New Old Owner
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From: Hayward, CA
New Old Owner
O Learned Denizens,
Last night bought a 2004 350z Touring in blue. 122,000 miles and no mods apart from a burbly Nismo exhaust fitted by the first owner. Oh, and a stupid gear ****.
Previous owner had it for 10 years but although it's ithad a lot of affection, it hasn't had much mechanical love.. Luckily it's Japanese. Cosmetically it's in a really grubby but basically sound shape, I think it will polish up ok.
Our plan (wife and I) is to autocross it and work on it together.
Titter ye not, it's a great plan.
I'm old enough to have a lot of experience fiddling with cars and she used to have a 2004 350z just like this in England, before I met her. Hers was brand new when she bought it. I was driving a 100,000 mile 5 Series wagon at that point in my life. She has also decided she wants to learn to drift after hearing me talk about it and hearing that I am coaching my co-workers. It's part of my job, in case you were wondering.
I don't have any ambition to mod it to death - I was specifically looking for an unmodified car as much as possible. If I wanted 500 horses I would have bought a 500 horse car.
It needs new brakes all round and new fluid, of course. The transmission hash noise seems terrible but a forum is a bad place to get advice for that, so I will have a look at fluids in it and the diff before I mention that again.
For autocross I plan on running the tyres back to front to make the car rotate more readily. More on that in due course. I think this car doesn't have a limited slip diff, and am thinking I might spend on a torque biasing diff if it struggles with lighting up the inside rear. I will cross that bridge when I come to it. They seem to be out there if I decide I want one. That and some autocross rims and tires are about all I am thinking of. Well, a harness bar and five point are possibilities because it will make autocross more comfortable especially as a passenger. Still thinking about that.
The thing is chock full of trim rattles - I fixed the first one last night by bending out the spring that holds the ashtray. I will just work through those as the mood takes me. Most immediate will be the window regulator clanging around in the driver's door.
Passenger window doesn't want to work, I will get into that in due course when I find a fusebox diagram so I can start from the start. Lift gate struts are totally dead, that doesn't seem like a drama to fix.
Bizarrely, a single lug nut is missing on the right rear wheel. I can only drift to the right until that's sorted.
Overall impressions are that this thing is brawny and nimble and a hoot. My wife has all but forgotten how to drive a manual but it came flooding back in the first few miles. I never forgot, so we're good there.
Generic advice on pitfalls to look for always welcome if you've read this far - if not I just filtered out your ADHD, so neither of us lost out. :-) I reserve the right to not listen to a word I'm told.
Damian
Last night bought a 2004 350z Touring in blue. 122,000 miles and no mods apart from a burbly Nismo exhaust fitted by the first owner. Oh, and a stupid gear ****.
Previous owner had it for 10 years but although it's ithad a lot of affection, it hasn't had much mechanical love.. Luckily it's Japanese. Cosmetically it's in a really grubby but basically sound shape, I think it will polish up ok.
Our plan (wife and I) is to autocross it and work on it together.
Titter ye not, it's a great plan.
I'm old enough to have a lot of experience fiddling with cars and she used to have a 2004 350z just like this in England, before I met her. Hers was brand new when she bought it. I was driving a 100,000 mile 5 Series wagon at that point in my life. She has also decided she wants to learn to drift after hearing me talk about it and hearing that I am coaching my co-workers. It's part of my job, in case you were wondering.
I don't have any ambition to mod it to death - I was specifically looking for an unmodified car as much as possible. If I wanted 500 horses I would have bought a 500 horse car.
It needs new brakes all round and new fluid, of course. The transmission hash noise seems terrible but a forum is a bad place to get advice for that, so I will have a look at fluids in it and the diff before I mention that again.
For autocross I plan on running the tyres back to front to make the car rotate more readily. More on that in due course. I think this car doesn't have a limited slip diff, and am thinking I might spend on a torque biasing diff if it struggles with lighting up the inside rear. I will cross that bridge when I come to it. They seem to be out there if I decide I want one. That and some autocross rims and tires are about all I am thinking of. Well, a harness bar and five point are possibilities because it will make autocross more comfortable especially as a passenger. Still thinking about that.
The thing is chock full of trim rattles - I fixed the first one last night by bending out the spring that holds the ashtray. I will just work through those as the mood takes me. Most immediate will be the window regulator clanging around in the driver's door.
Passenger window doesn't want to work, I will get into that in due course when I find a fusebox diagram so I can start from the start. Lift gate struts are totally dead, that doesn't seem like a drama to fix.
Bizarrely, a single lug nut is missing on the right rear wheel. I can only drift to the right until that's sorted.
Overall impressions are that this thing is brawny and nimble and a hoot. My wife has all but forgotten how to drive a manual but it came flooding back in the first few miles. I never forgot, so we're good there.
Generic advice on pitfalls to look for always welcome if you've read this far - if not I just filtered out your ADHD, so neither of us lost out. :-) I reserve the right to not listen to a word I'm told.
Damian
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