zedevan

Hey Mark, I was shocked to just come across a link to your car on Core77! Ever since seeing you're car I've been curious as to what you did for a job, although figured it wasn't my business to search around. To an aspiring product design engineer you are quite an inspiration with the cars you're building, yet alone everything else. It's good to see you can happily look past the Datsun badge. -Evan

if you're going to go to the trouble of putting a silvia dash into a zed atleast go for what is easily the nicest one (and i assume the rarest in america so will have people scratching their heads a bit) out of an s15 - it also looks the most like a 240z dash with people often replacing the centre vents for guages

u calling me a redneck? ...'zee' just sounds so wrong

in person they dont look that much alike also roughly speaking, the top skyline has always been above a zed (with a better engine, s20 back in the day, fj20, rb26 etc) but has been availible in a lower base trim which is beneath a zed, and is more of a family car - most being 4 seaters and there being 4 door versions

if you want to go that extreme, why dont you buy two lots of the headlight covers and do the following: paint one body colour - cut a whole in it so it has a small lip the whole way around it, and mould it into the bucket, so it sits completely flush cut out the bottom (or entire inside face) of the headlight bucket, and turn it into a false bottom so you can remove it as required to gain access inside install the other 'still clear' one from the inside - hold in place with double sided tape, tabs, dowels, whatever, lots of options so effectively the clear area is recessed the thickness of the outter cover. the seal is not important as the bottom can have small gaps/holes at the edges where you can't really see it? my small experiance trying to completely water seal bits on my zed's headlights highlighted just how much water gets thrown on the area from the wheels so if you are going the completely sealed way make sure its sealed at the back too - and dont forget to put some silica gel packets in there to absorb any moisture which will get heated by the globes and cause condensation on the inside (possibly not that large an issue with the air volume and temp difference?)

yep, but they still have to actually release it, by the time this is my highest priority for the car i'm sure it, and hopefully something better will exist the one advantage of a 260z/280z dash is you can quite easily fit a 10" screen! i have a pic up here somewhere... although i've never owned a mac running parallels or somethign similar (only had boot camp on a laptop uni gave me for a year), from what i've seen it doesn't seem to be to bad, even for basic CAD

readability of the screen is a real issue in daylight, when i was last playing around with the one in my car i just lived with it, as the screen was only $300ish - meanwhile some of the guys at mp3car.com at the time were spending $800+ getting a special coating put on their screens which helped out a bit, or doing custom led backlight setups the other issue with a carpc is that you are still using an operating system, and generally windows - and its hard to control alt delete on a touch screen! i'm kinda hoping that apple release an awesome tablet giant ipod touch so i can just rip out my current setup and use it!

My current system in my zed consists a computer 12volt 5.1 system, with the sub held in place by the cargo straps! and the speakers mounted ontop of the rear strut towers, and down in the footwells (i was going to change this to be behind the airvents at the edges of the dash - not sure if i'll do this when my car's back on the road though - was considering just running one of these http://www.soundmatters.com/foxl/ and run my iphone through it, as it looks like it would nicely fit where a headunit should be, nice and lightweight ) this has the advantage of having a 3.5mm input, along with a volume control that normally doubles as an on/off switch I doubled up the front inputs to come out the rear, so it was really just a 2.1 system driving 4 speakers, similar to a normal car's system, as music in "surround" doesn't really work. Naturally my mates who are into their car systems (with 2000watt RMS amps pumping out rediculous volumes) bagged this out quite alot, but after they'd sat in the car and had a listen agreed it sounded about the same as running a pair of 6x9's. http://www.onetonnemusic.com/mt-static/archives/creative_inspire_5200.jpg is similar to whats in my car

there is a gap the whole way around the screen which air can flow through - i found the vents were hardly doing anythign to help direct the little airflow the fan was pushing through so they aren't really missed! my car's not currently running so havn't bothered keeping up with the software, however was running centrafuse or winamp depending what i felt like. i'll look into software more before i remove the screen to see if thats really what i want to do - might get some gauges to put in the space instead

a 280z dash works better i'm not sure if i'm going to bother going back to the car pc now that iphone's exist!

http://www.viczcar.com/Featured-Rides/Nigel-s-240z.html thats the nicest yellow 240z i've seen - i believe the colour is off a Maserati

should try to get your hands on 'tegris', which has "about 70% of the strength of carbon fiber composite, and it is only about 10% of the cost" and has the advantage of not shattering

www.boundlessrider.com i have heard they have a track car fitted out with at set, but haven't looked into it at all. how they work is very cool! watch the videos under "about us"

rb26's come with the more complicated awd system standard in gtr's, however there are rb25's and maybe even rb20's which come 4wd from the factory (in r33 gts-4's i think they are called, and stagea's) I am not sure what awd system the rb26 stageas are running, but i'm sure http://www.skylinesaustralia.com would have the info you're after. to me the swap seems like to much effort, specially when u can get 2.5litre turbo motors which would just bolt in...

is it just me or does there look to be alot of glare with these projectors anyway, as there is nothing stoping light from reflecting off the rest of the housing, although you could always make up a bezel out of a sanded down aluminum can to stop this...but i doubt the lenses are that great. i was orginally thinking of doing this, but decided it probably wasn't worth the effort compared to an actual retro