Oct 2009

This month’s journey started by the car having no right turn signal light. I had bought a refurbished stalk assembly from an eBay vendor that specializes in restoring Z parts hoping it was the answer. I also had in the garage a refurbished Series 1 steering wheel that I wanted installed - the aftermarket wheel I bought from MSA vibrated so much that it would put my hands to sleep (literally) while driving. Unfortunately the turn signal stalk wasn’t the problem - during the month the car was in the shop it was discovered that the hazard switch in the dashboard was toast; along with dozens of other shorts along the wiring harness that were causing sporadic havoc. So, this month’s work turned into this mess:

*Run new wiring from the steering column to the turn signal indicator lights

*Run new wiring to the rear brake lights (as they were also completely dead)

*Drop the dashboard to replace all of the instrument light bulbs with brighter MSA bulbs. Discovered that half the bolts that held the dashboard in place were missing

*Clean up some of the wiring mess inside the center console area

*Got the light bulbs behind the ventilation panel above the center console working again

*Hook up the blower/heater (working for the first time since I’ve owned the car!)

*Installed refurbished steering wheel

*Installed refurbished turn signal stalk assembly

*Installed the powder-coated brake dust shields on front (had them for 12+ months in garage)

*Installed refurbished oil pan (had for 12+ months); old one badly dinged and leaked oil occasionally

*Oil change (since the pan was off)

*Swapped out engine inspection light with the chromed one (that I’ve had for 6+ months; had to transfer the old components over to the chromed shell)

*Reapply the vinyl trim in footwells with double sided tape - adhesive spray wasn’t sticky anymore

I ended up putting the orange air cleaner back onto the car - simply like it’s appearance more than the chromed one that I had on it. The bulbs above the speedometer and tachometer still have a short - driving it home from the shop they would cut on/off every five seconds - and it is IMPOSSIBLE to read those gauges at night without illuminated bulbs! Also still have to install a couple of the clips used to hold the ventilation slider cables in place - my car was missing them, and it turned into a 3 week hunt trying to locate some, so I currently can’t use those horizontal levers until those clips are installed. I had bought some of those clips from Canada, Japan, and a California source... Nissan no longer makes them and no catalog/manual I have showed a picture of them either. What a pain.

Item Description - Price Paid

TOTAL: $1391