Project Primera

A few pics until I sort out some full posts

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:35:00 +0000

So my 'new years resolution' is off to a flying start! Well, I am going to sort this blog out over the weekend but in the meantime here are a few pics to show some of the changes.

New wheels!

They are 16" Team Dynamics with a polished lip. Another eBay bargain costing £150 with brand new tyres!

Flared arches

This reflection on this shows off the new flared arches really nicely. They are actually from the BTCC racer.

New Powerflow exhaust

Well, it's used but being Powerflow is stainless steel and lifetime guaranteed! It's a full catback system finished with 5" slash cut back box. It sounds sweet and should be even nicer when the Cold Air Intake goes on :)

New years resolution: Update my blog :)

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:49:00 +0000

So it's been 5 months since my last update... urm, whoops.
Loads of changes to the car but I am very lazy about blogging so my new years resolution is to get that sorted. I will get some photos at the weekend and do a few blogs about my new wheels, wide arches, rattling rear view mirror, PC problems and upcoming engine mods.

Happy new year

Cracked it!

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:24:00 +0000

But not in a good way. While driving to a uni reunion a couple of weeks ago I made the mistake of parking front-in at a service station, something I've deliberately not done since getting lowered.
There was a sickening crack as I realised the kerb was too high and I was too far forward! The bumper was pushed at the bottom enough to crack along the line from the number plate (picture to follow). Fortunately, nothing broke off and the crack isn't too long so Demon are going to repair it and respray the whole thing for 100 bones.
So, a reasonable outcome in the end and the bumper does have a couple of scratches from some little gits who play in the car park outside my house so they will get sorted at the same time.
This is all scheduled for 12th September so hopefully it'll all be ready for the NPOC Peterborough meet on the 16th

In other news, I finally found/made the time to relocate the USB DAC from under the seat with the PC to the boot. The USB cable runs neatly under the carpeting and since the majority of the audio transfer distance is now digital, it is far less suseptible to interference. There is notably less engine whine (completely inaudible below about 4k rpm) and I have still to fit the engine grounding kit which should kill it completely.

Japfest 2007

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 23 May 2007 13:07:00 +0000

On Saturday May 19th I went down to Castle Combe with my car and the NPOC for Japfest. We had a good turnout on our stand (about 20 cars) and the weather, after a shakey start, was good. We saw a lot of track action including some drifting, club runs and a few nasty incidents (an NSX rolling over and a highly modified impreza catching fire!).
I managed to finally pick up a clay bar kit from the Meguirs stand and got some good photos too. They can all be seen here
After the show we went for a Chinese and a few pints locally and stayed in a nearby B&B in Yate called Englands Guest House (highly recommended and very cheap). I then drove home in convoy with a few, more local NPOC members. All in all a great weekend :)

Prepping for Japfest

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Thu, 17 May 2007 15:01:00 +0000

Show season is properly upon us again and this weekend is Japfest in Castle Coombe. I have been trying to iron out a few issues and get things sorted in time which has meant a few evenings out in the rain repainting the brake calipers, a weekend trying to find dry time to wash and polish and a few hours researching some bugs on the PC.
I was having a problem with the CarPC where the pointer would start jumping around the screen and clicking at random points. I have resolved this thanks to the registry fix suggested in this thread on mp3car. All that I need to do now is:

Hoover out and clear the interior (Friday evening)
Wipe over the plastics with some dashboard wipes (Friday evening)
Get the tracking checked (Going in to the garage Friday)
Replace the cracked headlight lense (Mechanic will do this while its in for tracking)

Hopefully the weather won't completely suck but it should be a top weekend anyway.

Low rider!

