Joely P

Smithy’s car was a bit tasty too.

I like the Mercedes one [emoji41]

I agree the draft you linked was open to interpretation, but the guidance for fitting aftermarket HID headlamps that Craig linked is a bit more cut and dry.

Haha cool [emoji41]

Out of curiosity, are 99spec headlamps E marked? If not, how do you prove to the tester that they’re an OEM fit part? Otherwise if they’re assumed to be aftermarket, by those rules it’s a fail item as it has no self level or cleaning function!

Let’s put this to our resident tester - Chris, you’re up!

Ironically, my daily drive has an opening for a spare wheel, but the model I have was the only one that didn’t have it installed as it has a Bose sub in the hole instead! Maybe I’m just the kinda guy that prioritises his music over his Boy Scout motto!

[emoji13]

Ah yes I remember, it was about £103,467.99 right Trish? [emoji13]

Simon and I have discussed this solution, what size are they Andrew? Next time I’m round in the Z, is there any chance I could try them on with a stock space saver over my Brembos?

Looking goooood [emoji41]

I launch the drivers side off a cliff and leave the passenger side installed.

It’s the diameter of the wheel and tyre that is the problem, it’s too big to go in the opening. I have no interest in hacking the car apart for something that really isn’t an issue to me. I’ll let you remind me when it is an issue. On mine, the void has been filled was sheets of very light closed cell foam for noise suppression, then the board you see that the amps mounts on is a Kevlar honeycomb composite with threaded insert mount points for the amps. The rest is the space is storage.

As the original spare doesn’t go over the front calipers (and my rear wheels don’t fit on the front), I opted to remove it! I have a Skyline R33 GTR space saver which fits perfectly over the brakes, but not in the boot recess! When I’m out and about locally, I leave that at home and if I’m ever unlucky enough to need it, wife recovery services would be called upon! If I travel further afield, I strap it in the boot.

I’d say that’s an original. It certainly doesn’t fit like most aftermarket ones (badly)!

To be fair, the tracing paper toilet rolls were actually quite interesting. Is it still used today do you know? Who in the right mind commissioned that as a suitable cheap alternative to Cushelle? Was it really that much cheaper? I remember it from school band recall you were better of wiping with a crisp packet and you’d probably do less damage to your hoop with that too!

So today was all about power; not horsepower but electrical power! I managed to find a couple of hours spare this morning to crack on with some Z related electrical gremlins. First up was my audio setup. A few months ago I heard a noise coming from underneath my false floor, the noise was coming from my subwoofer amplifier so I removed it to investigate. Seemingly one of the capacitors had enough of capaciting and the noise was it having a final hissing fit tantrum! It was still working ok but today it has come out again to be sent to the manufacturer for a good service, repair and overhaul. Ready to go, luckily the manufacturer isn’t too far from me so I’ll run it up there on Monday. The next job was to tackle my starter motor. It has been intermittently not engaging the flywheel on its first attempt for a while now, but the other morning, it took 5 attempts for it to start the car! I can hear it spinning, but it doesn’t engage the engine so I’m assuming the solenoid that throws out the gear into the flywheel is failing, nevertheless, it’s coming off and going for a spruce up too. Before I remove the starter though, I need to troubleshoot what has been making the supercharger whining noise on my non-supercharged VG! I suspect it is the alternator whining as it happened after I installed new injectors with the plenum off and went on a bit of a cleaning frenzy, maybe some excess fluid has disagreed with it! Plan is to remove the tension from the alternator belt and see if the noise stops, if it doesn’t I’ll move onto the power steering pump, if it still doesn’t stop I’ll de-tension the A/C compressor and if that doesn’t fix it I’ll drive it to Jimmer’s! If it is the alternator, that’ll be coming off with the starter and going to the same place for overhaul. I didn’t have time to carry out this troubleshooting today, but I have managed to prepare the car by getting it up in the air ready. I’m very particular about jacking, not just for safety reasons but also to protect the car, so it is never a 2 second job to get the car in the air for me. I’m not sure how many of you know, but we lost a member a few years ago due to a jack failure whilst he was under the car. So with the car now up in the air, I can tackle these jobs as and when I get the chance (probably late next week). Whilst it’s off the road I’ll also treat her to a new pair of Bosch 02 sensors that I’ve had waiting for a while. When idling the left bank tends to go lazy and stop pulsing, Jim suspects it might be preventing my idle from being smoother. Anyway, time to plaster a ceiling before picking the kids up from school and taking them for their weekly swimming lessons. [emoji41]

Thanks again everyone [emoji106] And thank you Richard [emoji41]

It’s currently Tuednesday for a nightshift worker!

The velour was called ‘セクシーなベロアの快適さ’ in Japanese. The leather option was called ‘汗ばむようなお尻の太もも’.

No, the engineers at Nissan avoided this issue by installing the pedal box on LHD cars into the RH footwell. It can be a pain at times without a passenger to help but you soon get used to leaning over to steer and all that important other controlley stuff.

[emoji13]

The word engine should be on the engine side, the arrow points to the servo.

I’ve just got back from a nice chilly afternoon thanks to Nickz32. One of his friends is a photographer who does shoots for several magazines and Nick sent him a couple of pics and details of my car a couple of weeks ago to run by the editors. Bizarrely, of all the magazines to want to run a feature, Banzai magazine came back wanting to do a full 6-7 page feature on the car! [emoji41] So today was the day, the weather was cold but there was some awesome light for a fantastic collection of shots. I had a great afternoon and the best part about it was that the shoot location was only 4.3 miles from my house, result! We had a great afternoon and I really look forward to seeing the final article in a couple of months or so. It’s very interesting to think that times are changing from an audience that I would mostly associate with wild body kits and massive wings, to an appreciation of stock(ish) bodied “OEM+” examples. Either way, it’s great to get the Z32 out there some more. The ground was really not too bad at all, a very small amount of the fine stuff on a 300m stretch of a country A road, but the rest of the 8 minute journey was navigated through unsalted and dry B roads so an awesome winters drive. [emoji41] Nevertheless, I gave the car an extensive strip down underseal and cavity wax about 6 years ago (which took over a year to complete in my tiny garage with the car up in the air and all 4 wheels off!) and has also had the accessible areas touched up by Jimmer over the years. I try to do a full inspection of all the nooks and crannies around once a year, including the cavities and I did this only a few weeks ago using a borescope kit so I’m happy that I have suitable protection for a one-off trip to mark another cool chapter of my Z’s history!