The Max

If you're going through the insurance, then for the bonnet pop-up issue in itself (I'm not factoring in damaged bumper, grille, bonnet, etc) that repair will entail: 1) Replacement rams (single use items) 2) Replacement hinges (single use items) 3) Replacement Bonnet Pop-Up control module (single use item living in the boot) Now, for the third item, if they can't source a replacement, the EEPROM in the module can be cleared with an appropriate EEPROM programmer, which will extinguish the otherwise permanent display of the pop-up indicator light on your dash. I've explained in the thread how that's done. There is a process for clearing the pop-up indicator when it's in error but in my case, it was a legitimate hit from a motorcyclist thinking he was Casey Stoner, so the only way was with the EEPROM programmer. While we're on the topic, does anyone know if there's a spacer or shim sandwiched between the hinge and bonnet? Mine is sunken by a couple of mm below the edge of the front guard near the windscreen and looking at the two hinges, I see that the driver's side has something like a little bit of sheet metal wedged in there while the other doesn't. I might have to fashion up one for the passenger side to sort that out. Yes, I'm a meticulous twat.

So is the common problem a ruptured o-ring under it or something?

Oh man, Level 10. I remember those guys very well. They rebuilt my J30 Maxima tranny back in the day, with a 4000RPM stall TC. It was bulletproof.

Bugger me. Are the 7ATs any better at handling the extra torque, from a mechanical standpoint of course?

He's already done that but the impact from that last drop has likely busted his crystal, in my opinion. If you take a look at the key's PCB, I've marked on it what my engineering brain tells me the components are likely to be. The larger coil is definitely for powering the fob in the keyslot when the battery is out. The other two coils (within their thin black plastic enclosures), I suspect they're the antennas because of their orientation seemingly suitable for both horizontal and vertical polarisation, thereby working under any position relative to the vehicle's transponders. The three coils should all be fairly robust, as they don't need to do any minute physical movements like the crystal does. Hence, they are well packed and rigid in their construction, internally. The crystal oscillator is what I suspect has been buggered up. These little metal cans have a tiny sliver of quartz rock inside, lightly sandwiched or suspended between very fine plates or wires for the electrodes. A voltage is applied and removed constantly, the crystal responds to it until it quickly achieves resonance at the desired frequency and filters out the unwanted frequencies to give an accurate frequency needed by the IC to proportionally multiply (in this case x32) to achieve the carrier frequency of 314.85MHz that these things transmit at, and then transmit the relevant data from the IC out via the antennas. In an impact, the frequency can be altered because of the internal stresses on the crystal, be it slight fracturing of the rock, etc. That could result in there being oscillation but at the wrong frequency. If the impact is hard enough, you can break the electrodes or the crystal completely, resulting in no RF activity altogether. Crystal oscillators are made reasonably rugged but they can only deal with so much impact before they say goodnight. Of course, these are mass produced boards, so it could well be just a dud solder joint that was ready to fracture with enough mechanical coercion but failing a quick retouch of solder joints, I'm inclined to think that the crystal is the most likely culprit here.

If people all import their vehicles from Japan instead of buying from the local supply chain, that hurts their international operations considerably. In turn, that costs jobs here in Australia and everywhere else. What seems like a simple language change to you or I, really becomes a problem for all concerned along the line. So, manufacturers of various products have their domestic product and support it domestically only. As Ben said, when that Japanese domestic product leaves their shores, it's really not their problem any longer. It's not like you had any business with them if you were to never buy another secondhand Nissan ever again. Would it be nice if Nissan had multiple selectable languages in these systems? Sure. Would it be feasible? Definitely. Would it actually be used in a country whose 99.9% proportion of users are Japanese? Not likely, so they don't bother and that's fair enough. When I bought my V36, I knew this was going to be an issue and I worked out my own Infotainment system to augment it. Time to get creative and/or resourceful, dude.

You know what? I never even paid any attention to that until you pointed it out! I have no idea how the Dynapack dyno works, in terms of how it works out the diff ratio, but it definitely raises an important question. Six years had passed since the last time it was dyno'ed and unless they do keep notes on exactly how the dyno was done on each occasion, it's likely that the method had changed for whatever reason. Seems a bit high though, doesn't it?

Could be a number of factors but my concern was primarily not to be as aggressive on the timing to avoid the detonation, so it could well be that I lost performance in that area. Maybe the difference in transmissions plays a part (as in greater inefficiency)? The only real way of being sure where the point of difference is would be to get back to basics, putting your engine and mine on an engine dyno first, to take the transmission out of the equation.

