DannyBoy

+1 Lets be honest, a £50 Timex will keep time just as well as a £15,000 Rolex, so the only point in having a really expensive watch is for the wrist bling. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if you told me that Victorinox was only £100, and it doesn't seem like it actually does anything special to earn its pricetag. DB Actually you are wrong... the £50 Timex will prob keep better time than the Rolex Yea, lol, you're almost certainly right. I went through several swiss automatics (not quite Rolexes though) that lost like half a minute a day before I gave up and went back to a quartz, DB

Thing is, even if the GT4 didn't hold a premium (which it does) they're still 2005 cars, and I think you'd really struggle to even find a regular 2005 UK GT-spec car for £6k. Unfortunately you've also chosen the two colours that carry a slight premium, lol. For £6k I'd be looking at imports, as UK cars for £6k will mostly be galactic mileage or CAT D etc. If you can stretch to £8k you'll get a solid 2004/5 UK car DB

+1 Lets be honest, a £50 Timex will keep time just as well as a £15,000 Rolex, so the only point in having a really expensive watch is for the wrist bling. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if you told me that Victorinox was only £100, and it doesn't seem like it actually does anything special to earn its pricetag. DB

I just had my front discs skimmed for £50 a disc, so if you reckon you could sell the pair for over £100 you'd be quids in. Is there a market for used (and previously damaged) brake discs? DB

If it's a CDoo9 gearbox (shown by a sticker on the bell housing) then it will not have the concentric slave cylinder of the later gearboxes. It most likely came from a late-registered DE Rev-Up car. Out of interest, what are you paying for it? because i've seen some people taking the p!ss with CD009s recently. DB

Well, from that I can see, ignoring under the bonnet, the only physical change is the bonnet, which changed in 2007? And then the interior changes in 2006?2007? Basically the interior is the main cosmetic difference, and that changed along with everything except the bonnet in 2006. The easiest way to spot a 2006 over an earlier car is the little dip in the bottom lip of the front bumper (the bumper changed for 2006), but if you look closer the front and rear lights are different too. For me the external changes aren't worth spending the extra money for, but the interior and the improved engines definitely are. DB

Just to confuse you even more the new bonnet isn't a 2006 thing, it didn't happen until 2007 when the HR engine was released. All the other changes happened in 2006 for the DE Rev-Up engine. DB

No, get a remap AFTER doing everything you plan to do or you'll just have to re-tune every time you put something else on, or better yet save up and get it all done at once. an Uprev remap is around the £400 mark, but that's for a custom dyno tune, not just plugging in a chip (which you can't do to the 350z). DB

Interesting thought DannyBoy. Where did you get the replacement gearbox from? Did they need to take the old gearbox off you as part of the deal? Original thread here viewtopic.php?f=10&t=59120 and I still have my old gearbox which I'll probably flog dirt cheap on ebay as a restoration project. If you have the time to find one then I think a new gearbox would be the best solution, especially if you have an earlier DE engined car as the gearboxes from the later cars (up to 2006) were significantly better and will be newer/lower mileage. DB

Have you thought about just replacing the gearbox? I just had mine swapped for a newer one rather than refurbing as in my view it worked out as better value. I got a 23k mile 2006 gearbox for less than the quoted cost for your bearing replacement. I got Jez at H-dev to fit mine but if you felt up to it people seem to be suggesting you could do it yourself. Just a thought. DB

So, I've finally got the CD009 gearbox that I bought months ago fitted along with a new clutch and flywheel. The work was all done by H-Dev, and as I've come to expect from Jez it was all hassle free and on time/quote, so thanks again The point was to solve a pretty bad 2nd and 3rd gear synchro failure, which happens to some degree on quite a few earlier cars. A few people wanted to know if this was a good option to solve a clunky gearbox so thought I'd post a verdict having now had the car back for a few days. First off the Exedy clutch feels VERY different to the knackered stock clutch; much smoother, lighter and more progressive. The gearbox itself has been a bit of a mixed bag really. The actual shifting feels much better than the old box; It'll go smoothly into any gear with no clunking even from cold, so a good result there. However, it seems to have some sort of slack somewhere in the input side, which presents itself as a 'clack' sort of noise when you bring the clutch back up quickly after a gear change. It's definitely on the input side and not the driveshafts or diff because it happens in neutral too. Fairly sure it's slack because if I bring the clutch up slowly it doesn't happen. The new box came out of a 2006 rev-up car and has (allegedly) done about 23K miles, so i wouldn't really have expected it to be making wierd noises, does anyone else's 2006 car do anything like this? Overall I'm calling it a net gain because even with the 'clack' the new box is still much quieter than the old one, and is much nicer to drive. For someone who uses the car as a daily driver, I'd say this is a worthwhile thing to get done as its made the car much easier and more relaxing to drive, but you always have to bear in mind that you're never going to know exactly what any pre-owned gearbox has had done to it in its previous life which adds an element of luck to it. DB

