Project: WeaponiZed

[V1H]

On 08/04/2019 at 09:00, blobbish said:

Nice Idea, but I'd be cautious of the placement of those drain pipes. A small leak would impair the front tyres.....

Thanks but no worries, they'll be hidden within the undertray once the front bumper is back on. I could catch and hold a 5cm deep oil puddle with it 

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by V1H

[V1H]

Been a special weekend as I got my TORQEN Big Brake Kit - Xtreme [#TRQ-BBK370] delivered, Friday afternoon:

Edited April 27, 2019 by V1H

[V1H]

Acquired a mirror-polished S/S cover for the radiator expansion tank from @RDON who has a limited stock of custom fabrication. Very happy with the quality and finish of the piece (all precision laser-cut). Many thanks buddy! 

Edited May 2, 2019 by V1H

[V1H]

I had a day off at today's fantastic sunshine and (partly) installed the recently delivered Torqen Xtreme BBK. The passenger side is done and it looks UNBELIEVABLE 

But judge for yourself...

 

Disks Comparison:

Calipers Comparison:

 

Comparison w/o wheels:

 

Comparison with wheels:

 

Close-ups:

[davidv10]

The difference with those brakes is quite something!

[V1H]

Yesterday I replaced my Mishimoto Weighted Shift Knob (363 g) with a Raceseng Contour Shift Knob (500 g). Big thanks to @Adrian@TORQEN for supplying it from USA!

While I liked the looks of the Mishimoto I didn't quite warm up to the feel of the shifting action with the stick-like shape, or maybe I grew less fond of it over time. So, I got the even heavier satin finished stainless steel knob with the optional Gate 3 Engraving and I much prefer the shift action feel it gives over the Mishimoto. The Raceseng also looks good with the OEM satin silver interior trims.

Because the Raceseng knob is much stouter and even heavier the gears clunk into place with a precise metallic feel and even shorter travel. I totally love the new shifter feel!

 

[nissanman312]

The new one looks loads better 

[V1H]

Went for a P1 service to H-Dev yesterday. Driver side turbo is leaking some oil through the compressor outlet into the intake pipe, around 10ml/100miles. Yet to be decided if further investigations, i.e. engine out job, is required.

Nice photo from the under-body:

 

Then, the mechanic pulls her back onto the forecourt. Undramatically, though, as he's a gentleman 

 

By the way, my brother standing in above clip (been visiting me for a couple days) was utterly shocked by the savage forward thrust when I accelerate hard from standstill with my tires properly warmed up and good tarmac able to hook from 1st gear w/o slip despite over 400 ft lb of torque. Yes, those 305mm MPS4S are insane! He was much looking forward to experiencing my Z and he had never experienced anything this violent by a long mile (he used to own a mapped AWD Audi S3). He also said my Z is unbelievably beautiful and truly special that he never realised just from the pictures and videos he had seen. I think it finally dawned him why I'm so obsessed about and constantly dumping ££k into my Z while he's just into mobile phone gaming 

Edited July 17, 2019 by V1H

[V1H]

BRAUM seats have also just arrived and waiting for me to install them! 

[V1H]

Replaced my exhaust tips for Quad tips. Due to the red diffusor I can, however, only fit h-style (not Y-style) and 3" inlet with max 4" outlets, and a total length of 20-25 cm. Since I didn't want to start welding but something ready I ended up after a lengthy search with Akrapovič-style quads from AliExpress. I was hesitant using the Chinese Ebay place but the quality is decent (if not perfect).

BEFORE - AFTER

Edited July 20, 2019 by V1H

[davey_83]

Looks fabulous, will all four tips smoke? 

[V1H]

15 hours ago, davey_83 said:

Looks fabulous, will all four tips smoke? 

Yes.  Although the outer ones are straight 3” whereas the welded-on tubes for the inner ones are bent (h-shape) and a little narrower (i think 2”)

You might see it in the attachment.

 

Edited July 21, 2019 by V1H

[davey_83]

Look smart!! I fancy a pair of singles for my 350z.

