CFAUVEL

I have a new to me 350z with a single, behind the seat, compartment. I thought it was a waste to have the space behind the driver not utilized.

The following steps are what I did to accomplish this....it is pretty easy.

Please don't reply until I have posted each step and marked the DIY as done.


Step 1 - purchase the parts that you will need.
1 - rear compartment found from junk yard or ebay
2 - rear door trim with original door and string lanyard.
3 - the latch catch that the door latch catches on.

CFAUVEL

Step 2 - in this step you are dismantling the new door from the donor door trim.

1 - remove the inside roll pin from the door with a suitable tool. I used wire cutters as with just slight squeezing pressure I was able to pull the pin out without cutting the pin. Put pin in a safe spot.

2 - on the felt side you are going to feel for five indents, that is where there are screws connecting the inner and outer halves of the door. I cut an X at each indent and peeled back the felt to expose the screws. remove these screws and put them in a safe spot.

3 - Remove the two screws that hold the latch onto the door.

4 - gently separate the two halves. On one corner there will be another roll pin still attached. Slide the top half of the door off of that pin ( or remove the pin completely).

5 - Remove the lanyard loop from the pin. and thread that loop through the small hole.

6 - remove the door from the trim.

CFAUVEL

Step 2 Continued - you have removed the door now you need to remove the lanyard re-tractor and drill a hole for the lanyard on the other side.

1 - remove the pin washers off of the lanyard guide and lift the guide off
2 - remove the two screws holding the re-tractor on.
3 - measure or draw a template for the location of the lanyard hole on the inner door half. make sure the hole is the same size and deburr any sharp plastic.

CFAUVEL

Step 3 - original door trim removal. Here we need to get the original trim out of the car. You can refer to various threads on how to get that bad boy out, but I'll detail what I did as best as I can.

NOTE: Door Trim here is referring to the trim that holds the two compartment doors not the car door themselves.

1 - remove the two screws on each side of the center console. Also remove one screw under the ash tray. That will give you enough room to pull the door trim out.

2- remove the subwoofer delete trim. Just a plain plastic piece that hides the metal plate that the subwoofer WOULD attach to. The trim is held in by clips at the top and just tabs at the bottom. Unsnap at the top and just gently pull up away from the bottom tabs.

3 - remove the power outlet and disconnect the wires.

4 - unsnap the door jam plastic sills (not the metal looking sill, the plastic piece just inside of the metal one. I didn't remove them all just undid them near the rear. Do that on both sides.

5 - around the seat belt mounting locations there are two larger side trim pieces that start from just behind the seat to behind the speakers, they unsnap pretty easily

6 - Using the doner door trim as reference, take note as to where the metal clips are that hold the door trim. Carefully unsnap these one at a time. Mine were very tight so I used all sort of tools as to NOT break the door trim.

CFAUVEL

Step 4 - subwoofer plate removal and new compartment installation.

This is pretty simple

1 - not sure of the bolt size (10mm I think), remove all of the bolts attaching the subwoofer plate.

2- NOTE: I didn't know it at the time, but once the plate is removed, if you look in the cavity you see two brackets that hang down with threaded inserts. I thought the two inner holes in the back of the compartment would line up, but they don't. Looking on the original side they added another plate with two other threaded inserts that bolt up to the hanging brackets to lower the threaded inserts so that they DO match the holes in the back of the compartment.

3 - NOTE: the compartments are wired for light. Both of my light bulbs were burnt out. Now would be a good time to splice two conductor wire from the original light harness to the new light harness so that both compartments will light up. I don't know when they light up( with headlights, on all the time?) My guess is they are on all the time as the light bulb is very tiny, similar to those found behind a digital clock in a car.

4 - re-install as many bolts as required to attach the new compartment in the location. You will have extra bolts. I didn't feel the need to make the adapter plate that lowers the threaded inserts for the bolts in the back of the compartment. The compartment seems sturdy enough for anything I might put there.

CFAUVEL

Step 5 - Attaching new door to original door trim

1 - thread the loop of the lanyard through the hole provided and attach the retaining washers.

2 - turn the door trim so that the grain faces you, lay the felted side of the new door face down and thread the lanyard loop through the new hole you drilled and attach the loop on the pin provided.

3 - if you followed my instructions you should have one of the roll pins installed and it should be on the outside edge of the inner felted door half. Slide the outer door half over the roll pin and snap the two halves together. Alternatively if neither side has the roll pin inserted simply snap the two halves together making sure the lanyard loop doesn't come off the pin. If doing alternate route, install one of the roll pins on the outside edge of the door. and slide that pin into the hole of the outside edge of the door trim.

4 - lay the inner side of the door in its proper position and install the second roll pin from the inside (transmission tunnel side)

5 - attach the five screws through the felt securing the two halves more securely than just snapping them. Attach the two screws for the latch.

6 - using zip ties attach the lanyard re-tractor just below the original lanyard re-tractor. Put the zip ties through at least one if not all three holes that the re-tractor has other wise it will slip. It has to be below the original, above there is no room.

CFAUVEL

Step 6 - final assembly.

Now you have a door trim with two functioning doors.

1 - attach the latch catch in the similar direction as the original. You my need to go buy some similar sized phillips metric machine screws. For the time being I have scavenged one screw from the latch catch on the original side.

2 - place the compartment door trim in its proper location, verify that the clips will meet the desired holes and simply push in with the palm of your hand to seat the clips.

3 - replace the two large plastic trim that goes from behind the speakers to just behind the seats.

4 - clip the plastic door sills

5 - done.

Maanlo

Nice write up!
Totally useful for everybody.. unless you have OEM BOSE sub.

CFAUVEL

Indeed only for those not using the BOSE sub.

BTW the dome light in the box is so small it barely lights anything.