Spong

Well done on selling your Atenza with impeccable timing Look forward to seeing the photos and report on the V35.

I'm no expert in this area, and have just been reading up, like you. Chad_Bob has a real grip on this issue in the following thread: http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Di...60#entry5349072 In addition, from what I read, it's a popular mod by some G35 owners in the USA, but I have no idea how serious the problem is for "day to day drivers" of the MPI VQ35DE motors. See: www.g35driver.com As you'll see, this is primarily a problem for those of us with VQ25DD and VQ30DD motors. Chad_bob found a far amount of oil being fed from the rocker cover (driver's side) back into his intake. A catch can would collect the solids and still allow proper ventilation, however he solved the problem by re-routing the existing plumbing. Along with exhaust gasses being recycled back into the intake, the Di engines suffer a terrible buildup, as you'll see from the photos. Sadly, there's no vapourised fuel mixture to help dilute this potent mixture, so it settles in the intake area. Your VQ35DE shouldn't suffer to the same extent because there's no EGR, and the small amount of oil from the PCV probably gets washed away by the vapourised fuel from the EFI system. In our Di engines, fuel is injected directly into the combustion chambers, so there's no moist fuel mixture to help clean the intake. I'll probably tackle this cleanout around the end of the year when I get the time. I can't say I'm looking forward to it.

Yes, ImgBurn is what I used. I used a DVD+R DL and all was fine in my case. Some drives (especially older ones) may have difficulty with recordable media so no guarantees it will work in every actual V35/M35.

Yes, the navigation systems in the V35 are supposed to be the same as the M35. However, there are at least 2x different versions used in the S2. As mentioned previously, mine is one of the later ones with a dedicated "carwings" button. Whether this makes any difference to the DVD used, I can't say. I have an original 2006-2007 DVD and made a backup copy of this dual layer (8.5GB) DVD which also works in my system. If you'd like to try it in your system, it maybe best to PM me with your contact details. I generally leave my disc out of the system these days, as the bluetooth phone connection, fuel efficiency and service interval screens still work fine. Only the compass screen doesn't appear. Otherwise with the disc inserted, I'm continually hounded by the sweet Japanese lady when at the fuel consumption screens. Maybe she's telling me to slow down?

Win4ever you'll be pleased to know your VQ35DE shouldn't suffer the same carbon buildup fate as those of us with the direct injected VQ25DD and VQ30DD motors, although you may want to do something about the PCV feed back to the intake. Many US G35 owners add a catch can rather than feed oil vapour back into the inlet. Welcome Ray! The navigation DVD is a dual layer (8.5GB) disc, and I've successfully made a backup copy of my original S2 disc that works in my car, but Blade_NZ and I tried it in his S1 M35, and it didn't recognise it at all. I suspect the S2 navigation either uses a different version, or Blade's drive is having trouble reading discs. (This apparently is the case with some of the older drives needing the laser cleaned). Getting NZ or Aussie maps done for these units seems very unlikely from all the discussions so far.

I wonder if one of the accessory catch can systems available on Ebay for the G35/300Z/350Z like the one below would be one way to deal with the breather problem Chad_Bob? http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAP...e=STRK:MEWAX:IT

I'm assuming your V35 has the same feature as my S2 M35 - it's a heated rear view mirror to counter the misting up problems you'd get otherwise. They sure think of everything don't they? I find the following site invaluable for finding the specs, changes and options for various JDM cars. You will need the Google Toolbar to enable it to translate Japanese to English, unless you're fluent in Japanese or use some other translator. The following page covers JDM Nissans including Skylines and Stageas. http://www.goo-net.com/catalog/NISSAN/index.html The following should cover your V35: http://www.goo-net.com/catalog/NISSAN/SKYL....html#grd200106

ETC is "Electronic Toll Collection" a system used in Japan to collect road tolls. I drove almost the length of the country back in 2002 and couldn't believe how many toll collections they have there. Back then we paid in cash. These days most Japanese have an ETC system (sometimes integrated, and sometimes an add-on box) where you insert a card similar to a credit card, and when you pass under the toll bridge, a sensor on top of the dashboard communicates to the overhead ETC system, and you get charged automatically. Some V35/M35's have an integrated system to the right of the DVD ROM drive. My car came with a 3rd party system, that was easily removed. I haven't figured out what the AutoDJ system yet. It doesn't appear to relate to the cars audio system at all. I'd be grateful for anyone who can shine some light on that. I have a feeling it relates to traffic congestion information.

