NSH PREDS

I got tired of my sunglasses rattling so I went to an arts and crafts store and picked up some black felt. They had tons of colors and patterns to choose from but we already have black on the tray so why not go ahead and match. I also picked out a faux pattern but it is basically too dark to see it up there anyway.

I already had some spray adhesive at the house so it was a simple matter of cleaning the plastic, measuring the opening, cutting the felt and gluing it into place.

The rattle is now gone for good and it also looks better than the plain plastic that was there before.

Super cheap fix.

lobuzz311

iTrader: (6)

I keep forgetting about the sunglasses holder because my last few cars had useless ones that couldn't hold anything bigger than Morpheus' glasses...
I might have to line mine if I start using it more regularly.

kevshiau

iTrader: (15)

Do you have a picture of where you put the felt? Mines drives me crazy and i just have a folded up tissue shoved in there

NSH PREDS

You can't see it in the photo but the material continues all the way to the back of the holder. I'm going to do the sides next as there is plenty of leftover material. I sprayed the plastic on the first go round but this time I'm going to spray the glue on the material and then adhere. The glue drys quickly and it was difficult to get the material to move once it made contact. Plus gravity and spraying up doesn't mix too well. The glue is also withstanding the heat that builds up in there.

RUsum1

I've been wanting to debadge my car ever since I got it. I would remove everything but the Infiniti emblem. The only problem that would bother me is that after removing the letters beneath the emblem, the emblem itself would not be centered on the trunk. What is the best way to remove and reapply the emblem to the trunk?

I've never made a mod to my car yet. What benefits do the round air filters give? Is that an expensive upgrade?

sergery

More air into the engine. Not to bad and there are a few options. Rochester's is an R2C and the fancy black chrome in an extra (worthwhile IMO) option. K&N and othe companies make them as well.

R2C
Infiniti G37 Cold Air Intake

K&N

WolfSongX

Ground Kit (for under $40)


Based on the Black Betty kit grounding points rather than the DIY kit since it targets better grounding points including the throttle bodies. I have an optional ground wire to reinforce the factory grounds to the block, but it's probably unnecessary.

4AWG
-Battery to strut tower 24"
-Passenger Strut tower to timing cover 17"
-Driver Strut Tower to block (by timing cover) 13"
-Reinforce factory ground from Driver's Strut Tower to timing cover 20" (opt)

74" 54" without optional ground
7ft or 5 feet w/o optional ground. $1.49/ft 4AWG black Kolossus Fleks
-8 4AWG ring terminals (6 without optional ground) $.99
-9ft of 3/8" Techflex of your choice (black $.30/ft)

8AWG
-Battery to Passenger Throttle Body 25"
-Battery to Driver Throttle Body 57"
-82" 7 ft. $0.69/ft 8AWG black Kolossus Fleks
-9 ft of 1/4 Techflex of your choice (black $.25/ft)

-1 4AWG ring terminal $.99
-2 8AWG Spade Terminals $.69

Shrink Wrap roughly 8 inches. ~$2.00

Materials
Wire: $10.43 4AWG + $4.83 8AWG
Terminals: $8.91 + $1.38
Techflex: $2.70 + $2.25
Shrink Wrap: $2.00

$32.50 + shipping

More Pics, sorry I didn't do a DIY for this but it's pretty basic. I also went a bit long on the wires, the lengths are what I cut the actual wire too, so don't include the connectors.






I actually had 90% of the stuff on hand to do this, so it only cost me a few dollars plus shipping to get the rest. Most of the pricing came from KnuKonceptz since I'm a fan of their wire and use it almost exclusively in my audio builds, but you could buy cheaper from other sources as well.

I actually tested with a multi-meter before doing the grounds and were getting readings of showing resistance before adding the wires, and minimal resistance afterwards.

The stereo was louder with the bass more defined and the paddle shifters work much smoother and quicker. Performance-wise, adding the wires to the throttle bodies does make a noticeable difference than just reinforcing the grounds to the engine and chassis.

So does this one make it under the $40?

Lego_Maniac

iTrader: (3)

Sounds awesome, looks cool, and lets in more hot air.

lobuzz311

iTrader: (6)

Lol... Pretty much.
You'll want a cold air intake if you want to see any real performance gains. Stillen, Takeda, Injen, etc.

flyng_fool

iTrader: (1)

Ha ha, that's funny! The Placebo Effect is strong with this one........

WolfSongX

Not another one of these idiots.

You do realize that our cars (and Japanese cars in general) have very poor grounding, right? You also do realize that the cars which have barely adequate grounding from the factory, deteriorate over time due to degradation of the wire's ability to conduct, right?

