The Max

Do a Google search on the word going around. They're not much better than a certain E.Lee. That's why I opted to import my own through Prestige Motorsports and I couldn't be happier. Despite the fact that I found 4 wire taps on two wires for the LCD monitor and the AV unit wiring while I've been working on it, which suggests that the vehicle had been worked on by the previous owner, it was very well looked after regardless and everything perfectly functional. In other words, truly the 5A grading that it received. I have no regrets and neither will you, as long as you do your homework and exercise a little patience with your decision.

Man it sure has been a long time between updates and I must apologise. The last month and a half has been a very busy one and I've been moving full steam ahead with whatever time I have on the weekends. This has meant no time taken to snap some photos of what I did for the front door speakers but what I can say is that finding the terminals to suit the Sumitomo connectors in the doors proved to be highly unsuccessful. I couldn't even find a supplier who could make available a "sample" pack of 100 terminals at least. So, I took the unfortunate solution of getting a carbide cutting bit for my Dremel and cut out two of the existing unused pin holes to pass through my 18AWG speaker cable. It's not a friendly plug/socket solution like I hoped but I had to ask myself just how often would those doors have to come off and reason with myself for a bit. That said, I left 40cm slack inside the cabin to allow for the plug to be disconnected and cleared sufficiently to allow for the need to cut the cable and re-terminate it in the cabin if that need should ever arise. This cable was terminated to the woofers (from the splicing box residing at the top grommet) to allow the speakers to remain connectorised. The parallel wires left intact were then spliced into the AV unit's harness for the front speakers and used to power the tweeters since they consume less power than the woofers. These wires were intercepted, meaning I cut them completely, leaving sufficient length from the connector itself as the ones from the connector (i.e. the AV unit) needed to be connected to the JBL MS-8 DSP via the 4-core speaker cable laid in on the passenger side. Again, I remind anyone who is looking to pass cables through grommets, rubber boots and existing conduit, always use a good wire lubricant to avoid friction burning the insulation on all wires that your cable may rub up against. I don't like the idea of removing all tape from the factory looms and re-taping it after. I take off the minimum to allow the cable to enter and exit and then just feed it with a thin coating of wire lube. Wipe the cable off, tape up the ends, done. Investigating the functionality of the AV unit was difficult in my effort to see if pin 1 on these units still provided a remote signal or not. With a little creativity, I managed to terminate a probe for pin 1 and found that it had nothing - not even the minimum 4V the JBL is happy to operate with. Shit. It's not ideal but I ended up wiring up the remote wire to the Accessories circuit from that same connector. Logically, I'm always playing music anyway and if not that, it'll be a phone call on the Bluetooth component. So with the front end wrapped up, I eventually got the chance to get started in the boot and finish wiring up the crossovers. Here is the complete set of front (SPZ60) and rear (ProSeries 6.5x) crossovers, wired up using my favourite Klotz cable. The colour order I chose was based on resistor colour coding, though I had to start it from the -ve terminations because black is the first colour. Forgive the white spooge on one of the ProSeries 6.5x crossovers. I got careless in my younger days with this in the Maxima and cracked the housing. According to Boston Acoustics' local supplier here, I couldn't get a replacement housing. I had to get a whole new crossover. Yeah, wasn't going to happen. I just needed something to protect the internals and the rest was out of sight, out of mind. Of course, we have two Klotz 8-core cables leaving the crossovers for their respective front and rear destinations. The one in the spiral loom is for the fronts, where unfortunately we couldn't pass the cable down the driver's side channel with the outer sheath intact from the middle of the doorway back to the boot. The solution here was to strip off the outer sheath, cut out the 4 nylon ropes within to eliminate further bulk and re-wrap the wires with spiral loom. In the first metre within the boot, I added some more protection by reusing a portion of the removed outer sheath in order to be able to safely anchor the cable to the GPS unit's framework. The second Klotz cable, which is completely intact, is for the ProSeries speakers mounted in the rear shelf. I'll have some photos of the wiring for this one as soon as I get the chance to hopefully work on that part next weekend. A top view of the crossovers reveals how they were mounted. The ProSeries were bolted from underneath to a sheet of 0.9mm galvanised steel U-shaped to perfectly take the place of where an XM satellite receiver would normally reside in the US models. The collective unit was then bolted in from the sides using the existing holes from the Nissan frame and using short length coarse thread self-tapping screws to ensure that we had a good grip but without risking any damage to the internals. The larger SPZ60 crossovers were mounted on 1.6mm galvanised steel sheet, with an L-shaped sheet spot welded in 8 places to form a sandwich plate. The crossovers have a reasonably thick aluminium base which allowed me to tap an M4 thread into their existing mounting holes. The sandwich plate had four mounting holes drilled to match and the crossovers were effectively bolted together with spring washers and 20mm hex cap screws given there was only enough clearance for the screw head, requiring an allen key arrangement to mechanically affix them. The completed assembly, after being wired up, was then bolted to the one factory M6 bolt in the boot floor with a machine washer and nyloc nut. There is another M6 bolt underneath the left crossover but of course, there was no feasible way to accommodate it and bolt a nut down. The plate was lined with neoprene foam tape to kill off any possible unwanted vibration from that stray M6 bolt and the assembly passed the vibration test. Here, you see the Klotz cable attached by the existing cable tie mounts, following along to where the amp lives. I haven't yet tried to mount the left side spacer yet to be sure that the cable coming down to the strain-relief point in the amp stack isn't going to interfere with it. Should it prove to be a problem, I'll be moving the cable rather than cutting anything out of the plastic spacer. Let's wait and see what we might discover next week. And here is the other end of that cable, connecting the crossover inputs to the amp's outputs. And here we have the plastic spacer fitted over the crossover bank. This is a very nice fit with centimetres of room to spare all around. By the end of all this, my legs and neck were getting a little tired from all the contorting about, much like this one... Stay tuned for hopefully next week's installment, where I hope to complete the set up - terminating the rear speakers and figure out how to safely mount the power distribution blocks.

