chad bob

Awesome! That would be very helpful. On another note, I unbolted the back box last week (2 bolt flange next to the diff) and oh man do these NA VQ 's sound sexy with no back box! I took it to the fabricators to get measured for a straight pipe to stock tips to replace the back box and they said it sounded almost identical to the Gallardo that they had in the shop a few days previous. I drove it for a few days like that, not overly loud TBH, does need a small silencer though to stop droning.

1580Kg, RWD, no TC, 191Kw, 324Nm. You do the math, rapid enough to cause trouble. Effectively i can barely tell the difference in thrust between the VQ25DET and VQ30DD probably because the VQ25DET stags are carrying 100Kg extra in 4WD gear. Fuel consumption 11 - 12 L/100Km town. 8-10 L/100Km open road.

I'm unsure of whether you guys will be able to help or not as the VQ30DD Stag is not available in Aus but I need some info. I'd like to do a service on the girl, but I can't seem to find any info on what oil grade, volume is required, if I had to guess I'd just throw 4L of the most expensive stuff I can find at it, but it would be helpful to know what the reccomendation is.

I always have held a soft spot for OVLOVs and when I was on the market for a wagon I was seriously looking at V70's and XC70's, but then I test drove an M35 and the VOLVO was suddenly not even in the running, in fact no other wagon including A4 Audis and Merc's come close to M35 awesomeness.... errm But while VOLVO's are the subject here is the meanest VOLVO wagon that ever was! It's a '67 VOLVO amazon estate with a 600HP 3L Inline six from a VOLVO S80 up front stuck to the biggest snail I've seen on a non drag weapon. Feast in it's glory!

Theres a very simple way to check if you need to install a grounding kit or not. Get your mitts on a cheap multimeter, put it on the lowest resistance setting (omega symbol for ohms) and put one probe on the battery negative terminal and the other on the intake manifold (furthest part of the motor from the factory earthing strap). Remember the reading that the multimeter shows (mine said 0.1 OHMS) now connect a decent piece of copper wire, (be it 8gauge amplifier cable or 25amp cable doesnt matter) between a bolt on the intake and the battery negative terminal. Now re test the resistance with the multimeter, mine came back with 0.02 OHMS after installing the grounding wire. This means that the factory earth is utter BS or has been damaged, check it out on your car before doing an earthing mod if you must. VQ engines are renound for poor earthing strap design. I did the same mod on my 2L track car (not a NISSAN) and the resistance went from 0.6 down to 0.04 ohms, should give a nice strong spark now.

Those noisy front shocks MUST be 4WD only. Mine are silent.

Just to clarify previous comments: The M35 300RX is 1580Kg with 260 Hp and 325Nm going through the Rear wheels only with no traction control. A luxury wagon with very bad manners! Love it! Oh and I'd like to add dual sunroofs as one of my all time favourite features.

My favourite feature is that it has no traction control, it's more tail happy than my old man's '06 Holden VZ ss ute. I can't stop it from getting the ass out on wet days!

Yup I used Blender. It operates in very much the same way as the other main stream surface modelling suits. I'm actually 'Solidworks' based, but Blender is more free form and uses no actual dimensions. The Stagea M35 model is available from Google Sketchup but it's best to convert it to Blender format because 'Sketchup' is far too basic to do cool stuff.

I found a sweet 3D model of a Stag M35 on google. I've been playing with it in 'Blender', so far I've been fiddling with a basic aero kit and a spring chop. I am thinking of modelling some sweet rims for it, or maybe do the engine bay! The pics are blocky but it'll turn out smooth in the end.

Umm not on my tan - walnut interior thanks! Non toxic smoke is reserved for standing around the track car in the shed with the bonnet open.

Ha! I see, thanks for clearing that up, my 300RX passes as a 'Green Dot' vehicle in NZ, I think that means that it chuffs out flowers and some such like a hippie van cartoon from the 60's.

I was just wondering why M35 300RX Stags are not eligable for import into Australia? I thought the cutoff for a specialist performance import was 105Kw / Ton ? Skyline 300GT = 128.2Kw / Ton Skyline 350GT-8 = 129.6Kw / Ton Stag 250 TRS = 122.6Kw / Ton Stag 300 RX = 120.3Kw / Ton Stag 350 RX = 126.4Kw / Ton Am I missing something guys?