[Lee370Z]

I saw this at Trax Donington and I thought that it was a stunning car. 

 

I love what you have done to it! 

[V1H]

This is an install guide for my BRAUM seats, but will apply to other aftermarket seats, too.

You will loose the factory seats motorized seat control and the seat heater function
You will save 4 kg weight per seat

 

As you know, I ordered:
- pair of BRAUM Racing Elite-X seats, Red Komodo Edtion [#BRR1X-RDRT] that include dual lock sliders
- pair of Planted Technology seat brackets [#SB096DR and #SB096PA]

 

I also needed to get extra hardware (per seat):
- four M8 bolts and nuts for the Planted seat bracket
- one 7/16" UNF nuts for the factory seat belt buckle mounts
- one 2R2 resistor to terminate the SRS harness (2.0–2.2 Ω is fine, wattage is uncritical).

Passenger seat extras, only:

- one 15R resistor (11–20 Ω is fine, wattage is irrelevant)

- Nissan Fog Light switch, or any toggle switch of your choice

 

Driver seat

1) The factory seat removal procedure is found in the workshop manual page SE-71. Basically:

• Remove headrest
• Slide seat forth/back to unbolt 2 floor bolts behind/in front of seat (M14 socket)
• Disconnect battery and wait 3 mins
• Lift seat and unplug OEM wire harness, i.e. 3 plugs: SRS (yellow), seatbelt sensor (small white), motor/heater (big white)
• Carefully take out the seat

 

2) You may now test fit the seat bracket, which should line up with the 4 factory bolt holes.
Note, the Americans labelled our driver side seat bracket with 'Passenger'.
But don't install it! The seat bracket needs to be bolted onto the Braum seats, after you first installed the sliders.

 

3) Turn over the Braum seat and bolt on a pair of sliders, then clamp in between a handle. The handle must face forward and release the lock mechanism by pulling up (when seated), not down!
The sliders have no easy orientation, so look closely at my photo:

 

4) Use the four extra purchased M8 bolts (facing up) and nuts (facing the floor) to bolt the seat bracket onto the sliders as per photo:

 

5) Undo the seat belt buckle from the factory seat and bolt onto the seat bracket, reusing the factory 7/16" UNF bolt together with the extra purchased 7/16" UNF nut:

 

6) Route the seatbelt sensor harness under the seat, which I secured with the yellow factory clips.
As for the yellow SRS plug, you could splice into the factory harness before the yellow female plug (photo from step A) and terminate it with a resistor. Or, like I opted to do, cut off the yellow male plug of the OEM seat and reuse it and terminate after that:

The termination is done to satisfy the ECU that will look for the presence of a 'working airbag', which is presumably a heater element (the SRS charge igniter) with an electronic characteristic identical to a 2.1 Ω DC resistor in series with a small inductance of 2.6 µH.
I appears, from what ppl did before, the ECU is successfully fooled by a simple 2R0 or 2R2 resistor.
I ended up ordering a 2R ±1% 3W resistor and a 2.7 µH ±20% inductor - probably overkill. (Would only matter if the ECU test signal was AC rather than DC where impedance deviates from resistance as frequency goes up. Bloody scientist in me )

 

7) Place Braum seat into car, reconnect 2 of the 3 harness plugs, bolt down the seat bracket onto the floor. Then reconnect battery if you're done here.

 

If you get an SRS DTC (Airbag dash light) you can reset it with this procedure.

 

Passenger seat

The passenger side seat installation is identical, except you have to also deal with the factory passenger occupancy sensor.

 

I’ve seen people transferring over the occupancy sensor by slicing up the factory and aftermarket seats, but with mixed success rates. The occupancy sensor is a bendy pressure sensor that changes resistance as weight sits on it. But that actuation is sensitive to the placement of the sensor and the cushion type/thickness above it (after all, it’s clearly tailored to the factory seat characteristics).

