Hey guys, new member DC here.
I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone that has made a diy or write-up here. Great advice, and great people!


I guess I'll move on to introducing myself. My name is Dane. Or DC on the forums, whichever works. I live in central florida. I love cars and working with them, I guess I wouldn't be here otherwise huh?
Not necessarily new to a g35, I've had my coupe for about 2k miles now.
I have a 2004 Silver G35 coupe 6MT approx 120k miles.
It's my favorite car that I've owned thus far.

Upon purchasing the car from a private owner I immediately began working and modding.

I was a little disappointed to find out that the stock 6-disk cd changer no longer worked. But at least it had ipod/auxillary integration.

I purchased the car with about 118k miles. '04 g35 coupe with the sport package. The guy was asking 7900 and I managed to talk him down to 6k. Which was decent. The car did need some work.

What I did not realize was exactly how much. This is where my journey started.

The car had misfires in about 3-4 cylinders when I checked it with diagnostic tools. (of course the car was acting fine when I test drove it before purchasing) The guy must have reset the ecu beforehand.

The first place I began was with fresh fluids, spark plugs, and ignition coils.
I changed the oil to royal purple. (I read around to see what you guys were using) I've always had success with my other vehicles and never an issue. Same went here. I noticed lower operating temperatures, and smoother operation of the vehicle.

Now, this could have also been from the previous owner not changing the oil recently. (about a month overdue is what he told me)
Man, it must have been more than a month, that oil was nearly pitch black when I drained it.

I just started finding more problems from there. Exhaust had a hole in both flex pipes on the TOP Have no idea how that happened.
Sway bar brackets were mangled to crap.
Tie rods were ****.
Lower and rearward control arms were ****.
and I recently found that my catalytic converters were "clogged".

So began more wrench work. I went through and replaced the control arms on both sides. Lower and rearward. Then I took off the cats.(Pain in the ***) When I had the cats off, I looked inside, and shook em around a bit. It seemed as though the previous owner had tried to punch them out, and then gave up halfway through. Both cats were rattling and half of whatever the hell is on the inside, was rattling around. In both of them.

I ended up replacing the cats with test pipes and used spark plug non-foulers for the 02 sensors. I replaced the y-pipe while I was at it.

For anyone that hasnt done that yet, the bolts are a pain in the ***.

Well, after all that, my most recent repair/mod has been new tires and wheels. With everything being out-of-whack due to all of the faulty suspension components, it ate the tires like no-tomorrow.

So I found some black 5-star 20" with 10" wide 24mm offset in the rear and 8.5" wide 22mm offset in the front with new tires. Just got them on and an alignment yesterday actually.

I attached a few pics. Sorry, not the best quality. I'll take some more when I wash her.

If you read all this, thanks for reading! Sorry for the long post!

 

Whoops, photos didnt upload.





With stupid lip and the previous owners' wheels.




other side.




and finally, with the new wheels. Crappy photo and dirty car.