The Japanese to English conversion for the Series 1 V35/M35 is currently available, and the Series 2 is apparently being worked on. The Russians expected S2 to be finished by the middle of this year, but they've been very very late in the past, so I'd be surprised if we see it before the end of the year. See: http://www.xanavi.com.au/ for more details, and Andy_65 in this forum, is the person most in contact with the Russian programmers. To make matters more interesting, there are at least 2x versions of the S2 computer. My 2006 S2 M35 has "carwings's (there a dedicated button in English) and I believe this version was released either late 2005 or 2006. If your V35 doesn't have a "carwings" button, it'll be one of the earlier S2's. With my cellphone paired to the bluetooth system, if I press the voice activation button on the steering wheel, and say "carwings" my phone tries to dial a local Japanese "carwings" number.

The shift lock is there if you need to move the gearshift away from the park position when you're unable to start the car. Normally you wouldn't be able to, unless the engine was started and the parking brake on. Activating it isn't that easy I believe. I think you need to depress the button down below the console. My S2 M35 has this button, and I haven't pursued it further yet. When you shift to Tiptronic mode while in 5th gear auto, the auto will shift down to 4th immediately rather than stay in 5th. You can then manually shift up to 5th, or step back down the gears as required. My Stag has that cable in the console also. I looked through all the Japanese manuals that came with mine, and from what I could understand, it connects to certain JDM cellphones only for use with the "Carwings" mobile help system and possibly handsfree. It won't work with other phones, but if your model has bluetooth capability (should state bluetooth on the navigation DVD unit) then you can pair compatible cellphones instead for handsfree operation. Carwings is JDM only of course. I paired my Nokia 6120c without difficulty.

I see Castrol NZ list Transmax J on their site, so I guess it should be available in NZ, perhaps to order. I'd be interested if it's better priced than Matic J, as I'll probably be doing a flush of mine in the next 6 months or so. Re: your new car, they do get dirty in the ship on the way over, so if your one didn't look great it probably will after a good clean. Some cars get collected by the transporters over the weekends, but only if the garages they're going to are open in the weekend. When I was there on a Saturday, I saw several transporters loading up, and by Monday my Stag was looking quite lonely and forlorn waiting to be collected. Back when I imported my previous cars (previous to the Stag was my Cefiro in 2003) you could collect them yourself, and drive them direct (with dealer plates) to the garage overseeing compliance, but now it's compulsory to pay for an official transporter ($70 to Grey Lynn in my case) - another case of someone else getting their share. The time mine took to arrive and be collected seems to be about the same as yours. I'd say your one will probably be collected Monday.

While on the subject of PM35's Chris, I have a 2006 S2 M35 RX250 four and wondered if you have a cable sorted to enable connecting an external NTSC video and audio source to the inbuilt TV monitor, i.e. using the aux input? I'm assuming a cable if available, needs to connect to the TV tuner behind the left side panel in the boot? Any idea of cost shipped to NZ? Thanks.

Welcome indeed. Good car choice there. Some of us have Stageas of course, but they're closely related. Maybe you'd like to enter your car in the "garage" area, then a link will show in your profile.

Cars are checked by NZ customs before they leave Japan, and can get "flagged" there if anything needs to be attended to in NZ, then they're checked again when they reach NZ by Customs and Agriculture. They look for stowaway spiders and suchlike. If the cars aren't collected withing a specified time, the importer has to pay storage fees, and they aren't cheap. I believe the time window for collection is only a day or two. From experience it seems to take about 2-3 days after arriving at the wharf before being transported. Your dealer will possibly contract out the job of overseeing compliance. For example, Maidestone Motors in Grey Lynn handle the job for several dealers, and when a lot of cars arrive, they can get a bit behind. I'm told that small importers get lower priority over the big ones. Waiting is the hardest part I know from experience. Once you get it though, it'll be like Christmas for sure.

Let us know how many km's your car had done, and maybe some photos of what it looks like please?

Yes, the ship will likely have unloaded and be on it's way to the next port. The most accurate info is on The Ports of Auckland site, and the ships sometimes arrive a day earlier or later than usual. Your car will probably be on the wharf that it was unloaded from, or may have already been collected by a transporter to be taken to the centre your dealer uses for overseeing compliance, depending on how busy they are down there. If you have a look around the wharf in areas you're allowed, there's a reasonable chance you'll see it, but then there could be several 350GT's in your colour so that may not help. I think you'd be very lucky to get it by this weekend, but you never know. How's that Atenza getting on?

