Now your FB post makes sense.

 

Happy Thanksgiving to the Crew. I want to thank each and every one of you for the past few years for everything, your support, your friendships, your helpfulness and commitments. Its made what the crew what it is today!

 

Thanks Lance. Hope you and yours had a great thanksgiving as well!

 

Hope you all had a brilliant Thanksgiving!

 

Random note, I basically got paid to have my oil changed the other day haha. I had that coupon from the Infiniti car show for a free oil change, so I asked Rudy if I could make an appointment and he said its busy so can I just drop it off and he will give me a loaner? So i did, just left it there for the day, got a loaner full of gas to run errands and test drive cars with my dad and then came back to a free oil change. Win!

 

Well I'm going to let all you hear about how my night went. Talk about nothing, I mean nothing going right.

So I pick up trans and diff fluid today, that went pretty well lol...

Then I get home, and start jacking the car up. Well the jack is old and is now a pos that didn't want to work, and the other jack we have doesn't fit under my car. Short story, damn near crushed myself between my car and the garage door. Shortly after that, went and bought a new jack.

Got the car up and the diff went smoothly. Then on to the trans. Get through all the quarts infiniti said I needed and definitely need another quart. Fluid is no where near the fill hole.

Didn't have time to do the clutch so we will see how bad that goes tomorrow.

Then I started working on the suspension... Rears are in and went fine. Then onto the fronts. Ran into these problems:

1 Strut mount nut was half stripped from who ever put the suspension in this car ( got it off finally but took about 45 minutes trying various different tools ).

1 Cotter pin is stuck in the a arm. Tried using a punch with no luck ( solving that tomorrow )

And to top it off, the air gun I try to use doesn't have enough juice to get the strut nut off to get the springs off the strut. Might be putting everything back the way it was and buying a whole set of shocks springs from a sedan instead of trying to get these coupe springs on the front.

At the end of the struggles for the night, here is how my car sits. And the mess in the garage.

 

Looks like a mess... hope it goes smoother today.


Pops is taking my mom and I flying...

 

Idk what tools you have readily available to you, but the best way to remove the pin is heat, enough heat will either loosen it up or melt the pin a bit making it very easy to get out, if you don't have heat, then drilling it out is probably your next best bet

 

Ahh yes, I recall how much fun I had putting the front springs on my stock shocks, luckily for me I have an acetylene torch that I used to heat up any nuts that didn't want to break free with the air tools.

Looking back on it, I would definitely have just spent the extra dough on the entire strut/shock assembly from a Z/G. Would've taken literally a third the time... good luck finishing it up haha.

 

Andrew_ that right there is why I have no desire to do suspension work beyond height adjustment. hope it goes better today.

 

Andrew - where are you doing all this? Up in ND or in the cities? Lemme know if you need a hand this afternoon or tomorrow.


How else do you learn? The suspension is what makes the Nissan/Infiniti platform. There's always something that comes up, but say you do have an issue, these are the times you rather have the issue then randomly stranded with no way to fix it.

Not to mention, doing it yourself, you know its done the right way. Stripped nut, loose bolt, he// the very shop you have all of your suspension work done at didn't even tighten the nuts holding the top of the strut on in Dan's car...no thank you going around corners the way we have...

 

I'v done all my own suspension work and im just burnt out on it. I don't miss seeing my car in that shape up on the jack stands haha.

Although I will say, when you have an entire strut/shock assembly, it makes the swap SO much easier! When I had mikes springs and struts, popping them in and out and doing te rears literally took like an hour and a half max for everything. Works way smoother lol.

 

Yeah I hear ya but still not something I really feel like doing. The main reason being that I currently don't have the necessary tools to do the job. I"m sure that'll change after I pick up my next car and the G truly becomes a project car.

 

I have access to just about any tool I can think of, and some I don't even know what they are used for lol.

Today went much much smoother to say the least. Just was frustrated last night and started fresh in the AM.

I have an acetylene torch too, just don't like using it if I don't have too.

Haha I usually enjoy doing my own stuff. Like polishing my own plenum. In my mind, I save money, gain knowledge, and like Lance states know exactly what's been done to my car.

Lance, I actually just buttoned it up about the time you made this post today lol but thanks for the offer. Things went smooth once I got my dad to actually come out to the garage and help me hold the strut still while I had the impact on it! Did everything else by my lonesome ha.

It does make it a lot easier with the whole assembly. I do have it down pretty good now though. If I had an extra pair of hands to hold the strut, changing springs on both struts maybe takes 5-10 minutes.

 

off to abu dhabi tomorrow! will post pics of any sweet looking cars that i see!!