pixel8r

+1 for M35. I've owned a s2 before, spent $5k on it to get 160awkw with potential for ~200awkw if I spent another $2k, which i didnt' have. But the M35 is just a much nicer car. Stock its somewhere around 130-140awkw, compared to 120awkw max for the s2. So you're building off a better platform with the M35, with an extra ~15kw to start with. The M35 performs better (70+ Nm more torque!!), handles better, is more comfortable, and slightly better on fuel (YMMV). I find the C34 interior a bit dated by today's standards whereas the M35 looks more modern, both inside and out - although this is somewhat a matter of taste. I have enjoyed both cars, neither are particularly bad, but my preference overall goes to the M35. There are a lot fewer parts for the M35 but you dont really need that much. The basics, exhaust, boost, ecu are all available. It already has a FMIC which makes it easier to upgrade (if necessary). You'll need an upgraded turbo for any serious power increase but there are options there too. I think you'll find there is plenty available for the M35 to do what you want it to. Bearing in mind it is a wagon and that if you really want a sub 12 or 13-sec car or something the stagea is probably not the best suited car... It can definitely achieve it but at a cost and you'd need to spend twice as much to keep it handling well.

I'd say the ecu would cut fuel long before you reached 20psi something about protecting the engine blah blah....spoilsport that it is. btw jpave - the turbo on all M35's is louder than previous stageas and other turbo cars. Yours may well be fine. Either way, the sound is not usually a good indicator of whether or not your turbo is healthy. You need to physically check for sideways movement of the shaft to properly diagnose it. And also keep the boost below 14psi (stock is ~11) and it should last longer...although some of the guys on here have been unlucky. It depends how the car was treated in japan too.

Its a shame they're not available here because the 300RX could quite literally take on the aussie wagons in every aspect. They have 190kw correct? and the fuel economy from what you've described is also a good deal better than local wagons. And you get climate control as well. Here in austalia we have manufacturers listing air conditioning and power steering as features, as though we should feel privileged that they've taken the time to add them in. Hi tech in australia means the car has engine features that most other manufacturers invented in 1995. btw the 300RX has: VQ30DD engine (V6 3.0L NA, direct injection, 191.23 kW), rear wheel drive. (from wikipedia). Its power is very similar to the VQ35DE's 200kw, but I imagine it'd fall slightly short on torque (324N-m vs i think 360N-m?).

hmmm shift kit. I had one on my last stagea and it was hands down the best mod I ever did. The shifts were just perfect and it transformed the car into the best auto I have ever driven. I thought then that the shift kit strengthened the gearbox but I've heard recently that it actually puts extra strain on it, which one is true? MV Automatics will do one for our M35's but they need to work on the actual box, and its not cheap ($700?). I'm keen to hear how yours goes. Also, chadbob - if you can post some pics of your earthing setup and let me know what product you bought (you mentioned its from jb hifi) that'd be great. I'm very interested in the $15 solution. Mods on a budget - love it!!

Mate if this works, sign me up!! If there's anything I can do to improve shift times or improve the auto trans in general, then I'd jump at the chance!! Basically it just seems to get slower and slower when waiting for the kickdown. Over the last few weeks its sometimes even at the point where I put my foot down slightly, nothing happens, down some more, nothing, and then it feels like it wants to change but hits a dead spot right before it actually does change, then it revs its guts out because by now my foot is well down on the accelerator... Its like its not reading the inputs correctly to know when to change gears...I'm not 100% how it all works but presumably the ecu tells the transmission when to change? If you say that a grounding issue can make this communication between ecu and trans ecu worse gradually over time, then this sounds like the first thing I need to rule out. Other than this there's probably not much else I can do - I had the box serviced only 8-9 months ago with fully synthetic fluid. It changes up gears fine, and the gear changes are as silky smooth as they ever have been. Its on the odd occasion the kick-down seems to take longer than normal. I'm now quite used to the delay but just recently its been noticeably worse. Not to mention the fact that everyone else who has driven my car has commented on the fact that the gearbox is very slow to change down. iamhe77 - let me know when you find out about the VQ25DET grounding kit. Any idea on price?

hmm. will check this out. i do have the book for my immobiliser so will have a read.

nope. if I unlock the car, open the driver or front passenger door and close it, it will still re-lock. even with the boot open it will still re-lock. Its only been things like when all 4 doors open and close then say one opens again and stays open that it wont lock again - something like that. Like I said, its more complex than just leaving a door open, and I've yet to work it out.

actually i did just try it and it worked. haha would've saved a lot of hassle the other night... ah well. it still needed adjusting anyway since it was already on the lowest height setting and was still pointing too high...