Actually, I measured the resistance with a multi-meter before and after. I didn't bother recording the values or taking pictures but I figured this was a dead horse, but there was significant resistance between the chassis and the negative terminal, and significant resistance between the negative terminal and the various grounded points on the engine block, timing cover and throttle bodies which was virtually eliminated by adding the ground wires.

So let's recap what we know:

• Signals are transferred from the CANBUS for the paddle shifters and the throttle by wire. Resistance from the grounds can slow down these signals because they're basically sent and resent until they're acknowledged.
• Amplifiers and therefore speakers can only put out the power that they can when there's adequate grounding. It doesn't matter how much power wire you feed to an amp, it will only produce the amount of power that the ground will allow.

So if there is resistance in the grounds then that is the limitation of the system. Reinforcing the grounds on a car will eliminate that resistance and electricity will flow better and be stronger, signals will be passed quicker and
in general the car will run better.

You do not "gain" anything by ground wires, you get back what you have lost to time and the to the bean counters who felt that adequate wiring would be too expensive.

Still not convinced?
Let's look at what happens when you click a shift paddle.

• A signal is sent to the transmission control box indicating that you have requested a shift.
• The transmission control box then queries the vehicle speed from the ECU to determine if the car can safely comply to that request.
• The transmission control box also queries other sensors to determine how "hard" to shift the transmission based on what the car is doing at the time.
• Once the transmission control box receives all the data back from the sensors, then it can send the appropriate signal to the transmission to initiate the shift.

This is a massive oversimplification, but you have to remember that all these queries have to be done in real time before the shift can occur and the signals are travelling over the CANBUS... which if there's resistance or noise in the system, can be slowed down significantly, and maybe the delay in one signal might not be noticeable, but as a set of commands that occur in sequence before an action is taken, then delay will become noticeable.

I never said the car shifted faster, I said that it responded to the paddles faster. Shifting faster is only going to happen if the line pressure is increased by doing a tune or hacking the system in some other method, but when I bought the car there was a significant delay between when I clicked the paddle and the transmission initiated the shift. That has been greatly reduced.

The audio system is basic physics and any audiophile can tell you... better ground means more power travelling through the amp and better sound.

Placebo... I don't usually walk onto sites and start posting and start off by showing how ignorant some people are, but I'm certainly not opposed to it if the opportunity presents itself.

flyng_fool

iTrader: (1)

I've been into audio/video for over 40 years. You might want to read up a bit on double blind ABX testing. It's quite the eye opener.

Audiophoolery

Just grounding your system better will not change the way your stereo sounds. All it may do is get rid of a bit of noise.

Rochester

iTrader: (9)

Meh, I'd rather hear my exhaust.

However, if adding a grounding kit made my exhaust sound any better, I'd be all over that mod like gold-plating on a Monster Cable.

flyng_fool

iTrader: (1)

Me too!!!!

WolfSongX

That's actually a good article... I read it a few years ago when I started doing mobile audio.

From that article, which is what I'm assuming you wanted me to read was the part about wire scams:
The earliest audio scam I can recall is fancy wire for connecting loudspeakers, and it's still going strong. These days vendors claim their wire yields better sound quality when compared to normal wire, and, of course, it's much more expensive than normal wire. In truth, the most important property of speaker wire is resistance, which is a function of its thickness. The resistance must be low to pass the high-current signals a power amplifier delivers, and is exactly analogous to a large water pipe allowing more flow than a small pipe. For short distances - say, up to five feet - 16 gauge wire of any type is adequate, though thicker wire is needed for longer runs.

The three other wire parameters are inductance, capacitance, and skin effect. But those are not a factor with usual cable lengths at audio frequencies, especially when connecting speakers to a power amplifier. Low capacitance wire can be important in special cases, like between a phonograph cartridge and its preamp. But high quality, low capacitance wire can be had for pennies per foot. Wire scams are very popular because wire is a low-tech device that's simple to manufacture, and the profit margin is extremely high. I could devote this entire article to wire scams, but instead I'll just summarize that any audio (or video) cable costing more than a few dollars per foot is a rip-off.

Now what I'm saying, is that the Power amplifier, which has output based on the amount of current that flows through it, is being restricted by the resistance of the chassis ground, is able to provide more current to the speakers at a given volume level, resulting in more speaker excursion and better response to the signal.

Again, it's not improving what is there, it is merely gaining back what it was losing to the resistance of the chassis ground.

And thanks for having an intelligent come-back, I withdraw my "ignorant" statement from my prior post.