Thought I'd post an update on this, as the one thing I had noticed about six months later was some detonation when driving out of a parking station at low RPM, high load (i.e. uphill). I've rarely had any time to myself to drop in on these guys during the week but I took advantage of my work-from-home situation (I still hate you, CCP!) and drop it in to Tunehouse for another run. There have been a number of improvements made in the software, which I neglected to ask but we're now up to version 11 (I presume we're talking about ECUtek, not the Nissan firmware). My instructions were clear - dial out the detonation even if it means losing response, torque, overall power, etc. The motor was around 30,000kms old at the time of the initial tune, if I remember correctly. This tune was at around 60,000kms last week. Despite the low kms, it was suggested that the OEM spark plugs be replaced (they installed HKS M54XL Super Fire) and give the MAFs a clean while they're at it, so I ran along with that. The torque has definitely been dialled out of the low RPM range with less aggressive timing, which is what I anticipated and so the response off the line at the lights isn't as snappy when light on the throttle. WOT response from a standstill is still reasonably aggressive. I actually appreciate that because I'm not jolting the car as often, which was an annoyance before no matter how lightly I would feather the accelerator. I'm sure my passengers will appreciate it all the more! Better yet, my VDC isn't triggering as aggressively as it used to either, despite my aged but not worn Pilot Sport 3 rubber on the rear. Overall, the car is still just as fun for me but now it's a little easier to tame. Surprisingly, we gained a further 5kW and another 9Nm of peak torque since the last dyno tune six years ago. Still, even if I lost 5kW, I'd rather that to egg-shaped cylinders from all that detonation.

I would guess that thumping the crash sensor would only trigger the warning if the vehicle was in motion and of course, that would trigger the rams. Damaged wiring is a possibility but it would take a very conscious effort to achieve that because the sensor wiring doesn't run right up to the HID ballast connector. There's enough wiring up to the ballast connector to allow for the required cut and shut to wire the 12V up to the halogen lamps. If the dude who worked on it managed to butcher it so bad, bugger me. The only time I ever encountered this warning lamp without a crash was when I loaded UpRev Osiris into my ECU, there was a slight difference in the JDM ECU code to falsely trigger this DTC. To their credit, they were quick to resolve that for me but I've unloaded it because my dyno guy uses ECUtek instead.

I would have a scan tool run on it to be sure that it's not a legitimate crash recording in the pop-up hood module. If clearing the DTC with the scan tool does not clear the LED and the ECU has not been flashed by an early version of UpRev's tuning code, then chances are the pop-up hood module has some crash data recorded in it. Replacing headlights will not cause this. My 2009 had the exact same procedure done on it for compliance, with no ill effect and I reverted them back to the factory HIDs myself, again with no ill effect. Read my post in this thread about the crash module reset process:

That looks like an automatic side mirror adjuster so that when you engage your transmission in reverse gear, it automatically positions the mirror to look down at the kerb so you don't eat your rear rim. Turn it on and try it out next time.