I therefore decided to not carry over the occupancy sensor but use a fixed resistor and toggle switch to emulate the sensor actuation for empty/child and adult occupant. 
 

The factory seat's passenger occupancy sensor, it turns out, is less sophisticated than I anticipated. As shown in the photo, the sensor simply splices into the wire from the seat belt buckle:

I measured the actuation of the passenger occupancy sensor. It acts less as a continuously variable resistor and more as a simple switch, which discriminates between two possible states, only:
I) IF seat is empty or occupied by a light weight person (child) THEN resistance = high (150 MΩ – 1 GΩ)
II) IF seat occupied by adult weight THEN resistance  = low (~20 Ω – 11 Ω)
The transition between I) and II) is abrupt. As I slowly loaded the seat with body weight, resistance just jumped at one point from 150 MΩ to a couple 100 Ω and then quickly approaching 20-odd Ω.  The passenger occupancy sensor can be approximated by a binary resistance state, HIGH or LOW. I suspect the sensor acts as Pull-up/Pull-down resistor in a simple logic gate circuit to provide the ECU with a Hi/Lo voltage signal.
While the sensor states might well be approximated by infinity (open circuit) and zero (short circuit), I decided to emulate the unoccupied state with o.c. and the occupied state with 15 Ω, via an ON-OFF toggle switch.

 

I made a drawing to show the simplicity of all the affairs, no magic or complexity here. In fact, one could even completely ignore the lost Passenger Occupancy sensor, leaving its connector disconnected. The car would merely never nag you to fasten the seat belt when the passenger seat is occupied. Note, passenger SRS is unaffected, and always active in the 370Z. After all, the system cannot distinguish between an empty/child seat with the seat belt unbuckled (R = high) and an adult occupant with the seat belt buckled up (R = high): 

So, I carried over the seat belt buckle with its wire harness to the Braum seat. As before, I salvaged the yellow SRS connector from the factory seat and terminated with a 2.2 Ω resistor (actually I used a 2.0 Ω resistor in series with a 2.7 µH inductor, but don't bother).
Finally I salvaged the white passenger occupancy sensor connector (cut off the sensor's plastic wires) and soldered on a white 2-wire lead, shown here:

 

When I installed the seat with bracket I ran the white lead under the carpet into the center console, since I wan to use a Nissan Fog Light Switch (Ebay) by the cup holder as my toggle switch for an OEM look.
 

The switch is still in transit.

Once there, I'll have to solder on the 2 wires with the 15 Ω on one of them.
I'll also attach a little custom sticker to cover the fog light symbol.

Edited August 2, 2019 by V1H

[ILUVUNICORNS]

Loving the thread. Cracking job mate. 

[Silverthorn]

@V1H That is an unbelievably helpful bit of information! That will save me a tonne of time working out how to get around the occupancy sensor when i pop my Bride's in!

 

Thanks a lot mate 

 

Awesome write up as per usual.

[V1H]

Forgot to upload a couple photos with both Braums fitted:

Edited August 2, 2019 by V1H

[Mikey_S]

Those seats look amazing!!! Such a good looking car! 

[V1H]

Hello, I just upgraded my original 6.5 year old SLA battery with an ultra-lightweight LiFePO4 battery Powerlite PS-30. This 30 Ah model goes for £250, which sounds expensive, but is perhaps the cheapest weight-saving mod there is. Which other aftermarket part saves ~15 kg for just £250? 

LiFePO4 also lasts ~5x as long as Lead-Acid batteries, and has no memory effect.

Cranking power is much greater, too, when comparing like-for-like size. Hence, this small 30 Ah battery has 800 CCA, which is even slightly more than the big old one's 740 CCA rating!

 

As seen in the photo, I added the optional copper terminals to my purchase (#PS-CU0930). The battery comes delivered with an unbranded cheap LiFePO4 specific charger, but I opted to buy a proper CTEK Lithium XS multi-stage charger with trickle function so I can plug in my 'garage queen' over winter and forget. 

