CucumberError

Following on from something that sonicii posted in another thread about towing with a V37 hybrid, I recently had an issue with mine, and thought I'd share. As someone else worked out, I'm not in Australia, I'm in New Zealand. A the end of August I did a road trip around the south island. Started from home in Wellington, jumped on the ferry to the South Island (Bluebridge), drove down to Christchurch, a bit of time there, down to Dunedin for some family stuff, then back up to Christchurch of the night, Picton, and got the ferry back to Wellington. Amazing road trip, a heap of fun. The cruise control + active lane control + all the other sensors made it pretty much self-drive along the Canterbury Plains. I love driving in the South Island so much more than the North Island. The car went amazing, other than 'the issue'. On the return ferry trip back to Wellington, we looked around Picton, then driving through the port slowly, the car was running on batteries the whole time, so by the time we got to the ferry, the batteries were pretty much flat. Once we start driving up the ramp onto the ferry, the tread on the car ramps is very rough, and my poor sports suspension wasn't a fan of it, so we're driving pretty slow. Then we're directed up to the top deck, which has a pretty long, steep ramp, up past the other decks, all the way to the outside of the ship. By this stage, we're going about 2kmh, batteries are flat, car is doing that odd 'labouring the petrol engine while running on electric' that it sometimes does on the motorway on ramp in heavy traffic. As we're getting to the top of the big ramp, a caution light comes on, the display in the dash tell us that the hybrid system has over heated and we need to stop. At this point we're about 5m from the top of the narrow ramp, so all we can really do is keep going. About 5 seconds after we get to the top of the ramp, the warning lights went away, the message is gone, and everything is fine. Now, what sonicii posted is "These cars don't have a torque converter in the transmission and rely on the low/reverse brake to act as a clutch at very low speeds (lower than idle speeds in 1st gear) and they don't like to slip for extended periods." I'm guessing that for that low speed it's actually just charging up the battery, using 100% electric for moving the car, and I can see how doing that for 5+ minutes constantly would cause things to heat up pretty quickly. Add in low air movement, and being inside a ship, this all starts to make sense. When we headed south on the same ferry, we were on a lower deck, and were running on the electric motors for a shorter period that I don't think we ran into that issue. I've since worked out that if I leave the car in Standard, slide the transmission into tiptronic mode it pretty much makes the petrol engine behave as a stop start mode, meaning that the low speed in the dock would have used the petrol engine, so the batteries had some juice in them once we got into the ship. Also opening the drivers door with the car running starts petrol engine, but will only charge the batteries up to 50% and then stop the petrol engine; while waiting to disembark, I had the door open to charge the batteries back up.

Just an update on this: I had a busy weekend doing home DIY, haven't had a chance to look at it, but this time on Sunday evening it actually properly stalled and I had to start it again. Check engine light came on after the stall (as to be expected), but I haven't checked any logs etc yet. Weirdly, the lowered V35 has become our 'practical' car. We also have a V37 Hybrid, so the ski hole (which is missing on the Hybrid, as the batteries get in the way), ability to tow friends broken down cars etc has made the V35 (towing seem to be a hybrid no-no) has made it our practical car hah. I'm half tempted to fit a tow bar to it, but that seems a bad idea.

Regularly when I warm start my 2001 Skyline (300GT Sport) it starts, revs up a little as it should, then the idle drops back down, but to somewhere below 100RPM, and all but stalls. I've never had to actually startthe car again, it always catches it, but it's been slowly getting worse the last year or so, to the point that last weekend at Bunnings, the tacho actually read 0 RPM. There's no check engine light, nothing in the OBD logs etc. Is there anything common that would cause this, that I need to pay attention to? Cold start is fine, and it's not every time it does a warm start. With the exception of some laboring from the AC pump, the car is great condition for its age. I'm the 3rd owner (1 in Japan, 2 in NZ), always been garaged, serviced etc.

So, I've done it. In theory it works, but now rather than the seat hitting a stopper, it now hits against the left hand runner and can't go any lower on the left, but the right keeps going down. I've got maybe 1/2 a cm extra, if that.