Paired with the right set of cams they have been shown to give good N/A gains, but of course when you add up cams, headers and fitting costs you're most of the way to a Vortech. DB

Beleive it or not, you can actually fit a 1m square pane of 1/8 inch saftey glass in the zed Its practicality increases with your ingenuity. DB

I agree with Neil. Definitely sounds like synchros to me, the synchros on my box are shot and it does mainly show itself on slower shifts. If I'm really slamming it between gears it just feels a bit stiff, but on a more relaxed shift it'll crunch. Slightly odd you only seem to be having 1st and 3rd issues though, as 2nd is the most common 'crunch' gear in my experience. DB

So one of the family cars recently gave up (Saab 900S, spectacular bottom end failure at 120K miles), and a replacement is needed. The criteria really is that it can seat 4 people for short journeys, is very reliable, and can be had for under £4k with less then 80K on the clock. We already have a VW Sharan as a family bus, so this is really only to have a sensible second car for other family members to use as none of them are insured on the Zed. It will need to be used for occasional long business-related journeys for one or two people, so a dirt-cheap hatchback shed won't really cut it. The two options I've narrowed it down to are an E46 320/325 (good to drive, nice to be in, very reliable, lots on the market) or an EP3 Civic Type-S 4 door (good to drive, very reliable, lots of bang for buck). I've gone on second-hand knowledge here and don't have any experience of either car 'in the flesh' so could anyone offer any wisdom on either choice? Or is there another really obvious option that I've missed? Thanks in advance for any help guys. DB

I'm pretty familiar with this site, having used it heavily in a data-gathering exercise when researching financial capability within the Military. TBH it seemed to me that the most valuable part of the site was the forum, as (like here) there are a lot of people there who are not affiliated with or employed by the site who offer extremely sound advice. luckily i can't see a change of ownership changing this, especially if Martin Lewis is retaining editorial control. Still, it does seem like the whole world is turning into a comparison site DB

You're probably better off trying to find a CD009 box from a 2006 car than refurbing, as this was the strongest gearbox made for the DE engined cars. The issue with the earlier gearboxes is weak synchros as you've pointed to, and so unfortunately a refurb would probably just defer the problem as you can't replace the synchros with stronger ones, just OEM-grade items which will fail again with time. DB

I also spend a silly amount of time detailing my cars, and sort of always have done although i think it's got worse since having the Zed. For me it's got nothing to do with preserving the paintwork for resale value or anything like that, it's about two things: the pride taken in a good job, and the feeling that the car deserves to look its best and stand out and that i'd be letting it down by keeping it scruffy and dirty. It's all very well saying that detailing is a waste of time and money for no financial return, but not everything is measured in £ notes. DB

Missed it yesterday and just watched the highlights on iPlayer, pretty glad i didn't waste my sunday afternoon really DB

You are kidding right? For a grand more you could get an early import, which would have the added bonus of having wheels attached. That's a proper Cat C, not an expensive cosmetic damage job. The suspension and running gear down the passenger side is clearly fooked, and suspension is just one of those things that I wouldn't be happy with being that extensively damaged. Just me perhaps but i wouldn't touch it with a barge pole with so many cheap Zeds out there which aren't write-offs. DB

Note: you'll probably spend about 30hrs on your first one, as it's a fine art completing each cycle, knowing when to move onto the next grit and so on. You'll also find that you'll become impatient and want it shining like no tomorrow. You must avoid that feeling as you'll only have to retrace steps back to before getting ahead of yourself. A bench polisher and compounds are a must for getting the best results. I invested over £200 for the equipment. But would you not then have a powder coated plenum rather than a polished one? DB

WANT DB

I love it personally. Not getting the comparison to chavvy fart cans really the rasp doesn't kick in until 4k, and i've never heard a 4-pot engine sound like a VQ at 4krpm through a milltek. Might sound boomier on a different exhaust but on the milltek it's awesome. On topic: I'd just assumed it was resonance because it only happens in a narrow RPM band. DB

+1, no matter what the real dyno says, the butt-dyno will be very impressed. DB

To gain more than 25bhp on a N/A car is very hard. Look at your gains from before to after the dyno. Unfortunately I only have before and after the tune. The lowest figure I have is 290bhp with everything (milltek, berks, spacer) installed but not tuned. final figure is 307, so according to that the tune got 17bhp more out of it. Mark I realise you're an undisputed expert on this so correct me if i'm wrong, but I thought the ECU took a while to dial out breathing mods back to stock power, so the '290' figure should still have been a few hp higher than bone stock even with no remap. If we call it 5bhp then that's an overall gain of 22bhp on a fairly conservative tune (which I requested). I realise the above is epic ricer-maths, but looking at it this way 300 doesn't seem unreasonable does it? DB