mad-ass' car progress.

[Average_Jerk]

Thats how we did the alignment on dudemans s14 also hahah

[mad-ass]

My order from The Retrofit Source came in earlier today. Ordered the Morimoto Mini H1 Projector kit with 4300K bulb. I already have PnP "Bi-Xenon" kit with the little halogen bulb to act as the highbeam in the low-beam portion.

So far..I have this.


So from what I've been reading so far I've gotten these two items today as well.


Capacitor for the [Low to High] or [High to Low] transitions so the HID doesn't loose power(or flicker), and Diode to keep the HID on going from [Low to High] and [High to Low].

My HID system already has relays in it, so I'll leave that alone.(1 relay powering both ballasts. don't want to change it because it's been working perfectly fine for last 5 years)

So instead, I'll change things around the stock low-beam harness(most likely going to be doing this on the power relay harness, as it can just be removed from the car very easily).

I'll tap into the high-beam wire and solder in the bi-xenon solenoid wire than the diode to the low-beam wire. On the low-beam wire after the diode, i'll solder in the capacitor than finally into the H4 socket.

Here's my super fine Power Point drawing! lol


This is all before it gets hook up to the ballast.

[mad-ass]

I finished up the projector retro fit using the TRS Morimoto Mini H1's and Mini Gatling shroud, and 4300K bulbs. The wiring I came up with...used it exactly except the Capacitor.

The clear covers coming off the headlight after 5 years of service.



First mock up of the projector.


The shoud is trimmed and fitted in.


Back side of the TRS Morimoto Mini H1, I ended up adding the stock H4 bulb holder clip as well.


Bit of close up.




Clear lens is back on with using the 3M Windo-Weld(available at Napa Auto Parts, I believe it was the 3/8th tick one, costs about $20 or so..enough length to do two full zenki headlights!)


Back on the car


Rough mock up to the car with just one side, decent cut off. still 10x better than before.


Over all, I'm happy with the out come. I did add the diode in the relay harness from the High-to-Low wire so it doesn't shut the HID off when the high-beam is engaged, and used the stock wiring to activate the high-beam/cut-off flap actuator. This worked out perfectly as I expected and wanted.

[mad-ass]

I spent the last two days working on my car after I was done with my projector retrofit. I probably spent good 20 hours on it in last two days..

Plan was to do the Energy Suspension rear subframe bushings, rear knuckle bushings, add SPL eccentric lock out washer/bolt, and find and seal up the hole in my gas tank.



^The bushings pressed in and ready to go in the car.(Bought spare S14 knuckles so I didn't have to have any extra down time with the car.)


Subframe out!

I know subframe collars are pretty much all the same, but These are Techno Toy Tuning/T3 collars I bought back in 2007, been in my car ever since and they served their purpose! I believe I bought the very last set he ever made for the S-chassis along with the super beefy T/C rod when T3 still made parts for the S-chassis.


^This is the under side of the rear fuel pump access port hole/fuel tank hump. you can see off the right side from center of the picture where previous owner used self tapping screw to "bolt down" extra speakers in this car...yup...what the actual fuck on this one.


^RTV seems to work on anything..haha.

Everything that was planned to be finished went very well with out much of a hick-up, and Boy am I glad I did those subframe bushings. I believe they made the biggest changes in driving characteristic on this car by any means. No more random road noises, solid rear end feels, the Kaaz diff even quite down a bit IMO!

Over all, the 30 some odd hours I spent on my car this week was the most rewarding time I've spent on it that actually made the car drive better for me. Projector retrofit and bushings...I should have done them 5 years ago!

[mad-ass]

I forgot to post this here.


Cut-off of the Morimoto Mini-H1's from the end of my garage to my neighbor's garage.

[rice4life]

Wow, those projectors look great, and have a nice clean cutoff.

[mad-ass]

Well, I've been wanting to do HID on my Fog lights(S14 Zenki OEM) for a bit while since I've done the projector retrofit..so I ordered up some kit.

www.mod-express.com JL Kit, 35W, 3000K, H3 bulb.

Mod-Express is the same company that I bought my HID's from back in 2007(and I still use the ballast, working perfectly fine) for uber expensive price of $140, but it is a AC ballast unlike most DC ballasts out there. But now their kits are super cheap and I'm hoping that it would work out fine, but most appealing this is the ballast being AC(big must for me)

I ordered Monday morning, received it this morning(wednesday). it also helps that it just had to come from so-cal to nor-cal so it shouldn't have taken long time anyways.

Here's what they look like when it comes in.











I test fired them already and they do work properly.

Hoping to be able to do a clean install with these.

[mike-81-240d]

Oh bummer you bought the mini h1's right before the new mini d2s v3.0's started selling. The D2S 3.0's are as good as FXR's.

[mad-ass]

Hi Mike-81-240d,

I do understand that there are better products out there, but for the price and ease of install on these units, I couldn't complain one bit.($120 shipped for new bulbs and projector kit with shroud. WHAT??)

I did talk to them for a bit about which product I should get, and biggest concern was the clearance I had to work with. But if I were to do this again, I'll probably do the FX-R's(even though it is way more time consuming to do that retrofit than the one I did), but the performance of these projectors are big for their price and I'm completely happy with them.

I'll post detailed pics of the process I take to do the HID conversion on my Fog Lights.

[mad-ass]

Finished up the install on the Zenki S14 Fog Lights using the Mod-Express JL Hid Kit(3000K 35W H3 HID Kit).




^ I drilled out the dust caps with stepped drill bit to allow room for the new bulbs. This gets covered later.


^The plug that was on the fog-light unit is removed and spliced into the HID Power harness so that I can plud this into the chassis harness and not mess with the chassis harness itself.


^I taped up the out-put side of the HID Ballast in efforts to keep them moisture free as long as possible.


^Pictured of one side, pretty basic setup as 35W will only take up 3.1~3.5 Amps of power draw, no need to use relays. Here you can see that only thing that needs to be hooked up now is the patch harness I made earlier into the chassis harness.


Taped up the hole/opening in the dust cap/cover as best I could....


Finished!

I'll post a pic of it on the road later when I remember to along with actual night time driving impressions.

[DioXidE]

Nice write up... at first when you said you had a 240 I pictured a hatch s13 because thats all I read about on forums about 240sx. Over here we never got the ka24 and all the s13 hatches are called 180sx and the 200sx is the s14 or s15. I owned a s14 na sr20de was such a fun drift car in the wet!

Build looks good.and I love the hid retrofit. I recently did a set like that in a mates r32 gtr.

[Hotsauce]

Awesome build thread. This really makes me want to work on the s14 i bought last year

[mad-ass]

Didn't realize I never updated this...and I forgot to do the night shots, I'll get on that here soon...but for now, here's a blurry picture of it. But check out the cutoff on the K-wall.


Just installed the VDO gauges(I got the volt meter few month back, just got the water temp gauge installed this week), not sure why I havn't gotten them sooner. Price point is there, quality is there, design and looks are definitely there, probably will never buy any other gauges unless they are speedhut or something in that line.



and also, did Oil change..hopefully this will be the last oil change with the KA.