College Park??

It's McFadden Service Center
141 Bowie Rd
Laurel, MD 20707
(301) 490-0411

 

yea, college park. just looked it up on google maps...it seems to be close to pasta plus. gotta love that place. Thanks

 

No doubt. What you doing in CP? Messing around at UMD?

 

so did u take off the spacers because of not wanting to have your wheels attached to something other than the hub directly or because you hated the way it handled? did u even feel any difference in driving/cornering

last week i was driving with 5mm on the front and it sucked, the steering did not feel as responsive and just overall it didnt feel very natural...

 

both man.

i felt such a noticeable improvement in cornering when i installed the sportlines. when i put the spacers on it just felt like some of the life got sucked back out of the car. i can't explain it, and it could be a mind thing.

also, i just hated the build quality of the ichibas. came with very soft mounting nuts that were very hard to work with without stripping them. i liked the eibachs that i used for the rears 10x better.

It surprises me that you felt that noticeable of a difference with just 5mm spacers!

so all of that combined with the feeling of not having wheels attached to my hubs just made me hate the whole setup. was very happy to see them go. i'll just get wheels with a width/offset combination that won't require spacers.

can you tell me if 19x9.5 +35 all around will fit reasonably?

 

that wheel will look sick! thats what Ted has actually but 18"

what i think is that either you have to stick to stock offset or maybe its because of misaligned front end....now that i have mine aligned I will try em again and we'll see what happens

 

hmmm true...a misaligned front-end combined with those huge wheels you have now. why do you think that we'd need to stick with stock offset though? and does changing offset throw off suspension geometry like spacers do?

 

im still on stock wheels so with 5mm spacers the final offset was +34 and yes having low offset wheels is the same as having wheels with spacers but its adds weight and a bit more complexity to the joint


idk, 2tCornot2tC kept saying to keep the offset or geometry would be ____ed without real explanation. To me, it would make sense if the offset had to be such that the same percent of the wheels width would be outside and inside (front space/back space)

like for

 

btw look at alll these offsets that ppl on here have....







1stOnes offset is 45 and R5:F is 45 as well but the calculated values are a lot closer to what ppl end up using.... and not to the stock offset and i dont think they mentioned anything about handling

i will try nissan rays +47 offset with and without 5mm spacers to c if calculated 47 feels better than a little compensated +42 which is close to the stock offset(since according to my calculations for 9" wheels we need to use offset of +47)

 

Purchased Morimoto 3Five 4300k bulbs for my fogs. Then moved the DDM 4500k bulbs I had in the fogs to the headlights.

The Morimotos are gorgeous!!! The DDMs are just pure white. I like it.

So, to recap:
- 55w DDM Raptor ballasts w/ 4500k DDM bulbs for headlights
- 35w DDM Raptor ballasts w/ 4300k Morimoto 3Five bulbs for fogs

 

how many miles do you have on the NST pulley? And has it been holding up well?

 

Pulley was installed on 2/7 with an odometer reading of 24,071 miles.

I had my 25k mile service a few days ago...I'm probably at 25,500ish now (service was a few hundred miles late).

No issues.

 

Installed the Dezod header last night and it was a HUGE pain!! And I'm definitely going to be embarrassed if I made this much more complicated than it need to be lol.

The stock header has brackets at the bottom of it that secure it to the engine block (or chassis or something) that need to be removed in addition to the bolts at the s-pipe itself. Those were very difficult to gain access to. Also, we found the bottom-left head nut to be impossible to gain access to without removing the alternator.

Removing the donut gasket from the stock header was easy, but modifying it to fit with the new header was a huuuuuge pain in the ___. I managed to fray the material it is made of and begin to unravel it from the inside to bore it out large enough to fit the new header. Not to mention, I was told by Paul from Dezod that it is made from asbestos, so I was paranoid as hell when working with it.

Fitment wasn't bad. I'd say about 95% accurate. My main issue is that the part of the header that attaches to the motor head is thicker than the stock header. There is significantly less thread for the head nuts to bite on now. Shouldn't be a huge deal, but just something I noted. Also, the o2 sensor on Dezod's header seems to be a bit further down than the stock header. The cord for the o2 sensor was just barely too short, so I needed to un-mount it's harness from the engine so it could reach.

It definitely does give you a moderate change in exhaust note, but not nearly as obnoxious as my Tsudo was. It's louder, but the volume is confined to the rear of the car and doesn't resonate in the cabin like my Tsudo did.

As far as performance, I still have to drive it a few more days but it definitely feels pretty good. No loss in the bottom end. We began the install yesterday at 7pm and didn't finish until 1am this morning. At that time I was tired as hell and just wanted to go home. I'll have to test it out some more later on today.

Here are some pics:

The stock header is an ugly mess compared to Dezod's.


The inside of the stock header's cat...very restrictive!


The inside of Dezod's cat...much coarser and freer flowing!


Taking the donut gasket off the stock header:



The inside of the donut gasket is made of like compacted and formed wire material. I frayed it and unraveled it from the inside. This took FOREVER for me to figure out.


Engine with header removed and alternator moved out of the way to gain access to the bottom left head nut.


Final product. Note the location of the bottom left head nut...it's right behind the alternator!

 

Accessing the bottom left hand nut was probably a matter of just having the right tools. I can see that coming out with a L shaped wrench

 

You're absolutely right. The correct tools would have made the entire install much smoother. I just didn't have access to them.

 

the right tools will save you lottta time

 

what is an L shaped wrench? an open ended wrench?

 

 

got it, still seems like that would have not had enough clearance with the alternator right there

 

Disaster is exactly correct. Nothing was going o get in there but an open ended wrench. And that wasn't even enough leverage.