I will add to that Bose comment that it is good for wiring up an upgraded stereo system compared to a non-Bose V36.

I don't see what is to "lol" about here. It seems that neither of you are the sharpest tools in the shed. No offence but messing with critical systems such as fuel and brakes without at least doing the homework beforehand is not only dangerous to yourself but to others as well. General rule of thumb is when you've disturbed seals in such systems, NEVER REUSE THEM! And personally, if I don't consider someone to be all that intelligent, the last thing I would do is allow that person to work on it. So, get a new o-ring from your dealership, grab a copy of the workshop manual and do some homework. Otherwise, pay a mechanic to help you avoid catching fire.

They have the equivalent? If so, then great. I'll buy a bunch of crimps and call it a good day. Cheers Chris!

From what I can see in the FSM, it appears that connectors M5 and M124 are integral to the main harness which was why my initial thoughts were (and remain) that it's not interchangeable. I've looked up the connector on Google but Sumitomo don't have a record of it in their catalogue. I could at least then obtain the male and female crimp pins and plug them into the connectors to solve all of my problems. Therefore, the one possibility could be to drill carefully with a pin vice a couple of the holes for the larger pins on both connectors to allow a couple of wires to slip through (albeit with the need to cut them if the doors have to ever come off for anything). Otherwise, I'll have to stick to the original plan of using the step lamp wires instead. It would leave a bad feeling for me knowing there's something incomplete about the vehicle but it'd be the lesser of two evils.

Thing is though, that depends on whether it's a high voltage or high current source. In this case, the app is a high voltage output and I'm pushing a nominal 100WRMS through 13AWG (the 2.5mm2 Klotz cable I mentioned in my amp write-up). The idea would be to keep the 12V lamp wire pair to less than 1m because it looks to be closer to around 24AWG. Of course, if the harnesses can be replaced as you suggested, then I'll be happier to do that even though it means taking doors off to work with it.

Is the interior side of the harness even interchangeable though?

And so the learning curve just gets steeper. In the process of installing the alarm and pulling out the AV unit to get started on the additional wiring to un-parallel the speaker connections in the doors, I made a startling discovery ... there are no longer grommets in the side panels passing wires through to the doors. Instead, they're all now IP67 connectors mounted directly on the panels and no spare wires that can be used!! So, I've hit a temporary roadblock with this project having asked the question in the Modifications section to see if there is a better option than sacrificing the little light at the bottom of the door for the tweeter wires. It's a shame I can't edit this thread because now I would preface the whole thread with "If you want to upgrade your stereo to its fullest extent, be sure to get a factory-fitted Bose system which will have all the wiring to accommodate this!!"

