Laser tester linked above came in today, I like it. Very simple unit, 9V battery and one button, runs through four styles of laser-speed-gun pulsing in sequence when you hold down the button, roughly $50. It's no substitute for actual testing with a police laser gun at range, but sure is a nice measure of reassurance that things are basically functioning correctly. Both my V1 and my Blinder went off as expected.

I tested my Blinder the old fashioned way -- been hit by cops twice already with laser. ;) I just love it when they keep trying and trying and trying, and I see the puzzled look their faces as I drive by. It never gets old.

Laser is rarer here. It used to be practically non-existent, but lately I see them from time to time. They generally sit in the fast-lane shoulder, out of the car with the gun propped on the door. Of course I haven't hit one yet since I put the Blinder in. Next up in my laser countermeasures is to apply Veil paint to the front headlights and chrome badge, hopefully today sometime.

Better hope they don't catch on!

As far as Ohio goes, I haven't seen a cop with laser... ever.

Why? They can't do anything about it. The device is perfectly legal in GA. I guess they could huff and puff at me and be generally obnoxious. That's why even though I know they can't read my speed, I slow down vs. blowing past them like some arrogant SOB tempting fate. :rolleyes:

That's my plan, too. I'm still gonna shut the speed down ASAP when I notice a cop, like I always do. If I have the presence of mind to do so, I'll even flick off the blinder once I reach ~5-10 miles over, just to give them a shot at a late reading so they're less suspicious. But it's perfectly legal, so that's all just to avoid any kind of hassle with a cop who's pissed off about being jammed and decides to be a **** about it.

Just painted on the Veil coating. I did the front headlights and the front chrome Nissan logo. A few random pics:

The Veil can as it comes in the mail:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...6-veil-can.jpg

The contents (3 cheapo brushes that tend to fall apart, 1 small can paint, instructions):

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...l-contents.jpg

Masking off the areas to be worked on (PITA with all the curves). I used Frogtape painter's tape:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...54-masking.jpg

After that, read the instructions and put on your painter's hat. When spread extremely thin, it looks fairly clear to the naked eye. Even a small thick droplet appears purple though, and thicker amounts are black.

It's about as thin as water, and tends to run and collect itself a lot as its being applied. They instruct you to wait for ideal weather conditions (not too hot, not too cold, not too humid), but that's simply impossible here, it's always hot and humid, so I don't know how that affected my experience getting it to apply smoothly. Use the smallest brush they give you, and just barely touch the tip to the paint to wet it, it's very easy to get too much paint on the brush for an entire headlight. Then stroke it around with the brush and try to get any glops and streaks smoothed over and let it dry. It tends to smooth out a bit and de-streak (and clear up) as it dries anyways, so it doesn't have to be perfect.

One can of this stuff could probably paint up the headlights of 50 cars, it's enough to last a lifetime. Going to wait to remove the masking till tomorrow and then check it out in the bright sunlight to see how I did.

Update on the Veil paint: apparently being so thin, it leaks through seams and underneath masking tape. I've got some lovely purple stains on my bumper now, some of which are quite bold. They recommend rubbing alcohol and some scrubbing to remove the stuff. That lightened the purple a little bit, but apparently the stain goes all the way into the paint. I went ahead and tried to scrub it out, and went through the factory paint on the bumper before the stain went away :(

So the moral of this story is: the risk of staining your paint is too high to apply this stuff on the car, imho. Remove the headlight units and the chrome badge from the car completely and paint them separate. I guess I'll see if I can get a dealer to fix these spots on my bumper/fender paint next week.

^^ Yea I recall on Radarguys forum that they said do not get that stuff on your paint. Guess you proved what they meant by that. :(

Yeah I was expecting something thicker, like actual paint. I should have realized the problem when I saw how thin and watery this stuff is. The spots aren't big though, I imagine a good paint repair guy can fix them up pretty easily.

Dude, that sucks. Sorry.

Well, **** happens, it's all a learning experience :)

Mostly it's just 4-5 little spots like these first two pics (you can see where I rubbed through the clear coat on one of these trying a method of removal):

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...464-paint1.jpg

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...465-paint2.jpg

And this is the only really bad spot, in front of the passenger headlight, where I went ahead and tried harder and went through paint in a tiny spot without doing any good:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...466-paint3.jpg

Wow, that really sucks man, I guess it is a live and learn situation. I hope you can get it fixed and paint matched.

Never do something unless your confident!
Especially on a nice car like that...
Hope you learned your lesson!

Haha :icon18: In case you haven't noticed by Page 17, my motto in life is do everything anyways even if you're not confident, and learn from it. That's how my first oil change went years ago, and that's how the IR paint went today. Actually that's how I got my first Unix job too when I was 18. Lied on the interview about age/experience, winged it, figured it out pretty well within the first few months.

So yeah, I learned my lesson, which is don't trust masking tape, not to avoid doing things I'm not confident about :)

Wstar, that may not have went through the clear. It might just need a buff. I would take it to someone that knows how to buff paint on cars, and have them buff your bumper. I bet that would come out.

