turbocad6's custom fx
#106
10-07-2008, 11:43 PM
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: NJ
Posts: 568
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#107
05-18-2009, 05:06 PM
alright, few updates:
first of all, I got really lucky & was able to find an almost complete brick leather interior... I can't tell you how much I hated the tan leather... I bought a new carpet & the missing misc pieces to complete the interior.. now I just have to redo all the upper tan in black suede...
then, it installed:
I love this interior, love it with my exterior body color, very happy with this upgrade...
OK, so then I wind up finally after 3+ months receive my wheels from IForged... I ordered them all black. I expected them to be all black, inner & outer lips & wheel center... what they winded up sending me though was black lips & wheel center, but then the whole inner barrel was just left raw aluminum! looked like crap, looked unfinished, plus, IForged does not offer the option of gloss black, just a matte black finish...
all in all I wasn't happy at all with the look of the wheels..., didn't look classy, didn't even look finished... simply didn't do it for me... I was anxious to see if the rear wheels will even fit so I mounted one up for a test fit... luckily my measuring & calculating paid off & the rear wheels fit fine:
the wheels were awesome but the flat black all over look just killed it for me, especially with the inner part being just raw aluminum... so I did what I wasn't really looking to do with a brand new set of big $$ wheels, I took them apart to refinish them...
I started stripping the wheels with the intentions of polishing the lips & doing the centers gloss black... stripped a rear & all was normal, raw aluminum under the black powder coat, but then as I start to strip the fronts I find something very strange.. the front lips, underneath the black powder coat, was CHROME.... not only was it chrome, but it was flawless chrome... not sanded, not scratched, not prepped in any way for the black powder coat, just flawless chrome, very strange indeed...
called up IForged & after a while back & forth with me conveying how upset I was to have received a mismatched set of wheels, I got IForged to sent me a replacement set of lips for the 2 rears also in chrome, so now I can have all 4 with chrome lip which, looking back, is what I really shoulda ordered in the first place...
a few shots of stripping the wheels:
and the chrome under powder coat:
mismatched lips:
totally stripped & ready for paint... decided to do the inner barrel gloss black too to help it be easier to clean, brake dust should be easier to clean off a smooth finished surface rather than a raw aluminum...
& then the final result:
OK, forgot to mention that IForged also screwed up with the front brake clearance & the wheels actually contacted the calipers, with the iforged wheels contacting the infiniti calipers, got me to thinking about the rotora's again, so I test fit my rotora 6 piston fronts again & they clear the wheels much better than the infiniti brakes..... sooooo, back to square one again
now I'm back to mismatching brakes if I just do the front rotoras & leave the infiniti rears... so now I say screw it, I'm going to do what I should have done long ago, just order a matching rotora rear BBK, along with new rotors & pads for the front... yeah, so I order them, in red to match the fronts... yeah right, should only be that simple.... turns out rotora has changed the way they assemble & finish there calipers
rotoras used to paint there calipers before assembly, then all the hardware & the brake line connecting the 2 halves remained natural finish... then they stencil painted the rotora logo... NOW they decided to take the easier way out like most other brake manufacturers & assemble them completely before paint, then they also decided to use a decal for the logo instead of painted & then they clear over the decal... to top it off the red they use now is more like a brembo red where it used to be more of a blood red, so not only do they look completely different cause of the decal & the hardware painted, but the color doesn't even match at all... to top it of they got tons of dust in the clear coat that they use over the decal so in short the brand new rotora calipers look like crap next to the original rotoras... I think my 12 year old son coulda painted these calipers better than rotora did, they even missed a bunch or spots with paint even...
I really didn't want to go through having to refinish the calipers but at this point no choice, I sure as hell ain't going to go through all this just to STILL wind up with mismatched brakes ....
since I'm forced to redo them at this point anyway, I really didn't want the red anyway, so I decided to do them a burnt orange to match the interior. I chose a paint that when not directly in sunlight look a bit darker & very much like the brick interior, but pearly enough that when the sun does hit them they light up a kinda hotter orange...
stenciled:
and, the final results:
first of all, I got really lucky & was able to find an almost complete brick leather interior... I can't tell you how much I hated the tan leather... I bought a new carpet & the missing misc pieces to complete the interior.. now I just have to redo all the upper tan in black suede...
then, it installed:
I love this interior, love it with my exterior body color, very happy with this upgrade...
OK, so then I wind up finally after 3+ months receive my wheels from IForged... I ordered them all black. I expected them to be all black, inner & outer lips & wheel center... what they winded up sending me though was black lips & wheel center, but then the whole inner barrel was just left raw aluminum! looked like crap, looked unfinished, plus, IForged does not offer the option of gloss black, just a matte black finish...
all in all I wasn't happy at all with the look of the wheels..., didn't look classy, didn't even look finished... simply didn't do it for me... I was anxious to see if the rear wheels will even fit so I mounted one up for a test fit... luckily my measuring & calculating paid off & the rear wheels fit fine:
the wheels were awesome but the flat black all over look just killed it for me, especially with the inner part being just raw aluminum... so I did what I wasn't really looking to do with a brand new set of big $$ wheels, I took them apart to refinish them...