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 09 May 2007 12:58:00 +0000

I am now running on KYB AGX adjustables with H&R 35mm lowering springs! I drove up to York on Monday to see Kev. It was a good day and fortunately the rain just held off long enough to do the job. We (and by we I mean Kev and Dave while I looked on and occasionally removed or replaced a wheel) swapped my suspension onto Kev's scrapper and put his lovely red shockers onto mine. It took about 3 hours plus obligitory tea and biscuit breaks!
I nearly left my bumper on his drive reversing out due to my new height but the drive back was lush. The ride is no where near as harsh as I was expecting but the handling is infinately better, zero body roll!

Lowering

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:20:00 +0000

A friend, Kev, from NPOC is getting rid of some Koni AGX adjustable shocks and H&R lowering springs from his track car. I'm off up to York on bank holiday Monday to fit them and swap them for my standard set up!
I am a very happy boy cos I have been looking for new shocks anyway and these are a bloody good upgrade. The springs are a 35mm drop so enough to improve the ride and look without being uncomfortable.
I'll post up the before and after (and probably some in between) photos next week.

Cracked headlight and bumper fixing!

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:37:00 +0000

This is weird. I parked in a multi-storey car park and walked into town. When I returned, my nearside headlight was cracked and the front bumper fixing at the top of the wing had come away! At first read you would think I'd been hit but the strange thing is that neither the bumper nor wing is damaged at all and the light has a clear stone impact at the top of the large crack.
I would definately have noticed either of these if had happened before but it doesn't seem like it was vehicle impact! Anyway, posted up on NPOC and hours later I had replacement glass winging its way to me in the post for 20 notes :D

LED's and CarPC Power

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:37:00 +0000

Well it's been a while since I updated this! I have been busy, sorry.
Car-wise there hasn't been a lot of change but there has been a little:
I sorted out the LED kit by getting a replacement controller and two replacement bulbs. This is all fitted and working better than ever :)
The power switch to the car pc is becoming more and more loose and I am worried about the effect power fluctuations and outages are having on the hard drive. This weekend I am going to remove the switch and solder the wires together permanently. I plan to install another switch later which will be installed into the dash and run between the ignition and the power regulator unit. This will give me the option to have the PC on or off as long as the ignition is on.It is a better solution because the old switch cuts power to the unit completely wheras this allows the regulator to maintain 'connection' and monitor the voltage on the battery etc.

Faulty tubes!

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:41:00 +0000

Last night I got out the multimeter and ventured into the blustery car park to test my LED kit. All I can say is gutted!
I disconnected the wires and tested the control box using the circuit test (from the multimeter battery). It was fine. I then tested the tubes wires and found the front and back seemed fine but the sides were dead :(

LED Tubes :(

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:18:00 +0000

Well the two side tubes on my undercar LED kit aren't working and haven't been for a while. I emailed litewave who supplied them and got a very useful email back telling me my warranty had expired but giving some advice on finding the fault. Like me, the support guy suspects the control box since two tubes have totally failed (not one suggesting wiring or partially suggesting a faulty LED cluster). To test it he suggested:

Remove the wires from the control box.
Connect the positive wire for a tube to the positive of a 9v battery and then touch each of the 4 negatives to the battery in turn to see if the LED sections light up.
Repeat that for both tubes to see if there is any problem with the wiring or LEDs.
If that all works, the control box is faulty but they can replace it for £20
Check the wiring and installation for shorts or moisture which might have caused the fault.

This is a big relief as I feared it may be the control box but a new one would require a whole new kit! I will grab a couple of 9v batteries from the shop near work and try this out tonight. If it is confirmed to be the control box, I'll order a new one tonight and probably an extra tube to go above the mesh in the bumper :)

Headlight Bulbs

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 10:31:00 +0000

One of my headlights went out t'other night so I needed to replace it. I decided to get some proper good bulbs and replace them both but I was torn between Phillips Blue Vision and Halfords Super Brilliance.
The Halfords are 50% extra brightness and come fairly well recommended by owners club members but the Blue Vision also get good reviews and have a blue xenon-style tint, the idea of which I must say I liked. In the end I decided to go for blue visions in the dipped beam and super brilliance in full.
The Halfords Super Brilliance live up to their name, they are very crisp and white and give very good illumination. The blue visions are good but while they are very clear, the blue tint is almost imperceptible.