Anyone can call themselves "Experts" but really this is just a subjective opinion. Having been self employed in the electronics and computer service field for over 30 years, I tend to believe that you're probably safest in the hands of an official Nissan dealer when it comes to the more involved work. They have access to more factory backup, factory service bulletins and diagnostic tools than the average independent garage does, but then the independents can sometimes have better overall experience, as they're dealing with lots of different brands and models. It's surprising that City Nissan knew little about the carbon buildup problems with their direct injection motors though. A small independent mechanic I do work for was well aware of the problem, and the more serious problems affecting Mitsubishi GDI motors. I've used City Nissan for over 20 years, but only for the more involved work, and I've always felt they were competent, fair and efficient. When I had a transmission problem with my old Bluebird wagon, they were happy for me to source a replacement, and they modified it to suit without drama and excuses. They seem to be very "import friendly". Having Nissan "Fast" for parts and "Consult" for diagnostics gives them an advantage, although independents could get their hands on these too if they're serious.

The Series 2 M35 RX models like mine, have a single DIN Panasonic (CD/Mini Disc) head unit as the standard option, with an integrated double DIN sized unit (possibly Clarion or Bose) as the alternative option.

Yes I saw that posting of Andy's back in May. However, way back, the Russion guys promised the conversion for the S1 M35 "soon", then it dragged on for around 18 months more while they worked out how to protect their intellectual property. Andy also mentioned more recently in another thread that he hasn't had any updates on progress recently, so I figure they may have been held up again. Let's hope not. They may have more to do this time, with at least two versions, and what appears to be more menus than last time. The picture you saw on the TV screen on my Stag was "daytime drama" on TV in Japan at my friends yard in Saitama, before it was shipped to me in NZ. Sadly it's never shown a TV picture in NZ of course, but as there is an AUX input, I'd like to send either an IPOD video or media player signal to it at some stage. When I was visiting my friend in Japan last year, I setup a wifi network for him, and when he got the car back to his yard, he was able to give me a video tour of it via Skype. I also had photos of course prior to him bidding on it. When I listed my S1 Stagea on Trademe recently, within days I had a couple of people outside of Auckland keen to buy it sight unseen, but they never got back to me. Then within a day, I had a genuine buyer arrange to come around. They had looked at another couple of Stageas, and looked at another one after mine, and later came back in the afternoon with cash for mine. I think we were realistic with our expectations in this flat market, and it was a good fast sale. Good luck with your sale.

I haven't decided for sure yet whether I'll get mine done. I'm getting quite use to the Japanese menus now, and it's hard for me to justify the cost at this stage, but that may change. I don't know what the S2 conversion will cost, hopefully less than the S1. Do you have a link to Andy's recent post re: the S2 M35/v35 progress? As far as I know, there are at least 2x S2 versions to deal with, an earlier one, possibly without Carwings and/or bluetooth and a later version with Carwings/Bluetooth. What year is the V35 you have coming? I have the later version Nav unit and managed to pair my mobile to the inbuilt handsfree bluetooth. Initially it would drop all incoming calls after 1x second, but someone here pointed me in the right direction to disable this. Apart from that, there's the service schedule, fuel economy and trip meter figures, and compass, and of course the bluetooth, and TV. Once you remove the navigation DVD, it disables pretty much all the stuff we can't use anyway. I see you still have your Atenza, and a few idiots have been offering silly money. You tend to get that on Trademe Any decent offers yet?

I believe most M35's don't have an immobiliser as standard. If there's a flashing LED on the dash to the right of the ignitiion key, then I believe a factory immobiliser is fitted. As I understand it, if the car has an immobiliser, it requires the presence of the matching remote which has a chip or coil within it, which will then allow the car to start. Without it, for example if you tried to start the car with a simply copied key, or forced the ignition lock in some way, the fuel system will remain disabled, and although the starter would operate, the car wouldn't start due to lack of fuel. Some cars take this a step further, and use a similar principle to allow the car to be started without a key at all, as long as the remote is near by. I believe the percentage of V35's with immobilisers standard is greater than M35's. In Aussie, I think an immobiliser must be fitted that complies with their standards in order for it to be complied and insured. There's no requirement for this in NZ. If your car only comes with 1x key/remote and an immobiliser, then getting an additional key/remote could be more expensive and require Nissan to pair the immobilizer to the remote using Consult. Otherwise, pairing an extra remote is pretty easy (see my thread in the M35 area). Removing the immobiliser (if fitted) is not a simple process, as it's intended to prevent your car being stolen, so if it's all working fine, I'd leave it there if it was me.

Thanks for that useful info. Nissan seem to charge crazy prices for some things in NZ, then surprise you with reasonable prices on others. They want $300 for a set of platinum plugs for my M35, but thankfully I have a friendly Pilot friend who's going to get me some from the US - approx US$60 for the set, and some cabin air filters also. BTW, Ryco at www.ryco.co.nz list their version of these filters also -p/n: RCA113P. I saw a price of around $28 for the Ryco equivalent on one Aussie site.