As long as they are legal in GA, you are fine. I just wouldn't use one personally.

sorry about the stains, but at least you were able to pass on some valuable info to the rest of us.

That sucks about the paint man.

I'm pretty sure it's through the clear, and down inside the paint itself. I started out with a little alcohol on a paper tower and that did very little good (did remove a little at the surface though). Then I moved up to a microfiber cleaning rag, and then a toothbrush, and then finally a slighty-rough (but fabric-based) scrubbing pad. Basically the purple never goes away until the paint goes away. I could see the clearcoat gone first (paint gets dull in that spot), and then the actual paint, and then you see dark bumper material underneath, but it was always purple until I got to the bumper plastic.

Yea then you did go all the way through. Might have a guy see about the rest of them though. :(

Some dealers, like Infiniti, Audi and so on (mostly luxury ones) have a guy that comes out and touches up paint on cars while on the car and does a really good job usually too. I had to get my rear bumper on my G35 fixed and he did this and you couldn't tell. Might be worth looking into.

Changed the oil again today at 9150 (2150 oil change interval), since Blackstone recommended keeping it down to 2K for now (I had to wait on parts to show up, hence the 150 over).

I also swapped in the Mocal 180 degree thermostatic sandwich plate. I didn't even end up using some of the adapters I thought I would. I attached the Mocal-recommended -8AN to 1/2" BSP Male:Male unions to the sandwich plate, and then screwed the -8AN 45 degree swivel ends of the hoses from the Stillen kit straight onto those. It was a little bit of a stretch to get the hoses to cover the extra 1.5" or so, but I had slack elsewhere in the hose routing so it fit fine once I shifted them around a little.

Oil change was 3 cans of 300V (so 6L, roughly 6.3qts) and came out just about perfect on the oil level afterward - but then again compared to a regular oil and filter change, I lost a little bit extra from the sandwich plate swap (the plate itself and the lines both drained a bit when disconnected, but I didn't intentionally try to flush anything out of the cooler/lines). On the other hand, I did this oil change on ramps instead of level, so I may have left extra in the bottom of the pan too :)

So I suspect when and if I ever have one of those "regular" oil+filter changes that doesn't involve other work, it will probably come out somewhere close to exactly 3 cans of 300V, we'll see.

I also switched to K&N's HP-1010 oil filter this time around. It's identical to the HP-1008 in every way, but longer, so you get more filter surface area out of it I would hope. Fits fine, even on top of a thermo sandwich plate, with plenty of headroom around it.

I've found a small leak along my new oil pan gasket (from when I put the spacer on). Either I didn't get the Ultra Grey on perfect, or didn't torque it perfectly, or perhaps I even slightly warped the pan's mating surface during removal, who knows. In either case the leak is so tiny you'd hardly notice it. Made an oil stain on the plastic undercover, and the oil level dropped about half the range of the L:H on the dipstick during 2150 miles.

So probably next oil change, given the paint stripping incident with the pan anyways, I'll just order a new pan to be extra sure and swap that on with some fresh Ultra Grey and give it another go. The spacer should stay in place anyways with its own Ultra Grey, so it will be much easier this time around than trying to get them both up there perfectly at the same time.

Also on the Veil Paint mishap around the headlights, I've decided to postpone fixing it even though I hate looking at it. I've got more projects coming up in the bumper area anyways (which could lead to more damage which might as well all be fixed at once), and there's always a chance I'll end up falling in love with some (aero/cooling-functional) aftermarket bumper replacement for that matter too. So I figure I'll wait it out a little before I call a paint guy.

good progress, good update... re bumper cover, i'm leaning towards eventually the zele with a separate splitter (APR maybe)... very porsche-esque

Then you clearly haven't driven down 71 to Cincy. Once a month they speed trap on 71 with 7-8 cruisers in a 2 mile stretch. The literally sit in a line and pull out and then circle back down and do it again.
Cincy uses 60/40 Radar/Laser. The motorcycle cops ONLY use laser and they are damn hard to see because the bikes are so small. And you frequently see cruisers parked perpendicular to the highway on the shoulder with a laser gun on the window.

I love my V1 but I think its more important to just learn smart speeding, ie not excessive and only in places with good visibility of the shoulders.

You are right, I haven't driven down to Cincy ever. I pretty much stay in the Columbus vicinity.

Today was a shitty day for my Z.

Started off with picking up a nail on the passenger rear tire while driving around town somewhere. In the sidewall no less. Luckily the hole doesn't leak much, since it's one of those funny angle holes that mostly slips between layers. Even after I pulled the nail, there were only some very tiny bubbles at the hole (when wet), but it was maintaining pressure fine. I went ahead and deflated it and patched over the outside of the hole with some permatex silicon gunk and then reinflated after it dried, and made an appointment to get the tire replaced at the dealership tomorrow (since I bought their road hazard program for the factory tires).