(Just make sure you don't charge your LiFePO4 with a conventional Lead-acid battery charger)

 

Although such a (internally 4-cell) LiFePO4 battery has a nominal voltage rating of 12.8 V, a single cell when fully-charged has 3.65 V, that is, the battery voltage is 14.6 V (100%). I read that a cell charged to 3.4 V is already 95% full, that is, 13.6 V (95%) for this battery. And a conventional automotive alternator outputs around 14.4 V. So, no worries, this battery will charge to about 99% anyway. The battery also has internal short-circuit, deep charge and over-charge protection, as well as, a built-in voltage LED display.

Edited October 17, 2019 by V1H

[V1H]

I also (what I feel) slightly harmonised the exterior looks by capping off the candy-red wing mirrors with EVO-R Carbon Fibre Covers [#370003]. I bought some 3M double-sided tape and stuck them on pretty securely.

I think, now the red touch on the car directs one's focus more toward the big Brake Kit

 

I also have a set of darker grey Nismo Door Handles 2018+, which I'll install soon.

I got, both, the carbon covers and Nismo door handles from @Adrian@TORQEN, which was of course a delight to deal with 

[nissanjuke]

love the idea of this battery as my battery does not fire up m z  ,if i have left it more than 2 weeks without using it! 

[V1H]

I chopped up my EVO-R LED Fog/Brake light because the LEDs were too dim for me. I binned all parts except for the plastic case and built a new light from a red 5050-SMD LED flexi strip. The brighter LEDs command a bit more current and run directly off 12V. In contrast, EVO-R light has two 78M05 voltage regulators to power its its 555 Timer and all LEDs with 5V only.

Hence, I built a new 555 Timer circuit with 12V LED supply:

I bought a 555 Astable Timer PCB [#555 AST KIT] to generate the flashing for the brake light (freq and duty cycle can even be trimmed). But this circuit switches Gnd, and to make an easy compatibility with the solid Fog light, i.e. two separating diodes (SS24), I needed a switched 12V (like the original EVO-R circuit did it). So, I added a P-MOSFET (I had a IRF9520 lying around) to the output. Took me a little moment to figure out that it must be p-channel, not n-channel, and how to hook up a MOSFET; haven't had an electronics project in a while 

I also added the 4k7 resistor to its Gate, called pull-up, to make it a defined default OFF. Again, had one lying around, noncritical value. I sourced two decent diodes and connected them facing each other as shown. This way, when the car applies 12V to the FOG light wire, the STOP light wire cannot see the 12V and potentially corrupt the CANBUS - and vice versa. Also, the factory fog light is a current-hungry light bulb. Thus, in order to keep the CANBUS happy I added the 30R  / 30W power resistor (dissipates an extra 5 Watt) parallel to the LEDs to burn more power than needed in modern days and simulate the old days 

 

I cut the new LED flexi strip into groups of 3 LEDs (You cannot cut them any other way but multiples of 3) and arranged them on a cut-to-size aluminium plate in a 4x4 matrix. The 17th and 18th LED I wrapped around and behind the base plate. I had to make sure the PCB and power resistors are as shallow as possible to fit into the EVO-R case.

 

Because the new LEDs are really bright, I made a black 4x4 hole mask to better separate the individual LEDs and better resemble a typical F1 style rain light (or, coincidentally a similar style to the A90 Supra! )

 

This is flashing with all assembled and the smoked lens sealed up with some silicone:

 

Back on the car:

Note, the red light halo is not from the Fog light but a hidden under-body LED strip directed at the Motordyne Helmholz cans that comes on together with the tail lights ... OOPS 

Edited November 15, 2019 by V1H

[nissanjuke]

nice your car just gets nicer every time i see it ,love all your mods  pure car porn 

[Umster]

13 minutes ago, nissanjuke said:

nice your car just gets nicer every time i see it ,love all your mods  pure car porn 

This is so true! Hands down my favourite Z on the forum and then you take it to a new level with the detail in your build thread. 

 

I've got so much respect considering how handy you are with your own car and how unique you've made it.