The Japanese to English translation of the V35/M35 navigation is very well covered in a couple of threads here. Start here: http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/So...re-t194126.html Your S2 V35, like my later M35 doesn't have a conversion yet, although those with earlier models can have them done. Contact details for Aussie and NZ are at: http://www.xanavi.com.au/ The guy in Auckland dealing with this is Shaun and he's contracted to handle this through Andy65b in this forum who arranged this with a Russian company. I think it's unlikely we'll ever have NZ maps for this system, but we can live in hope. It would be awesome if we did as it's a really nice screen and integration. The workshop manual, if enough people commit to it will be NZ$150 I believe, but they'll need at least 150 people first. See www.jpnz.co.nz for more details. Luckily the list for the M35 is a lot long longer currently at around 66 or so and they only need 100 committed sales. One reason the list for the V35 is shorter could be because the USA Infiniti G35 manual is easy to find on the net as a free download.

My car (like many destined for NZ) came on Kiwi Car Carriers (see their current schedule at www.kiwicar.com) and at the time, they were sending about one ship a month through Kawasaki/Yokohama where my car was delivered to by my friend. They have a cutoff date prior to departure, so I had to wait about 3 weeks+ before it could be booked onboard the next ship. Shipping to NZ took approx 2 weeks, then it can take up to about 3x days to get from the wharf to your dealer's contracted garage. Time for it to be processed and through compliance will depend on workload. My garage was snowed under, and even if nothing needed to be done, would have taken around 4 days. Your dealer maybe able to tell you which ship yours is on, then you can check online close to arrival at http://www.poal.co.nz/shipping_cargo/ExpectedArrivals.asp to see the exact arrival time and wharf your car will be unloaded from. Details there are updated hourly and change often. Compliance in NZ is generally a lot easier than Aussie from what I can see. In Aussie, they have to fit new tyres, and an imobiliser meeting Aust standards, even if the current ones are OK and meet Japanese standards. I believe they even remove HID headlights and do a few other ridiculous changes to give the local industry a chance to clip their tickets. Even more strangely, they don't allow in any of the non-turbo S1/2 (RB25DE) or M35 (VQ25DD/VQ30DD) Stageas, apart from the later VQ35DE equipped models. However, they do allow V35 Skylines in with the VQ25DD/VQ30DD motors. I've no idea why, unless it's something to do with protecting Holden/Fords territory. If there are any Aussies reading this thread, please let us know why.

My M35 was 2006 grade 4 exterior/ grade B interior (but more like grade A) so not in the same league as yours. There are minor signs that a smoker's been there, but it's not bad like many. The only exterior issues were a couple of scrapes on the front bumper down low and I've since had the bumper repainted ($240). There was a spot of minor corrosion underneath at the back by the subframe (about 3 out of 4 Stageas get pulled up on this apparently as they're prone) but that involved the work I mentioned. It was very minor, but they're very tough on private imports. This was repaired to factory spec, under supervision of a compliance inspector so shouldn't be a problem down the track. In addition, I had to have new brake rotors and pads all round, despite the old ones being perfectly serviceable. (I still have them). At 84,000km, it's likely I would have needed skimming and possibly new pads around now, so no biggie. Once the cars are unloaded from the ship at Auckland, they have to be transported by an authorised transport company, direct to a garage that's setup to oversea the compliance, and that's normally done by VTNZ or the AA, or some other "authorised" centre. Any remedial work is carried out by the garage, then it gets retested. When the cars are sitting at the wharf, you're not allowed to go anywhere near them, that's why I was only able to view mine through a wire fence, and only because it was within view, and fairly unique (I haven't seen any other S2 M35's in the same blue as mine). This all happened about 6 weeks ago. The attached photo is one I took through the wire fence while at the wharf in Auckland, and you can see other photos once I had it in the garage section of this site (see my details to the left). My car cost 620,000 yen at auction (around NZ$9700 at the time I bought it a few months ago). All up, including shipping, additional costs and all the extra work that needed to be done, my car probably cost around NZ$15,000 all up which was no bargain. However, all the other comparable models I've seen at around $16,000 to $17,000 have had 120,000+ km, plus a lot more wear and tear. If I'd gone with say a 2002-2003 model, I'd have saved quite a bit, but as we tend to keep cars along time, we wanted something a bit newer. I'm sure your one will sail through. A grade 4.5 A is about as close to a brand new car as you'll see with rare exceptions, and your dealer sounds like they know exactly where it's at. The cars are also inspected by NZ Customs in Japan before they leave, and everyone wants to "clip their ticket", so I'm not keen to go through the process again myself, unless it's with a grade 4.5 car like yours.