Hey guys, I'm on quite the steep learning curve here, having discovered yesterday that unlike the cars of yesteryear, there's no longer a simple grommet for passing additional speaker wires through. And since Nissan obviously feel it's more important to save money by making a whole bunch of different harnesses across their different variants of the V36, I was wondering if anyone else has tried tackling this problem where the stock woofer and "squawker" speaker are paralleled together with only a capacitor to act as a crude filter for the higher range speaker? The fact that the door connector isn't all that easy to unplug with the lever in the way and the amount of stuff that's behind the side panel under the dash has left me resigning myself to the idea that my only option will be to sacrifice the not-so-useful little foot light at the bottom of the door and use its wires to feed the replacement tweeter instead. Of course, it still means having to take out the whole dash so that I can better expose the wires in the cabin to cut and tap into but I really don't see any other option here. Naturally, I'm not all that comfortable with using such thin wiring but that said, the tweeters consume less power than the woofers do. Of course, it's not just about power as there's also impedance to consider since various wires have various inherent capacitance which may or may not colour the sound somewhat. The less I have to tweak, the better but if I don't have any other option, so be it. Any and all suggestions appreciated.

What is it that you seek?

Maybe I was picking the wrong terms but that's exactly what I learned after I broke the original one. Rubber cap first, locking ring second. Steep learning curve.

Well, after almost 2 months of too much stuff to do and not enough garage, what does an anti-theist do on a Good Friday after finishing work early? Work on his car with whatever limited space out of desperation and boredom. I fixed - no, replaced - the firewall grommet I was talking about before. Found the part number on the part itself, ordered two of them through my highly esteemed spare parts guru Raj at Steve Jarvin and formulated my plan to try and replace it without having to extract the loom from inside the cabin (which was why I bought two, in case that hairbrained scheme was plain stupid). The key to removing the grommet ring is to peel off the rubber cap around the edge to expose the grommet ring, after which you can get in a screwdriver to push back the two clips so that the ring can be safely removed. After getting a good look at the workshop manual, I found it was only 3 plugs on that loom inside the cabin with two intermediate connectors in between. The intermediate connectors were just another point at which the harness could be disconnected, allowing for easy replacement of the grommet. However, what I figured was with the limited space behind the ECU and SMJ (Super Multiple Junction) connector, it was better to just pull the whole length of the loom with the ECU connectors and SMJ connector as well. So, away we went. Unplugged the three ECU connectors which are lever-action locking types. Press the small tab facing towards the rear of the vehicle and the lever will be free to glide in the same direction. This pushes out the connector, freeing it up from its receptacle. Repeat for the second one behind it and then the third one behind that. Note the different colours on each one so that you can plug them back into their correct order. Of course, the cabling itself is also varied in length which will help you if you forgot the order. In my case, it was (front to rear) grey, brown, black. Then the same thing for the SMJ connector. There are two next to the ECU. The second one (i.e. on the right) is the one you need to pop the grey lever. You may need a little flatblade screwdriver to help you gently pop the lever off the tabs. Once you have those three connectors free (because the grey ECU cable actually is part of another harness that's unrelated here), you can then start with the engine harness protector sitting between the air inlet and the firewall (just under the windscreen). It's a long rectangular object with two locking tabs. First, you'll need to move the battery clamp hook. After which, once that's out of the way, you can remove the air vent inlet shroud which is held down by two plastic hand-nuts. This will give you the necessary clearance to start moving the engine harness. Now, insert a small flatblade screwdriver into each tab and pull each end towards the front of the vehicle. Once freed, you can pull it forward and away from the windscreen to give you the slack you'll need to pull the loom out of the interior. Ggently start pulling out the harness into the engine bay, paying particular attention to the connectors inside the cabin so that they don't get snagged onto any of the fixtures. If you can, get a second person to assist with the gentle pulling of the loom while you guide the connectors up to the firewall cutout. The cutout isn't big enough to accommodate all 3 plugs at once so pull them out one by one. Start with the SMJ connector as it has the most slack and will give back some real estate for the larger ECU connectors to pass through, one by one. Once out, you can then slide off the busted grommet ring. Here's how mine was broken from my initial stupidity. So, slide on the new one taking the same care. Feed the cables back through the firewall cutout in the reverse order and again, take the same care in guiding the loom and connectors back to their rightful home. AND NEXT TIME DON'T BREAK THE FRIGGIN' GROMMET RING!! I haven't clipped it back in as yet because I still have a couple more cables to pass through including the power cable for the amp. A key bit of advice for this is to have four things handy: Electrical tape (black) Self-amalgamating tape Cable lubricant or sewing machine oil Isopropyl-1 alcohol, preferably of the aerosol variety The electrical tape is self-explanatory. The self-amalgamating tape, I'll talk through for the uninitiated. This tape actually fuses to itself to form a homogenous rubber seal which is what you already have at the tip of that rubber cap that sits over the firewall grommet ring. Simply put, in this situation, it's better to use this than silicone sealant. The cable lubricant is vital for passing through the cables, especially the fat ones or anything with a connector. This is a tight rubber opening. Sure, you can stretch it a bit over time using a blunt instrument but even then, you still risk unwanted friction against the existing wiring loom and that means a dysfunctional engine. You're messing with something pretty serious here so don't take the quick and dirty approach. Show some love to your V36 and it'll show you some love in return. All you need is a very thin coating over the first inch of the connector or cable that you're passing through. It's best to go from rear to front when inserting the cable (sounds kinky, I know) because you don't risk the rubber tip getting drawn in on itself and folding up. That'll only add to the friction. When the cable has passed through and you've got it to the length you're after, wipe down the harness at the exit/front point, get a rag underneath and squirt some isopropyl alcohol over it to clean off any remaining lubricant. This will be important for the self-amalgamating tape to form a good seal. Once I've completed the passing of the cables into the cabin, I'll be sure to take a photo every step of the way to demonstrate what I've discussed here.

