New Shoes
 

Had a screw stuck in the tread of my front right tire. :shakes head: Decided to replace all four with Michelin PS 4S from Tire Rack. Should see an improvement on wet pavement over the Potenzas. Should have them broken in just in time to switch over to the winter shoes. Oh well, I guess I'll have more to look forward to next spring!

You have a reputable place in the Chi that will put used tires on?

Tire Shop
 

When I bought my winter tires I got a set of inexpensive (but not ugly!) wheels which I swap out for the summers. I keep the off season set on a wall-mount rack in my garage.

I'm in the city (Lincoln Park) and use Ashland Tire on Ashland north of Addison for tire and wheel needs other than the seasonal swap, which I do myself. Good friendly and competent people with fair prices. :tup:

Finally replaced the windshield 😎 The previous owner had been driving it cracked for 2 years and I couldn’t deal with it anymore. Looks much more clean

Sadly, I took mine to the body shop for an estimate on a total repaint, and a dent repair the other day.
Car has been Showroom condition for 8 years, impeccably maintained, and gets vandalized in my own garage. Coffee mugs make hella dents in the Z, and rolling metal toolboxes wreak havoc on the sides of them as well.
I'm slightly torn, here. on one hand, she'll be fresh and new, with a better jacket, on the other hand, shes not 100% anymore. I took a great deal of pride in the fact that she was so well maintained for so long.
Whats worse, I have to remove my customized stereo build in the trunk to get the rear taillights out. Perhaps thats in need of a facelift after the paintjob as well.
The shop I took her to redid the rear quarter on my titan last year, and it turned out incredibly good, he also did work for a friend of mine a while back, and his paint looks fantastic. I have total faith in him.
He quoted me $2300 just for the repairs and paint of the drivers side door, and rear fender, along with the rear bumper cover, and dent removal (no filler) on the rear deck lid, and repaint on that as well.
I've since decided I will have him repaint the entire car, and throw in whatever extra he will charge. Im guessing another 2.5k or so.

Terribly sorry to hear this. Domestic?

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In a roundabout way. The Fiancees 28 year old son Had a drug/drink fueled argument with the imaginary folks in his head at 330am in my garage one night. The state police took him away that night to the local mental facility (he does have mental issues (brought on from years of bath salts addiction).
She will now have to find a facility or some other place for him to live.

Yikes.. I feel your pain. Here’s to a brighter future to your Z. And a brighter paint job!

I think this will help put the issue to bed. Good luck on the repairs and repaint.

Sad to hear about both... :icon14::icon14:

thinking of doing this led conversion and while am at it, replace weak horns with hella supertone horns.

https://youtu.be/nM5MEJGBffI

Got the SPL rear mid-links, FUCAs, and rear camber arms aligned today. Just checked the rear, Firestone's "experienced tech" broke one of the titanium bolts and replaced it with a hex head bolt. Didn't tighten the right camber jam-nut. Didn't torque anything down to spec. What kills me about this is that I literally gave him the instructions, my 3/16" hex bit, and my 1/4" drive torque wrench - and he still ****** it up.. and didn't tell me about the broken bolt - or reset the wrench.

It's like.. dude.. I TOLD you I installed all this myself.. do you not think I'm not going to notice?

RCA :tiphat:

Probably didn't replace the bolt with the proper grade bolt either. Sounds like all Firestone store's are alike. No better out here.

Not today but I went to the drag strip with a few friends and played with my knock-off go pro. Pretty sure I blew out my diff bushing at some point because I was getting a good amount of wheel hop. Need to swap that out and figure out how to make the Z faster

Finding a good alignment guy is tuff.

I don't care what everyone says about Firestone. I will never take anything to them. The horror stories I've heard over the years about them is unbelievable. :shakes head:

I took them a new set of tires and wheels to have the tires mounted and wheels balanced. When I got home I installed the wheels and checked tire pressures. All four had around 50 psi. I guess after they over filled them to set the bead, they neglected to bleed them to the correct pressure. That was enough to convince me to not go back.

I would never take a car to Firestone or Goodyear. They will literally hire anyone. I know because I've had friends work there. Friends I would never let even drive my car, much less wrench on it.