I started stripping the wheels with the intentions of polishing the lips & doing the centers gloss black... stripped a rear & all was normal, raw aluminum under the black powder coat, but then as I start to strip the fronts I find something very strange.. the front lips, underneath the black powder coat, was CHROME.... not only was it chrome, but it was flawless chrome... not sanded, not scratched, not prepped in any way for the black powder coat, just flawless chrome, very strange indeed...
called up IForged & after a while back & forth with me conveying how upset I was to have received a mismatched set of wheels, I got IForged to sent me a replacement set of lips for the 2 rears also in chrome, so now I can have all 4 with chrome lip which, looking back, is what I really shoulda ordered in the first place...
a few shots of stripping the wheels:
and the chrome under powder coat:
mismatched lips:
totally stripped & ready for paint... decided to do the inner barrel gloss black too to help it be easier to clean, brake dust should be easier to clean off a smooth finished surface rather than a raw aluminum...
& then the final result:
OK, forgot to mention that IForged also screwed up with the front brake clearance & the wheels actually contacted the calipers, with the iforged wheels contacting the infiniti calipers, got me to thinking about the rotora's again, so I test fit my rotora 6 piston fronts again & they clear the wheels much better than the infiniti brakes..... sooooo, back to square one again
now I'm back to mismatching brakes if I just do the front rotoras & leave the infiniti rears... so now I say screw it, I'm going to do what I should have done long ago, just order a matching rotora rear BBK, along with new rotors & pads for the front... yeah, so I order them, in red to match the fronts... yeah right, should only be that simple.... turns out rotora has changed the way they assemble & finish there calipers
rotoras used to paint there calipers before assembly, then all the hardware & the brake line connecting the 2 halves remained natural finish... then they stencil painted the rotora logo... NOW they decided to take the easier way out like most other brake manufacturers & assemble them completely before paint, then they also decided to use a decal for the logo instead of painted & then they clear over the decal... to top it off the red they use now is more like a brembo red where it used to be more of a blood red, so not only do they look completely different cause of the decal & the hardware painted, but the color doesn't even match at all... to top it of they got tons of dust in the clear coat that they use over the decal so in short the brand new rotora calipers look like crap next to the original rotoras... I think my 12 year old son coulda painted these calipers better than rotora did, they even missed a bunch or spots with paint even...
I really didn't want to go through having to refinish the calipers but at this point no choice, I sure as hell ain't going to go through all this just to STILL wind up with mismatched brakes ....
since I'm forced to redo them at this point anyway, I really didn't want the red anyway, so I decided to do them a burnt orange to match the interior. I chose a paint that when not directly in sunlight look a bit darker & very much like the brick interior, but pearly enough that when the sun does hit them they light up a kinda hotter orange...
stenciled:
and, the final results:
#108
05-18-2009, 05:35 PM
#109
05-20-2009, 04:01 PM
yeah man, your right, wouldn't have had the same final results if they were no issues really... lovin the gloss black wheels which IForged don't offer & lovin the caliper color too, guess I got lucky with the screwups really...
also picked up an HR drivetrain for a motor swap come this winter... got it complete from a G35X, motor,tranny, transfer case & front diff with complete harnesses, ecu & bolt on accessories
not planning on building the motor up, it's got 5k miles on it, should be fine as-is to put maybe 440-450 or so to the wheels with FI... hope to have it in & running by next spring, twin turbo seems like the obvious choice but I'm also considering a twin rotrex blower setup instead...
also picked up an HR drivetrain for a motor swap come this winter... got it complete from a G35X, motor,tranny, transfer case & front diff with complete harnesses, ecu & bolt on accessories
not planning on building the motor up, it's got 5k miles on it, should be fine as-is to put maybe 440-450 or so to the wheels with FI... hope to have it in & running by next spring, twin turbo seems like the obvious choice but I'm also considering a twin rotrex blower setup instead...
#112
05-21-2009, 02:06 AM
mounting the blowers & the pulley setup & the plumbing is the easy part, I can do that myself & if I need a hand I have a good friend who's a racecar fabricator, so that's the least of the problems. management & tunabilty is going to be the real challenge, if I can get it to run on the stock g35x box then the dual throttle bodies will be ok & I should be able to get an uprev tune, don't know if they cracked the 35x awd ecu yet but I'm pretty sure by then they will have if they haven't already. it's about the same as the other HR boxes they've already mastered just a bit different flash that'll include the diffences for the AWD
I also weigh the possibility of building a custom intake manifold & running it on the stock DE box with a single TB, then continuing to use the utec. the utec has a spare output that can be used for the cam timing advance contol that the DE box doesn't have, so that's very possible too I think, but ideally it runs on the HR box & runs dual TB's... as long as I can get all the can buss stuff to all comunicate & play togeather nicely. worse case I'm thinking I may need a G35X "unified meter & a/c amp", which is kinda the equivelent of a body control module in these cars, but the original fx unified meter may communicate fine with the HR ecu too. this is important because even though the tranny has it's own computer it relies on the unified meter for some of it's function I believe, since the shifter is not even connected to the tranny computer, but it is connected to the unified meter... hopefully communication protocalls haven't changed much & the 03 stuff can talk to the 07 stuff...
I also weigh the possibility of building a custom intake manifold & running it on the stock DE box with a single TB, then continuing to use the utec. the utec has a spare output that can be used for the cam timing advance contol that the DE box doesn't have, so that's very possible too I think, but ideally it runs on the HR box & runs dual TB's... as long as I can get all the can buss stuff to all comunicate & play togeather nicely. worse case I'm thinking I may need a G35X "unified meter & a/c amp", which is kinda the equivelent of a body control module in these cars, but the original fx unified meter may communicate fine with the HR ecu too. this is important because even though the tranny has it's own computer it relies on the unified meter for some of it's function I believe, since the shifter is not even connected to the tranny computer, but it is connected to the unified meter... hopefully communication protocalls haven't changed much & the 03 stuff can talk to the 07 stuff...
#113
05-22-2009, 12:19 AM