Out of curiosity Chris, what other Garmin unit is there now that the GVN53 has been discontinued? I'm more curious from an audio standpoint as the GVN53 didn't have an audio input. My thinking there being to have the GPS accept incoming audio from an external media player (my trusty old Sony NW-A3000 ATRAC beast) and intercept it as required with the GPS directions. So all the while, one can have their auxiliary video cake and eat it with music too.

Sorry Chris. The engineer in me gets carried away at times. Not sure if that's a nerd thing or an ego thing. My sincerest apologies mate.

Well said, t5iv. People seem to fail to realise that not everyone here is just a general member of the public and/or enthusiast. If someone doesn't want to divulge their secrets for whatever reason, be it on the basis of profession or just simply not wanting to tell, then respect it and do the same homework they've done. We all learn from experience so if you don't find the information you need, make an effort to figure out the information yourself. Grab schematics, find old junked out gear and if you're really ballsy, make carefully calculated tests with your own vehicle. If something breaks along the way, be sure to have the cash around to fix it. Thankfully the firewall grommet ring that I broke only cost me $7 but I bought 2 just in case I'm an idiot for a second time.

That's weird. They're the same motor and drivetrain (from '08 onwards, if I remember correctly) but the coupe is heavier as is usually the case with 2-door vehicles. That just doesn't seem right to me.

I considered the sedan at first, mainly to banish my mother to the back seat as she's a very dangerous passenger in the front seat. The stories I have to tell about how she made my dad stack the Maxima and almost made me stack it in the same car many years later... But I came to the realisation that: a) I have the old BA wagon to drive her around in b) The sedan doesn't look as sexy as the coupe. But in your case, 3 kids won't fit in the back seat - assuming the front seat will be occupied by a significant other in whatever form - girlfriend, fiance, wife, blow-up doll, etc. So, no option for you but sedan.

Depends on the features one seeks to use from their Bluetooth protocol, with later versions of Bluetooth essentially just adding more features. As I mentioned in the translation thread late last year, the one major problem I've encountered and discussed with others (across other vehicles too, such as from Toyota, etc) is the inability to access the phonebook in an iPhone. This is not a firmware incompatibility issue. It's Apple dictating what can and can't be shared over Bluetooth. I can't say I understand why but it is what it is. Nevertheless, since you've got an Android phone, it won't be so tightly sealed up, thankfully.

CF (CompactFlash) slot, not SD.

In reality though, putting the Infiniti badge on it is Australianising it since they're sold as Infinitis here. Not quite the same as the Chev-wannabes.

I also recommend you read through my instructions about transferring the phonebook to your vehicle's phonebook. Not sure how similar the V35 menus are in relation to this but give it a crack. If you have an iPhone, forget what I said since iPhones don't allow for phonebook transfers via Bluetooth. http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/topic/332357-v36-skyline-japanese-translation-document-work-in-progress/page-2#entry6683826

EBC RedStuff for me.

Looks like he's flashed it with an UpRev Osiris ROM as well, given the pop-up hood warning.

I agree with you for the most part. However, there is one reason which is the only valid one for me and was the case with the MoTeC M800 in my Maxima back in the day - emissions testing. Only once did I ever get pulled into an police/RTA inspection bay driving around one night. I switched to my "RTA Map" which basically leaned out the fuel, engaged a less aggressive ignition curve, kept the boost solenoid open and reduced the rev limiter back to 4500RPM. Kept me on the road and out of an EPA building. Otherwise, you're right. For a naturally aspirated vehicle or even forced induction with very mild mapping, it's not necessary.