I have a 2001 300GT, it does about 12.5L/100km daily (driving to work, a bit start and stop, but also some motorway driving, about a 20km trip each way) and 10L/100km on the motorway.

Mine is a sedan, but in one of those links was a series of pictures taken looking through an open back door, so it must work for the sedan too. That was something that I did like about my old Toyota Mark II (Chaser, x90), the steering wheel went up/down/back/forward and could pop up out of the way when you got in and out. I also find it a bit odd that the instrument cluster moves with the steering wheel in the V35.

Thanks for that Fri_33! I'll have to try that next week (out of town for the rest of this week). I couldn't work out a google term to find anything useful (including 'I don't fit in my V35 Skyline!'), but I recalled reading something about it being possible when I was first looking at getting the car, but hadn't been able to find where.

Hey folks, I have a 2001 V35, with a sunroof. I'm also 198cm tall. Since the sunroof opens internally, the roof liner is quite a bit lower in the sunroof model than the non sunroof model. I was wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to lower the seat lower than what the electronic controls will do it? (So I'm thinking take the drivers seat out and remove some spacers or something or take it into the local Nissan dealer and see if they can change the seat runners for something else). Has anyone had this issue before and come up with a solution? I'd only need 1-2cm more room. I fit in it fine after work, just in the morning I'm slightly taller and it makes my head brush against the sunroof surround ;(

I've had a bit more of a play with things, and I've got the GPS screen stuff all pulled apart, but it seemed that it's still held together by the hinge. It's not a screw or a nut or anything, just some round thing with a weird flat edge on the top. Has anyone ever pulled the screen out of one of these? I've found a few touch screens with HDMI and USB that I think will fit in the enclosure, I just need to be able to get it apart to see how much space is actually inside the screen casing. Has anyone done it before?

I've recently bought a 2001 Nissan Skyline V35 300GT and I'm looking at how to put a computer in it. In my previous car (Toyota Mark II/Chaser X90), I had a Raspberry Pi in the boot. It powered on with the car (took ~30 seconds to boot) had wireless, decent USB sound card, USB drive with music etc. You could use an Apple device to AirPlay to it or use an iPhone/iPad app to control the media player installed on the Pi. The centre console perfectly fit an iPad mini in it, so it made controlling via wifi really easy. I'd mounted an iPad dock in the centre console so that the iPad charged. I just used Apple Maps for turn by turn GPS. So, onto the V35. When I sold the Mark II I took the Pi etc out and kept it, with the plan of putting it in the Skyline, but now I'm thinking I might do it a tad nicer. I've come up with two concepts: Idea 1: Put the Pi in the upper glove box where the MD stacker was, then mount a dock for an iPad mini in the coin pocket above the heater controls. Then when you're doing a road trip, just throw the iPad in, otherwise just use AirPlay from my phone to play music etc, pretty much the same system as was set up in the Mark II. Idea 2: Mount an Intel NUC in the upper glovebox. Run Windows 8.1/Window 10 on it, have it running as a wireless hotspot so that iPad/iPhone can connect to it and play music via Airplay. When I purchased the car, the guy before me had purchased the pop up TV for the GPS stuff, so I've pulled that apart and thinking about mounting a 7" touch screen in place of the original screen, having a HDMI and USB cable running from the screen back to the NUC and then using the Windows 8 style metro apps for music, Windows Maps with a USB GPS receiver, maybe setup a USB camera as a reverse camera using the windows 8 camera app to see it etc. I was then looking at the possibility of getting a printed circuit board made up for the GPS control buttons in front of the screen to do things like media control, a hardware Windows key to get back to the main screen, make the top row of buttons short cut keys to music, maps, camera etc. I'm also of the understanding that if I'm using Windows, I could possibility get the OBD2-ish (I know it's not OBD2) details and feed them into the computer, making it give real time engine readouts while you're on the road, to get fuel usage etc? Has anyone done anything like this? Any tips or advice? <tl;dr I want to make my car into a giant Microsoft Surface. >