So, I finally got around to finishing the touchscreen. Full disclosure though, I'm not entirely happy with it and I knew this restriction going into this project from the beginning. There are two types of touchscreens - resistive and capacitive. Your phone's screen is capacitive. The V36's touchscreen is resistive. The downside of resistive is that it does not have the same sensitivity nor resolution that a capacitive touchscreen can offer, so that renders it useless for gestures, such as swiping. Look at the menus of our vehicles and you will see that they don't have any menus built for scrolling, aside from the phonebook and even then, you need to use the jog dial or up/down buttons to navigate those anyway. I have tried for a little while to find a suitable 7" capacitive touchscreen overlay that could be used instead but came up empty-handed. As a result, we can only do an x,y positioning and left click to be even mildly useful. For the GPS software, that works extremely well as they have designed their own software that way. For the Foobar2000 audio player, I will need to design some scrollbars into the skin so that I can tap my way up or down. Ultimately, that is what's left after completing the hardware installation for this system - software tweaks. I won't bore everyone with the details about the software itself, though I'm happy to answer any questions you may have for me about this. But to list the building blocks required for this modification: Touchscreen HID interface circuit using the now discontinued Microchip AR1100 chip (there may be other suitable replacements today but I haven't looked any further for the reasons above) UPDD (Universal Pointer Device Driver) software to translate the AR1100 serial data to human interface device data The latest is v6 but that does not work very reliably in a Windows 7 environment, so be sure to use the latest v5 driver for Windows 7 PCs 5m USB lead to reach from the screen to the rear right corner of the boot 20cm 4-wire FPC extension cable and suitable homemade female-female joiner (I have yet to find one from a manufacturer) Let's start with the touchscreen disconnection here. I won't go into the removal process of the screen assembly. It's pretty straightforward. Note down the bottom left corner, where the touchscreen cable is. Carefully disconnect this guy from the display's PCB. You need to pull the latch away from the connector to unlock and then gently pull the thin film cable out. This connector will no longer be used, not that I ever used it apart from the telephone dialler on the odd occasion. That can be done with the physical button panel anyway. Before replacing the rear housing, it is necessary to bend the housing slightly where the cable passes. Normally this would sit on the inside but now we need to bend it in to allow the cable to gently sit outside. It's only a very slight bend, so don't go crazy and brutalise it. Once you have carefully replaced the rear housing, use a small but strong piece of double-sided automotive tape to hold the FPC female-female joiner in place so that there is no stress imposed upon the touchscreen's cable. They are reasonably flexible enough to take a little punishment but the more you can do to avoid them cracking or fracturing, the better. Likewise, tape down the interface board in the position shown. This will allow sufficient room for the USB cable to enter from the hole on the right and plug in without imposing any stress along the materials. Ideally, the hole should have some kind of rubber lining around it to avoid grazing the extension cable. By the same token, this is the added benefit of using the extension cable - it can be a sacrificial and easily replaced component if something were to happen, as opposed to replacing the entire touch overlay. Here is the rear view of our screen assembly. The cable has been stuck down with the same double-sided tape to make its reasonably stress-free journey to the other device. Here is the screen assembly mounted in place and everything plugged in. Note how the USB cable has a gentle bend radius on the cable, which was the aim of the game as previously mentioned. With the vents and button panel assembly reinstalled, you can see that we have just enough clearance in there so as not to unduly stress any of our components. Lucky eh? And that's basically it! Start up your PC, calibrate the touchscreen positioning with the UPDD software (remember, v5 for Windows 7 and v6 for Windows 10), set up the tap gesture for x,y and left-click and there you go. Until I sort out the scrollbars in Foobar2000, I will need to rely on my wireless mouse for scroll capability but at least I can skip tracks of whatever album is currently playing.

Howdy all. Time two (hopefully final) updates! First one is the subwoofer story. I replaced the subwoofer with a Focal K2-E30KX 12", using the same enclosure for now but ideally will need to be a bit bigger for better low-end extension on this critter. Only problem with today's subs is that they're not as sensitive as the old Soundstream was, so it meant having to replace my trusty old Sony XM-1002HX amp with a much more powerful Helix C-One. Now my back hates me even more when I have to lift this monster in and out, given the amp is a couple kilos heavier than my old Sony (understandably) and the Focal sub is about 5kg heavier than my old Soundstream. Anyway, upgraded the power cabling from 8GA to 4GA (the main feed entering the boot before the distribution block is 2GA) to accommodate the hungrier amp. Only problem I created for myself is that the RCA sockets on these amps are seriously tight tolerance, so the amp doesn't quite like my right angled RCA adapter in that it does fit but then when I attempted to rotate it a little for positioning, I heard a snap and realised I snapped the centre conductor and the outer ground ring off their respective pin and strap. There goes my warranty, since I've had to recrimp and solder a small wire to the board to restore a solid connection. 😡 Despite being quite happy with the sound I got from my Soundstream for the last 22 years, I have to say, the Focal has made me realise what advancements I've missed out on over that period of time. So in a way, I'm actually glad my Soundstream died. I just wish it died in a safer manner!! Mind you, this is with the sub not being in an ideal enclosure nor being that well tuned just yet. This will be the final piece in putting an end to this project (or will it?). A massive thanks to Marty at FHRX Studios for not only his excellent business acumen but also his clear understanding of what I wanted and his subsequent guidance. I had another more expensive Morel subwoofer in mind after hearing it in action but Marty saved me a bundle in steering me towards the Focal without compromising on what my ears like. Up next, touchscreen control.

If they must be new, then you'll have no choice but to look overseas. Aside from the US, give Amayama and Partsouq a look, as their prices can be quite competitive (I've dealt with Partsouq myself and they've been great on the two occasions I've used them). Be sure to search by part number rather than by make/model/build date, to be sure you're landing the right one and THEN cross-compare to see what make/model/build year they list it as being suitable for, just as a means to double check.That has always ensured I get the right part for my vehicle, particularly if the part number has been superseded by a newer (compatible) component.