Well better late than never, right?! Hopefully this post makes up for my delinquency.
It has been a busy year at work and home, and the Z had a short summer season to be sure. That said, there were some significant changes made and I definitely had some good driving and shows throughout the summer months!
First up, I still wasn't 100% satisfied with how the WickedCAS corner box sounded with the rest of the system and try as I might I couldn't get it tuned to my liking. So I sold that, and ordered a Zenclosures dual 10" rear firing box. I ordered two JL 10w3v3-4's and I'm running them in parallel as a 2Ohm load.
I got the box naked (just the wood) and ordered some Alcantara fabric from JPM Coachworks. It took some time to arrive as it ships right from Italy, and when it finally arrived it was another 8 weeks to have it padded, stitched and wrapped. However the end result was as amazing as I had hoped for:
Next, I bought a Quaife LSD pre-installed in a pumpkin from a member here on the forum with only 1000 miles on it. The energy differential bushings were already installed in the ears and I bought an energy rear main differential bushing. It also had a Nismo finned diff cover installed. I kept factory FD gear ratio as some sort of boost will likely be in the future.
After removing the factory diff (cake walk) I set to work changing the main bushing. It's as ridiculous as others have said, but after a sawzall, dremel, drill, sledge and custom clamp-press, it was out and the energy bushing was in.
I installed the new pumpkin and went for a test drive. The car immediately felt much better powering out of the turns but it wasn't until several weeks later when I went to the track that I really noticed the difference. Wheel hop with the new bushings was all but eliminated! And the Quaife is amazing, just takes everything you throw at it and performs.
While the diff was getting installed, I decided that the current exhaust system wasn't loud enough. I wanted the sound of open dump, with the ability to make it quieter if desired. So with the help of a good friend who made some custom exhaust pieces for me and did all the welding, I installed two electronic cutouts right before the FI mufflers. It's all hardwired and there is a switch in the cabin so I can go from my normal exhaust (Factory headers, Motordyne ART pipes and FI non-resonated CBE) to open dump out of turndown pipes just before the FI mufflers in 3 seconds.
The car FINALLY sounds like it should have all along. Plus, with the flick of a switch, I can go back to something that won't absolutely terrorize my neighbours lol. Unfortunately I can't find the main group of pictures of it all finished, save for one during installation. Also, I didn't get any sound clips of it this year but will absolutely get some done next season.
Electronics also got updated this season -
I installed an Optima Yellow Top battery as my OEM one was dead after the winter. (My fault for leaving it in with no trickle charger all winter anyways).
I installed a permanent mounted police scanner and PCAS system for detecting nearby (police) aircraft. I also added a third front laser jammer head to complete the 5-sensor system.
Brakes got the Z1 2-Piece rear rotor (slotted) upgrade, changing from the Stoptech 1-Piece rears I'd had previously.
I changed out my 5 year old K&N oiled CAI filters for some much better AEM dry flow ones with K&N pre-filters to keep the crazy amounts of dust we have here out.
Finally, I removed the dipped front emblem I had and installed a gloss black 'Z' logo one to make the front cleaner.
I took the car to two shows this year, first was the Edmonton Z Car Club annual show and shine, where I managed to take home best late model Z (350/370)!
Second was Driven Edmonton, where I won best in show for my class (Z Car, all models). That was pretty awesome as there were some amazing Z's there and lots of them!
The car got a full paint correction and wax before the show:
And after the show, just before I parked it, I took my new iPhone 7 Plus and did a photoshoot: (The forum really takes a ton of detail out to make the pictures fit within the file size, but you should get the idea anyways).
Then, after a crazy year, I put it to bed again!