I recommend Powerbulbs.co.uk as they have a lot of quality products with independant reviews and they are cheap especially since they do free delivery on everything!
The Halfords Super Brilliance bulbs are only available from Halfords stores but at the moment they have BOGOF on all bulbs so it's a good time to pick up a pair.

I will do a quick bulb changing how-to on here soon as the owners manual is useless and there is a real knack to the front indicators.

Japfest II

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 09:47:00 +0000

This weekend I was up to Donington park for Japfest II, a japanese car meet and track day. NPOC had a stand and we got a good look round some other jap cars (including the 110 Skylines that were there!). We also got to watch some drifting and time attacks and saw a GTR stack it into the tyre wall!
All my photos are on my Flickr page here and there are some vids on YouTube:

The audio is funny on that last one!

My new DAC

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:09:00 +0000

A while ago I bought this SilverStone digital to analogue converter to run from the computer. This connects via USB and is recognised by windows as a USB speaker. It then converts the signal to analogue before passing it (via RCAs) to the amps.
The benefit is that the unit is far more effecient as converting the signal than my on board sound card and as a result I get cleaner sound and much less feedback.

Clear repeaters

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 10:54:00 +0000

At JAE I picked up a set of clear side repeaters from Kev and chrome bulbs from an NPOC group buy. The reason for the bulbs is that the standard side repeaters use clear bulbs but orange lenses so if you change the lenses to clear you have no orange light (illegal). If you use orange bulbs they show through the lense when they are off and make it look like a fried egg!
The chrome bulbs are actually orange but coated in a special chrome paint so they flash orange but can't be seen when they are off.
I spent about half an hour changing them over (quite an easy job) and they look much better than the orange ones so I'm well chuffed. Only £15 for the repeaters and bulbs too!

I also got a pair of chrome bulbs for the front indicators as they are orange bulbs standard and show through as I explained above. These are not easy! I could not get at the bulb holders and while I eventually managed to get some long nose pliars on the nearside one, the offside was unreachable due to some pipework that runs behind the light! I have decided to remove the cluster to get at it but the bolts are rusted to crap and I daren't try to get them off without replacements ready cos I'm sure they will break!
A job for my mechanic Mac I think. The car is due a service anyway.

JAE was amazing!

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 09:27:00 +0000

This weekend gone was brilliant. Friday I sweated and worked for hours to get the car ready (didn't quite do everything but the important stuff was sorted) and then I gently nursed my shiny motor to Peterborough.
The NPOC guys are a great bunch and it was nice to put faces to (screen) names. Lots of nice things said about my car which made me happy and lots of nice cars to oogle at too. Jane and I took a lot of pictures so I won't post them all here but they are available to look at in my photobucket account:
CLICK HERE

I picked up some clear side repeaters and chrome bulbs at JAE which will go on this weekend but now it's gonna be no more spending on the car for a while as I need to save my cash.

Incidentally Jane did the race for life on Sunday and finished in 44 minutes raising £230. I am very proud of her.

JAE - Like christmas but hotter :)

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:05:00 +0000

This weekend is JAE. The biggest japanese car show of the year.
It is being help in Peterborough at the East Of England showground and for the first year, I am going! This is also my first NPOC meet so I'm really looking forward to finally meeting everyone. I have tomorrow (Friday 21st) off work so I can prepare the car and then I'm off tomorrow afternoon, meeting Nik (a fellow NPOCer) en route.
I am really excited, it should be a good laugh. Before I can go though I have a mahoosive list to accomplish:

Wash and wax exterior
Clean glass
Remove and recover door pillar vinyl
Remove (and clean) alloys
Re-paint calipers
Affix caliper graphics
Fit new rear reg plate
Try to fix the side undercar LED bars (wiring issue I think)
Hoover, brush and clean upholstery
Clean dash
Gunk and clean engine
Adjust gains and volume with new amp
Tidy up my temporary boot build
Fix embedding problem with Datascan on the CarPC
Install Girder and fix a problem with hibernating mapmonkey and winamp on the CarPC
Apply demon bodystyling graphics

It's a hefty list! Once I've done all that, break out the cling film to protect against suicidal bugs and away we go!

