My tension rod bushes have covered around 20k miles and I can’t feel any physical movement in them but I guess there could be some when under more load.

They recommended that I bed in the pads fully first and then take it back for them to assess. That’s on my radar. There is no movement in the steering rack bushes, tie rods or ball joints. I can’t feel any play in the wheel bearings and the last MOT where they put it on the side-to-side jiggle machine showed no signs of movement.

Hi all, I thought I’d throw this out here to knock some heads together as this problem is really frustrating me now! It started off as a very mild vibration when braking at speeds at around 80mph and above but gradually got worse over a period of months. It was never “too” bad but I decided to try and rectify it before a trip to the Lake District and now it’s become “too” bad! As it stands I get fairly severe vibration at all speeds down to around 20-30mph where it fizzles away. When I first take the car out, it’s nice and smooth with no feedback but after the 2nd or 3rd use of the brakes it begins to worsen and after that it’s at its worst. When I release the brake pedal, all vibration stops and it’s back to smooth sailing, no vibes are evident through the seat. Here’s what has been done: - Run out checks of both front wheel hubs - DBA 4000 discs with around 10k miles on were turned down using an on car brake disc lathe - Thermal paint marking on discs show no evidence of overheat - New brake pads - New front upper control arms after play evident in passenger arm, body side bush - Calipers inspected for piston movement and pad movement - Full fluid flush and bleed - All bushes inspected (several times by servers people!) with no evidence of play This little snag has me scratching my head, any ideas? I know spanking another £500 on discs is probably a good call but I just can’t see how these discs are at fault. I did another run out check on them today and they’re perfect! Any advice appreciated.

Saw this this other day parked near Halfords at Freeport, anyone in here?

Got it all back together this morning and took it for a nice spin [emoji41]

I wouldn’t have bothered doing anything after seeing the requirement in writing that Chris has posted. It basically reads ‘install pretend rocker switch to pass this test’! Failing that, a UK cluster is your best solution, that way you can do 180MPH on your track and not have to worry.

Uh oh! I assume we’re talking a rattle from the region of the power plant area? [emoji17]

Haha! No issues with the injectors, I machined the plenum in case I needed to access them so I didn’t have to do this bloody job again for a while! The problem was with the VTC solenoid. Before I changed my injectors, the passenger side solenoid was weeping slightly so I took it out and sealed it back in. I “thought” I did a good job of it and I followed the FSM by applying a blob of RTV into the corners of the gaskets before fitting the cam cover but alas, my previous weep, turned into an even heavier weep! I noticed a drop on the garage floor when I had it out the other day, then I noticed another drop or 2 on the driveway (grrrr) when I was troubleshooting my braking vibration. I borrowed a borescope kit from work to have a dig around and find the source, which turned out to be the VTC solenoid. I have been mulling over whether I should do the job before or after the Lakes trip as a have very few spare days leading up to it, but in the end I couldn’t leave it like that and pulled the trigger! Got most of it back together now after resealing the offending area, but I had to call it a day to work a nightshift, doh! I’ll finish it off tomorrow.

Not something I really wanted to do today; some emergency maintenance!

The rears is what you’ve done wrong there! Unless you’re kindly providing music for people in your back seats? (Or you’re watching movies?) Oh and the coaxials in the front. So most of it really! [emoji13]

What are these 4 channels you speak of Nick? Not rear channels I hope?! Ah no wait, you wouldn’t be that silly, you must mean 2x component and 2x tweeter, that’s ok then.

For reference, the only difference between the JDM and US spec lenses is that hole for the sidelight bulb. Personally, I have the US spec lenses, my fog lamps are no longer in use (my switch operates the rear fog now) and my sidelight bulbs are in the fog lamp position. I find the light spread within the cluster is better with the bulb central. I tend to overthink these things!

You’re correct, it is just the lens but it is the lens assembly which have the reflectors installed.

If Mike can’t get them for you, CZP supply them. You can buy the pair of lenses but be aware of you buy the pair as listed on the website, they will be US spec lenses which don’t have the hole for the sidelight bulb. https://conceptzperformance.com/nissan-infiniti-nissan-oem-fog-light-lens-set-left-right-nissan-300zx-z32-26151-30pkt_p_622.php If you want the JDM lenses with the hole, go for these: https://conceptzperformance.com/nissan-infiniti-nissan-oem-300zx-fog-light-lens-90-96-z32-lh-passenger-jdm-26156-40p00_p_14464.php https://conceptzperformance.com/nissan-infiniti-nissan-oem-300zx-fog-light-lens-90-96-z32-rh-passenger-jdm-26151-40p00_p_14463.php

This was the very first task I did to troubleshoot this defect, the hub is perfectly clean. Also, they did this again after doing the hub run out measurements so I’m happy that this is not causing an issue. The discs were turned down whilst being bolted to the hub as that’s where the equipment mounts, this would technically eliminate any issues caused by that (not that you would machine away a run out caused by that!).

The pro-cut machine uses a pinch type cutter which refinishes the inner and out face at the same time. For that reason the disc thickness is consistent and well within spec. I shall check the pistons in more detail later, they are all definitely moving but whether any are more resistant to move than others isn’t something I’ve checked. They certainly aren’t sticking on though.

The trouble is those discs have covered relatively little miles and as the pro-cut service cost less than half the price of 1 disc, it made sense as a cost effective way to troubleshoot the defect. Now that the discs are proven to be true, I don’t really want to punt another £500+ on new discs as I can’t see what could be wrong with these ones? I supplied the machine shop with new pads and they fitted them as part of the service. This vibration is only evident when braking from around 80mph and dissipates to nothing when slowing past 60mph, or the moment I release the brake pedal. To me it screams an issue with the front brake discs but now that they’ve been machined down on the car by a computer controlled lathe, I’m struggling to work it out. I’d be very surprised if the defect was a result of the rear braking system as there are no vibrations through the seat or body of the car, only through the steering wheel (and only at illegal UK road speeds - which is handy I guess!)

That was my first port of call after my initial inspection of the components. I took it to a specialist who did run out checks of the hubs which were fine, then the discs which had a slight run out. They machined them down and now they’re bob on (this was only last week).

Yeah I did have that done. I also put the rears on the front to be doubly sure! The tyre shop assured me that my symptoms would be all the time as applied to only under braking so they weren’t convinced of the fix either!

Today started off really well, I took the kids to school and then got started on fitting the new upper arms. It was a nice straight forward job and I had them both fitted way quicker then I expected, result! Gave the wheel another wiggle test when back on and hey presto, all the play has now gone and it’s all tight up there. I then decided to take it out for a shake down run to let everything settle back in and give it a little test even though I was almost positive it was a fix - no, it wasn’t! Damn thing is still giving me vibration through the steering wheel when braking at high speed! I could argue that it’s improved and the vibration has “lessened” but either way, it’s still there, it’s enough to be annoying and it needs fixing! I then put it back in the garage (with a plan on leaving it up in the air to remove parts for overhaul) and homed in on the lower control arm bush and ball joint on the passenger side. First of all I removed the tension rod (the bush in this still feels tight and is relatively new), then dropped the bush end out to have a good jiggle of the ball joint - solid. Next I put the bush end back up tight and separated the ball joint, at this point I was really hoping to find a small amount of play but it wasn’t to be, another faultless component. I ran out of time eventually but I’ll strip down the drivers side when I next get the chance and also double check the steering rack bushes for movement. Running out of ideas!