When I worked for Advance, we had a Firestone AND a Meineke in the same parking lot, plus we delivered to NTB (Now Big O Tires here). They are all fvcking morons. Come to think of it, Tires Plus is marginally better, but they are still idiots. :eek:

The NTB we delivered to would regularly break customer lug studs, then charge the customer to replace them. :shakes head::shakes head:

I feel this man.

I blew mine out and have been dealing with it the last couple of months. I finally bought some solid bushings. Just need to find some time to swap them out.

I luckily have a guy at work who I actually trust that is willing to do it and relatively cheaply considering how much of a bitch it is

Replaced el wire mood lights for the doors in orange. Here is the original video after install.

https://youtu.be/1-cAagvRDHY

Ian looks cool, will need to check this out on you car. :tup:

Not sure my oil gallery gasket is done or if I overfilled the oil on the last change. Noticed some light smoking when i got back home yesterday in traffic (vented hood may have made it obvious), and found oil running up the dipstick when i checked it cold this morning. The level is high so I'm hoping it's just that.



I was able to road trip to and from Houston without any issues, but who knows. I have no codes, so maybe just drive it and let the oil catch cans get some of it/burn off the excess.

If it was your oil gallery gaskets. You would never know unless you have an oil pressure gauge or the engine started to make noises. The gaskets leak internally.

i bought a sawzall in preparation. i just really, REALLY dont want to do this..

add Town Fair Tire to the list of tire shops to avoid.

Yeah, you're absolutely right on that one. I'm sure it's an overfill issue. I'll just drive it around and burn the excess off, pretending it's a formula 1 car on startup.... I'm working on getting the PIDs for my dash command software so i can pick up Oil pressure from OBDII, but everything else looks fine. Unfortunately the only oil reading i have available in the car is the temp (which could indicate a failure of some sort, but it's not reliable for pressure readings).

I'd rather be paranoid and have a working car instead of negligent with a broken one. Ideally I'll do the gasket, oil pump, and timing chain all at once in the future.

The dude is charging me 3 hours of labor at $45/hr since he works for me

Seems 2.5k was a little light. Came back with 3.7k on top of the 2.3 for existing damage repairs.

Sorry to hear, man.

:iagree:

Uprev tune completed, haven’t taken it to the dyno yet but wow what a night and day difference between stock and tuned.... feels like a whole new car with the tune :)

:iagree:

I hope insurance is covering most of that! :eek:

Nah... I have $500 deductible on the first $2300 (which was just for the damaged areas) the other $3700 is on me, so $4200 Out of pocket
Its all good, though. She'll be fresh and new again, better than showroom. I can live with that.
I don't get her out much anymore, I think I did like 1500 or so miles since last inspection, so other than the occasional show, or get-together, and the occasional sunday drive, She'll be resting in the garage waiting for the grandson to get his license.
I did have to tear out my custom stereo install, and all the rear trim panels so they can get the tailights out, so I am planning a whole new upgrade for that going back in as well.

geez that's it? I think you're putting too many miles on it.

Agreed. Might want to do a few laps in reverse to get that odometer down. :tup:

Was doing 5k mile oil changes, but now that the ride is at 48k, I am switching it up to 3k mile intervals. I went with Motul 8100 Eco-nergy over the Mobil1 that I had used for the last four oil changes (20k miles). Ordered a Blackstone kit and will use it on the next oil change at 51k.

While I was under the car performing a visual inspection on the ART pipes, I noticed the that mid muffler on my Shockwave had a nice cracked weld on the leading edge. No dent, but seems like I knocked something to make it pop.

To fix it, I went with the tried and true JB Weld epoxy putty. Comes in a cylinder with the reactive putty as the core. Knead it to solid color and apply. Ugly fix on a nice exhaust, but $6.99 was perfect for my budget on a Saturday morning. And it did fix the leak. Sound is no longer close to open down pipes at full throttle.

I'll keep an eye on it, but don't think I'll be taking the muffler off to get the weld fixed or ordering a replacement through Motordyne anytime soon. If anything, I may spend a project day to sand down the putty a bit. I Play Doh'd it up to ensure a nice and solid seal.