Just tried this last night with help from my dad, and we just got more and more confused the more we tried to align the headlights. Basically from what we worked out, both screws adjust both lo and hi beam, and they seem to work against each other. ie. using a ratchet, and turning both screws the same way, one brings both lo & hi beam up, the other brings them down. Change the direction on the ratchet and they are both reversed. From what we worked out, you have to keep doing one then the other, and that will move the beam either to the left or to the right. Hope that makes sense. In other words, one of them adjusted it upwards, but slightly to the right. Turning the other in the same direction moved the beam downards but also to the right. So you can use both working against each other to adjust the height and left-right angle of the beam. From what we could tell, there was no independant adjustment for lo vs hi beam. They both moved when we turned either screw. So it was a case of finding a happy medium where the low beam was low enough and the high beam still high enough. If anyone else has more info on how the adjustments work PLEASE feel free to share it. Also I read recently about the headlight adjustment on the dash - does this work? I always thought the motor for this was disconnected in compliance...I'd be thrilled if it worked. That'd be one awesome feature to have.

The M35 is self-locking (most annoying feature ever) but the s2 is not. Must be a feature of your alarm. Read your alarm manual, I've had alarms that do this but its usually possible to disable the feature. I've yet to read the V35 manual through to see if its possible to disable the auto-locking on the M35. There is also obviously some combination of doors opening that will prevent it from locking again, but I haven't yet worked out exactly what it is yet...just seems to lock sometimes but not others...

the last quarter does go by much quicker... Somewhere on this forum is the litres used at each mark on the guage, as per the manual. Basically from full, the first quarter you use will be about 17L, then the next measures about 18L, then say another 18L but the last quarter is only about 10 or something. The numbers are slightly different to what I've got here but basically you should go furthest on the 2nd and 3rd quarters according to the guage. I'm not sure why the guage is designed the way it is, with the last quarter measuring just over half of what the other 3 measure, but thats how it is. So if you think the last quarter always seems to go quickly, its because it does.

welcome!! Yes the self-closing boot is such a cool feature. Its so handy when you have your hands full and you can just get your hand on the boot to pull it down. You just let it fall gently against the car without having to try to slam it when you're carrying too much stuff. The other tricks I like is the levers either side in the boot to fold down the rear seats, so if you're loading something big into the boot you dont need to go round to each side and fold the seats down first. I'm disappointed the M35 doesn't have the extra cig lighter in the boot, although admittedly I never used it in the s2. Just would be handy if you want to carry one of those waeco fridges in the boot or something. The s1/s2's also have a removeable mat under the boot - but mine was missing this. So many gadgets

My greatest concern is the lack of turbo options for this car. If my turbo goes, I dont want a highflow - because I'd much rather keep the characteristics of the turbo exactly as they are now. I can see the benefit of replacing the weaker parts of the turbo with stronger bits to reduce/eliminate the possibility of it failing again, but apart from this I'd want to keep the proportions as close to stock as possible. I've been down the high-flow road on a previous stagea, and it really only works if you're prepared to spend a fair amount of money on supporting mods (exhaust, ecu, possibly intake/injectors/fuel pump etc), and that only makes sense if you want your car to go faster. Its not that I dont want more power, its that I dont want to alter the factory tuning. Any change to turbo/exhaust pressure etc and the stock ecu is just not going to be up to the task (ie. its not going to be an ideal setup)...I just dont have the money to go down that road, especially when I'm pretty happy with the car as it is now. If the turbo goes, hopefully I can get away with only replacing the turbo...do GCG offer a non-highflow option ie. direct replacement with steel wheels of similar proportions?

yeah i was looking at the 186 and thinking that sounded a bit high for just fmic and 3" exhaust (and pod) with no tuning. An SAFC or eManage (better) and a boost controller would see this climb to around 160awkw at around 11-12psi I'd say. The aftermarket piggyback ecu is really needed to get the best from the exhaust and especially if you increase boost. At the moment it will be running quite rich with that exhaust...and my guess is it'll be around 10psi (the reduction in pressure after the turbo increases max boost).

Maybe it was full of helium? Cant weigh as much as a falcon lol. Actually I think the new falcons are a bit heavier (same with new commodores) but all stageas are heavier than pre-2006? falcons. There's only ~20-30 kg difference between s1/s2 stageas and the M35 too.

I never heard of this being a common fault with M35's...is it? After a quick search I found 1 thread regarding this - the button still worked but just not the AUTO part. Sorry Danny, offtopic... Hope you get it sorted...

My s2 turbo died at less kms than my M35 has now. The M35 turbo is likely very similar to the one used in the s2 stageas. Either way they are both ceramic and suffer the same limitations. The M35 only runs ~11 psi out of the factory so to my mind the only danger occurs when increasing the boost by either a boost guage or altering pressure somewhere in the system (ie. free-er flowing exhaust). Of course there are some that are just unlucky, but that happens to the s2's as well (happened to mine at stock boost). We could always run 7-8psi boost on the M35, but then we'd have to put up with s2 performance (just teasing - i used to own one). Other than this I've yet to see or hear of evidence of any model of stagea having any "weak points" reliability-wise.