Then I went out to dinner down in the Clear Lake area. Had a half-decent steak at Outback, and came out to find my car had been broken into in the parking lot. The ******** smashed in my passenger window, rifled around in the car a bit, and settled for taking my Valentine 1 and the Glock 26 I keep in the center console. The cop who took the report said the same guy had been doing this all over town this evening for hours (driving around random parking lots and doing smash+grabs on the contents of the cars) and they had a make/model on his truck already from earlier calls. Given that my incident netted him a loaded weapon and is well past the felony line in theft value, at least they responded quickly to take the report.

Nothing else was damaged on the car though, so I'll get an estimate and a scheduled date (I assume I'll have to wait for them to order the glass) to replace the window when I'm at the dealership for the tire tomorrow and take it from there. Still gotta file an insurance claim or two, and dig up the pistol's serial number from my records for the cops. What a day :icon14:

Thats a real sh*ty day.. At least the steak was good.. I love outback! I had a Great day. I went to the casino to play poker which is very rare but had some family in town and wanted to check it out. So Im at the table that it had a bad beat which means that the hand went heads up to the end with 2 royal flush hands at the end.. the pot was at 72k-ish the loser got the most money like 35k the winner got like 15k and eveyone else got 3k. I was just sitting theere.. so got the 3K! I never win anything.. to bad i wasnt the loser.

Dude sorry to hear that!

Wow, that sucks man.

gosh, that really does suck...

if you can figure out a way to ship them without breaking, i just pulled both my side windows

The thought crossed my mind, trying to grab a window from one of the racecar builds on here. Dealership says 2-3 business days to get the glass in, so no quick fix there. The install looks pretty dead easy, there's like 2 bolts to attach the glass, so I could do that myself. But yeah I don't know what the ins and outs of shipping auto glass safely are. I imagine UPS doesn't throw them in the back of their regular trucks, etc. That's probably why the dealer has to wait 2-3 days too.

I've got calls in to a couple of other auto glass shops around here to see if they can get the glass in quicker, as ideally I'd like to be able to drive outta town tomorrow night, but it's looking unlikely.

While I'm on this subject, I'd like to rant about dealers not stocking parts. You would think in a major city like Houston, even if not every dealer stocks everything, that between them all they'd have just about every common replacement part in stock and trade parts cross-town in a couple of hours. Yet no rear tires in stock, and no side window in stock. Both of which I imagine aren't very uncommon parts to order, given road hazards, theft, and collisions.

Side windows are very uncommon. They are usually specail order. Front windshields are a dime a dozen just because they break all the time. Side windows break due to collision, so they order all the parts when it's in for bodywork. No need to stock them, unlike windshields. Hope that helps you relax a little. Still sucks though

Ugh. I feel for you man. I actually keep all my guns' serial numbers listed in a note file which is on my computer and Blackberry, precisely for such a situation.

Mine was down in a pile of paperwork in a file folder in a safe, took me about half an hour to figure out where I put the number at heh.

Got the tire replaced under the road hazard deal, I think it was around $30 at ~9200 miles. Glass is ordered, but won't be in until late this week, probably Thurs or Fri. Gonna let the dealer install it since his rate isn't too bad, and then I don't have to deal with digging the broken glass outta the bottom of the door and trying to get the glass aligned perfectly :)

Just a quick update since I've been slacking here lately. Window glass was replaced and tinted Friday at the dealer. Turns out they didn't align the glass perfectly though. It's shifted towards the rear of the car by about 2-3mm comparing it to the driver's one when they're both rolled up with the doors open. This results in wind seeping in at highway speeds, and a solid "thunk" when rolled up with auto-up that doesn't happen on the driver's side (I assume that's because the curves don't match up right and it's landing on a single point up there). Not sure yet whether I'm going to bother with taking it back to them again or just tear open the door guts and figure out adjusting it myself.

FI exhaust was supposed to arrive today, but UPS had some kinda screwup and it comes in tomorrow.

FI exhaust came in, and I should get to install it this evening :yum:

When are you going back for the dyno, if I am free I might meet you there to hear the exhaust.

All things considered, I'll probably try to schedule it at EngineLogics sometime next week during the weekdays.

Status update on the FI exhaust install. I got started late, as usual for a weekday I guess.

Removed the Stillen system, did a little prep work regarding heat shielding, etc. Cleaned up the mating surfaces on the rear flanges of my HFCs. Installed all of the FI parts per the manual, with all the bolts and gaskets in place, but the bolts just on loosely with my fingers so far everywhere.

The thing that has had me the most nervous about this is fitment at the crossmember, given the past issues with the Stillen kit, and the fact that I'm running Stillen's headers and Berk's HFCs (neither of which FI has been tested with, and some people have raised question marks about whether the rear of the HFCs comes out at the correct spot with this setup, too...).

Removed the temporary shim I was using at the crossmember to hold up the center just to see how bad it sags and how much play there was in various directions before I tighten, and.... <drumroll>.... it clears the crossmember easily, even with all the bolts still loose just hanging there :) So I'm very happy. Taking a little break here before I go back down and finish this up, but so far everything looks great :)