Some more work for JAE

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:40:00 +0000

It's coming up to JAE (the Japanese Auto Extravaganza) which I am going to this year with the club. It's the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd. Before then the car is going back to Demon for some final touches (which I am going to keep quiet until JAE) and this weekend I am going to wash, wax, hoover and polish the car inside and out!
Next week I am going to do a few more tweaks to the PC like fixing a bug with winamp (it won't resume after hibernate) and installing a nice image viewer.
Looking forward to it all being done and to meeting a lot of the guys from NPOC.

Incidentally I bought a new kenwood amp and it seems to have knocked the noise back a lot. There is still a bit but I am going to play with the gains and see if I can kill it off completely. It's now only audible when there is no music (rare!).

Dream wheels

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 12:07:00 +0000

I've seen the alloys I want! They are gorgeous and I think they'd look the boll*cks on my car in 18" with some nice low profile tyres on!

Sex on wheels!!

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 15:37:00 +0000

Today, was one of those awesome days!

Blistering hot sun, a day off work, met Nik (a fellow NPOC member) and got the bodykit fitted. Ace at Demon Bodystyling is a top guy and a total perfectionist. Who better to trust with my pride and joy? Anyway, enough chat, here is the kit fitted and looking sexy as I could ever have hoped for:

Feedback forever!

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 16:57:00 +0000

Read all about the ongoing problems I've had with feedback and alternator whine on this mp3car thread http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=79534
It's been going on (to some degree) since I first upgraded my car audio and I am beginning to think it must be the amp as it's the only common denominator left. I am waiting for confirmation from some of the guys on mp3car before I order a replacement. I want to make sure that's it before I plunge another £70+ into this install!

Jotting down some ideas

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 09:57:00 +0000

I have a few ideas for performance mods to do over the next year but I keep forgetting things (memory like a chocolate soldier in the sunshine as my Mum always tells me!) so I'll note them here.

Upgrade the header - Hotshot or SS Autochrome header and downpipe. Nissan OEM gaskets as the provided ones rot easily.
Exhaust system - Powerflow catback exhaust.
Decat pipe - Courtesy of a welder I know from NPOC
Induction kit - Probably a hotshot cold air intake fed either from the bumper or a bonnet vent.
Cams - JWT S3 cams.
Brakes - Drilled and grooved disks and Nissan OEM pads
Suspension - H&R Springs with Koni shocks (probably from MotorSportWorld)

Of course I might just go for a turbo conversion with direct port nitrous injection!

Screen works but audio is dubious

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 21:32:00 +0000

I did some major soldering and wiring at the weekend and the screen seems to be working well. The audio is still a problem but I have some ideas to solve it, mainly some tweaking to the crossover.
I am aiming to finish it this weekend.

Bodykit off for painting

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 21:22:00 +0000

So I made a long old drive up to York to collect a bodykit from one of my fellow NPOC members. The trip was a little troublesome (they moved the motorway since my sat-nav map was made!) and the guy wasn't in and hadn't told his missus I was coming. Still, having her answer the door in her dressing gown wasn't an unpleasant experience and she was really cool and helped me whip the bumpers off his old car and squeeze them into mine!
They are now up at demon bodystyling waiting to be painted ready to fit at the end of the month!

The spoiler

3Shirts@gmail.com (Tim) — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 18:34:00 +0000

Lazy as I am, I snapped a quick pic on my phone today so this is my car as it currently is, with spoiler :)

By the way, I'm not disabled or stealing the space from someone who is! They are allocated bays and ours is a ground floor flat.