+1 for TT's being a waste of money. I had one on a silvia turbo but it was just annoying. The usefulness on a water-cooled ball-bearing turbo is debatable...and as already stated above, all you need to do is be aware of how you drive for the last few minutes of your trip. And if you do need it to cool down, which if you do the above will be rare, just sit in the car a bit longer when you stop. Most turbo timers are set to only 1 minute anyway, so its not like you'll be waiting long. I've been told that when driving on the highway, and you pull into a servo, its wise to let it cool before turning the engine off...not sure how important this is since highway driving doesn't usually work the turbo very hard at all...but all the same - I've done a few interstate trips and when I stop at a servo I'll just pull over somewhere for about a minute before pulling up to the pump. for what its worth...

fuel flap opens by pushing on it (its locked when the car is locked). just out of interest its actually the same mechanism as a mitsubishi 380 - i hired one in perth last year and spent at least 15 minutes looking for the button to open the fuel flap. so when it came time to fill the M35 for the first time, and not finding a button, I knew to check that. thankfully thats where the similarities between the two cars end. The 380 is "ok" i guess. At the start of the week I was pretty happy with it, but by the end of the week the FWD-ness and horrible on-off traction control was driving me crazy.

Spotted a white/grey s1 on the road that goes between Warrego Hwy and Gatton/Esk (dont know the name of it) on Saturday afternoon/evening. I flashed my lights a bit but didn't get a response...disappointed. Maybe they thought it was some volvo fan who was mistaken. Was weird seeing a stagea in such a remote place, what are the chances?

I would normally trust the tyre shop's recommendations to a certain degree. However the one thing they cannot tell you (unless they've personally owned the tyre) is what its like 3+ months later. What I mean is that the Firenza ST-08's I mentioned earlier, have had good reviews from some tyre places and yet they're extremely noisy after about 2-3 months. They were very quiet when they were first put on. So you can never be too sure either way, but I'd say definitely listen to what the tyre shop tells you as far as what is a "good" vs "bad" tyre (and hoping they're not just trying to steer you towards the more expensive ones). However as far as how long each lasts, I guess you'd have to listen to people who have owned them and then make up your own mind between the various opinions.

First up DO NOT TOUCH FIRENZA ST-08's. EVER!! They are an ok tyre as far as grip and longevity are concerned, but they are hands down the most noisy tyre I have ever heard. I thought my wheel bearings were starting to go - thats how loud they are, until I switched one of the front wheels with the spare and the noise was instantly a lot quieter. Then I switched both the fronts with the rears (keeping them on the same sides of course) and the noise is now a lot more bearable, although still obvious even above my stereo. I've had a wheel alignment but it didn't reduce the tyre noise. My criteria for stagea tyres are: #1 it must be hard-wearing to last as long as possible. #2 handling/comfort - hopefully quiet too. #3 grip - not too fussy with grip since ATTESA does a very good job of this even on cheap tyres (i've had simex's before and had no grip issues). If you dont do any racing etc with your stagea I probably wouldn't be spending over $180 a tyre but thats just me. Your requirements may well be different to mine

Note that the M35 holds 10 more litres of fuel compared to older stageas, so 400km on a tank in a M35 is worse than 400km on a tank in a s1 or s2. I'd say 430-500km would be a more accurate average for the M35, although it does vary quite a lot depending on where you live/drive etc.

Yes I fell victim to the subliminal mind control and sold my s2 in favour of an M35... I even now find my fingers typing things like "I love my M35" and "drives like new"... Watch out, they'll be after you next... You'll start looking at your "old", "tired" (sorry its the mind control, make it stop!) stagea, thinking it might be time to upgrade, then you'll have thoughts jump into your head of newer technology, more power/torque, more comfortable seating, 5 speed auto, tiptronic (for the s1 guys), more backseat legroom, more boot space (incl storage under the boot floor), and all kinds of NEW stagea goodness... When this starts to happen, its then only a matter of time... (cue evil laughing) mwahahahaha

to give a better idea, the JNCAP rating for the M35 stagea is 4 stars for the driver and 5 for passengers I believe. JNCAP ratings are out of a total of 6. The rating methodology is also different between different countries and the rules also change with time as more and more safety features are expected to become standard equipment on cars, so its probably not possible to compare directly to ANCAP ratings... However, ANCAP ratings are out of a total of 5. This puts the stagea at about 4 stars. Still a good result, especially when compared to other wagons of the same year. For example all Ford Falcons up to (but not including) the current model were 4 stars. The holden commodore including the VE is also 4 stars. What it means though is that even with 4 stars, the stagea is going to offer a pretty good level of safety in a collision. To get 5 points it would likely need side curtain airbags and some fancy buzzwords after the title (ie. ESP etc).