Nonsense! Self tapping wood screw! I will post pics as soon as I have som spare time to pull the engine cover off.

Saying that though, if you were to compare the metal quality of an HKS kit's wiring to my JB HIFI special's, I dare say you would see absolutely no difference in conductivity or quality.

$15..........$200.................$15................$200 I dont get it dude! Let me try again: 200 / 15 = 13.33333333333 or maybe 15 / 200 = 0.075 x 100 = 7.5% Nope I still dont get it. You could pay for my airfairs to Australia and I would put together a kit for you that looked exactly like an HKS or APEXi unit, and you still have enough $ left to buy me a box of VB!

pixla8er, what you just described is EXACTLY what I was experiencing in my Stag. Now it changes like a champ! I had my box fully serviced 5 months ago as well. Just remember that off the shelf earthing kits can cost up to $200, my kit cost me $15 and 10 mins of install time. If you like I'll take a pic of what I did, but it's easy enough to explain and only involves 2 lengths of wire/

Now you guys are thinking like me! It is a bit bogan but how cool would it be doing the classic Aussie hotrod wagon look with a beut M35 body. Keep everybody guessing

HA! A skeptic Nope the negative terminal remained attached through the procedure, I didn't need to reset my dash clock or radio stations. All I did on the battery was remove the 10mm nut, stick on the terminal then screwed the nut back on, the terminal connection itself didn't move 1mm.

The way I see it, if a grounding kit gives you an improvement in response and shift times this = fuel savings as you get more go for less throttle. So on a $15 grounding kit, it'd pay for itself after a few tanks of gas.

I think the moral of my story is that it's very hard to tell if your auto box is properly grounded or not because the deterioration in shift times and response to throttle position would be VERY gradual over a few thousand Km or so. So it's the sort of thing whereby fixing the problem is the only way to tell if there was anything wrong in the first place, so ground the thing , if you end up with a much nicer car to drive (this happened in my case).... or nothing changes, which means that everything was correctly grounded in the first place, still nothing lost. From the reading I've done, it appears that people have seen shift time and response improvements in the following models after fitting even a basic grounding kit like mine. (all automatic transmission models, obviously) -350Z -V35 Skyline -G35 Infinity -M35 Stagea This is why I mentioned that any number of Electronic Automatic vehicles may see improvements, it's not limited to a single model but in fact every model using Nissan's 'FM' platform. So who's to say that you won't see improvement in a WC34 or R34.

I'm sorry, I know that these points of discussion have been covered previously but I had such a successful weekend that I just had to dig it up again. I have seen details on the yank G35 forums concerning earthing kits for the VQ35, there was some doubt that they would actually work. This weekend I popped into JB HIFI and bought 2 meters of 8gauge amplifier cable and a packet of gold plated terminals, $15 in total spent. Installation took 5 mins, I just anchord the cable on the opposite side of the motor to the factory grounding strip, one terminal on the intake and one on the timing chain cover, then back to the negative battery terminal. I was not prepared for how great the improvement is, it feels like a totally different car! When I come to an incline, instead of having to change down manually or stomp my foot to get the car to shift down, it does it with the very litest application of throttle, the gearbox feels like it's had a valve body re-build, so responsive, sauch fast changes with none of the delay that it had before. If you havnt installed a grounding kit on your M35 yet, do it! The other mod i did this weekend was a VQ35 intake mod, removed the inspection cover on the air box and re-positioned the bonnet seal to create a second intake, theres more induction noise and I detect a slight increase in low end pull, a good mod none the less. Good weekend.

Cuff all this! When I go for new rims on the Stag I'm going to get some 15 x 8" Valiant 440 charger rims, nice and rusty with some fat old goodyears on the back. The rust should tie in with the Ruby red paint work nicely

*cough* power windows *cough* I really need to get this swine flu looked at

This is rather common in the 'frog eye' WRX Subarus with the TD04, I know 3-4 WRX drivers who've had this happen, havn't heard of a NISSAN with the same issue though. Simple, buy an NA M35 ALMOST as much go without the hair drier