LinPark

7/18/2010

So I have been waiting for quite sometime on this post - it is my 200th post here on the site and I have quite a bit to cover today.

First, the car tripped 1,000 miles last night. She sat patiently in the parking lot of the movie theater at 997 miles while my wife and I took in The Sorcerer's Apprentice which I would recommend to anyone. After that, we took her out on SR70 here in Bradenton and I almost teared up as she passed into the 4 digit mileage territory but then I remembered how sad it would be if she just sat around in a garage all the time.

I plan to do an oil change in the next 100 to 200 miles - I have all the items that I need now. I have to say the oil filter for this car is amazingly small. Not that long ago, I bought an oil filter wrench to help me change the oil out in my 280Z. Here is a picture of the 370Z oil filter sitting inside that wrench which just barely fits around the 280Z oil filter:



I haven't owned that many cars so I basically assumed that most cars have an oil filter in them about the same size as the one in the 280Z so I bought a fairly standard wrench and figured it would always work. Now I'm wishing I had bought one that was a little more flexible in the sizes it could handle because there is no way this one is going to grab that 370Z filter.

Last weekend, I finally finished most of the paint correction and had gotten to the point where all the polishing was complete but no wax was used so I figured it was time for my first real modification. I guess you could say installing the locking lugs was my first one but that was just too easy so I'm not going to count that one. I stripped the 370Z logo from the rear using the techniques outlined in the DIY section - dental floss and the Bug N Tar remover seemed to do the trick best for me on this project. I had toyed with moving the logo altogether but in the end liked the look of it best right where the old logo had been - here are some pics of my Fairlady Z emblem:







And last but not least, I've finally finished the exterior detailing. I can't believe I started this project back in April on a brand new car and it took me until July to wrap it all up. Granted I only work on this car a few hours each weekend because of other commitments (college for my kids and retirement for me can't come soon enough I tell ya!) but it has been completely worth it. I'd like to thank AK first for turning me onto the Adam's products - if it weren't for his thread on cleaning his car and referencing those products I'm not sure what I would have ended up doing but I'm sure it would've taken me even longer than it has and costed me even more money than I've already spent. I'm sure there are those that will argue with the use of those products and tell me I could've done it much cheaper and much faster (please let's not flood this thread with those comments). The bottom line is that there will always be certain things each of us are willing to spend money on - sometimes we pay the least we can for a solution and other times we pay what we feel is warranted to get the results we want. I am extremely happy with every product I've purchased so far and here are the pics:

















Next up for me will be an upgrade to the audio and I've also reached out to Igor/Alex at 180 Customs to do some headlight modifications.

Later all!