RANDY

pic of "Center surround that go around the dash $80" please. Neg on prices?

yeah, searching (and not just SAU) is probably a good way to learn the basics. Briefly though... RCA cables out of Head Unit, into "line in" or whatever of the amp. (always power off when doing this). Speaker wire comes out of speaker terminals of the amp, and into the speaker terminals of the sub. Search for "bridging" incase you want more beef out of the amp. For power, red goes to positive on battery (B+), preferably with an inline fuse, and black is an earth or ground (GND) cable, best to run to the chassis, as short a cable as possible, onto a really clean metal surface. Remote (REM) wire must come from the "remote" output of your Head Unit, and run to the "remote" input of the amp. This tells the amp to turn on when the head unit is on. Oh, and those RCA cable are pretty crummy, and you don't need the yellow one (a colour usually reserved for video signals). Buy 5m or so of just stereo RCA cable, good quality.... and for power you'll need another 6m of thick red wire. I've put this really simply, just to give you a rough image, but if you're going to do it yourself, definately read up a bit on audio/power.

From what i've read, some headunits don't come with an antenna control wire on the back of it, so installers (or owners) wire it in with the ignition wire (out of the back of the headunit) So... if the antenna comes up when you turn the car or stereo on (CD too, not just radio) then it's like that. Find the wire that travb81 mentioned, and remove that from the connection. Otherwise, it's hooked up to the antenna control output of the headunit, as trav said.

Oh.. my apologies... I should have mentioned that this is the method for manual shifter surrounds. No idea with an auto. But I second the auto sparky. If you don't know how to use a multimeter, it's probably best that they check the wiring for you, and then decide on the course of action depending on what is actually wrong with it.

cool =-]

That's weird hey? Mine is nice and firm, but progressive and not TOO firm. I drove a friends N/A R33 GTS4, and it was SO SOFT! I couldn't feel the pedal through my shoe, so I was just carefully judging how far my foot was tilted to govern the amount of accelerator I was giving it. You have an "R33 Series II"?...Non-turbo? If so, try someone else's pedal first (someone's GTST) So... if this is a model-specific thing, you could get a spring from someone who's wrecking GTST's? Mine certainly seems standard.

Well.. mine never worked either. I pulled it out and then pushed the metal clip-bit-thing of the socket in further... so that it could touch and hold the actual cigarette lighter in place. Works now! Might want to try this first? Pull the ashtray out, unscrew the screw behind that. Grab the shifter surround from the rear part, then lift until the whole thing unclips at the back. Slide backwards and up, and the front should come out. If you spin the piece around, you can see the back of the ciggy lighter socket (without having to take off the shifter knob). From there, find the side of the socket that has a bit of metal cut out, and push it in a bit more. Test with ciggy lighter. If the socket just doesn't have power to it (by testing with multimeter off the actual wiring), then this is useless to you. Check fuses for that issue.

Yer... shouldn't be -7 at idle... That's vacuum. Should only see that when backing off hard or coasting downhill. Does your car actually boost and work properly? If so, it just sounds like your guage isn't right. Could check the piping to the sensor for leaks. It sits against the firewall on the drivers side (under-bonnet). Has one pipe, and one electrical plug... small black box.

OH good work! I've already put the 34GTT cooler in, and the turbotech controller... Got all the exhaust parts, but haven't fitted them. When that's done, i'll shove it up to 10psi... same as you have. Hopefully it'll feel the same! Can't play vids though =-/

So it is quite good to do eh? Seems a few people are getting tighter panels and increased dB from doing the doors and boot.

Nah, those pillar trim bits are pretty flexible. I wouldn't count on them. I had one bolt in the middle, under the cap/cover thing. I also had two plastic... things? on the left and right, hand side. They are the press-in plastic clip kind of things. I pulled those out, and found that the hole they grabbed into actually had a thread in it. The metal part of the parcel tray has a bolt welded into the underside (visible from inside the boot). I bought two bolts and screwed them in. Now it's strapped down by three bolts, rather than some plastic bits (and c-pillar covers). I honestly beleive the plastic c-pillars clip into the parcel shelf to hold the pillars in place, not for the pillar covers to hold the parcel tray in place!

Regarding the scruffing of the LED, the pictures I have attached are with no scruffing at all. I have only used one bulb/LED for the example pics, so only half the panel lights up. Either way, the panels buttons all light up the same brightness... so... experiment if you feel like it, as midnight suggests. =-] Additional: sorry, Midnight, if it looks like i've just redone your guide. I started documenting it and taking pictures before I found your guide. (while searching for mine after it didn't appear immediately after posting). I then changed the title a bit so it's clear that mine is a secondary to yours. =-]

*sigh* still to do mine. I have a Dynamat extreme kit, so it should do two doors. Anyway.. my boot rattles with a single sub. I thought it might be the keylock part, which has some play in it... in which case I might just lather it in some thick grease instead. (from the inside of the boot-lid.. behind the lining if you have it)

Repco and the like... you can buy genuine bonnet struts for most makes of cars from auto places... i'm sure with a part number or an example you could find a match? Stuff it.. just let the metal parts rust up, then the strut will hardly move! ;o)

Chris: cheers for the heads up. I bought the unit about 1.5 years ago now, and didn't know your trade back then =-] I didn't WANT a Kenwood. But out of the lot it seemed the least flashy, the easiest to press buttons and read display, and had some other features I had to have.

That handle surround CAN break, but just don't bend it too much, and eventually it'll come off. That's the only hard part of the whole damn job! The doorskin hangs on the sill, so pull the bottom away from the door, then slide the whole thing up, off the sill.

Hey! Your nickname totally didn't register for a minute there! Good stuff... good to hear that the shelf went well. Did you do the shorter shelf that I described above? (and the night you picked up the wheels) SO worth doing =-]

So that's pretty much what i've been hearing. I was actually shopping for a Blaupunkt HU when I bought my Skyline, but even eBay had diddly-squat in the way of variety/availability. Ended up with a Kenwood 5029 something-or-other. Blue lights and flashy facia. Well, thanks for the input, Chris!

That just makes my method sound WAY better again! I made my own shelf out of 6mm thick MDF, which I made shorter width-ways. The ends of the shelf sit right up against the c-pillar clips now, with a bit of excess carpet hanging over. You can't see a single gap, and it looks dead factory!

I would have rated Blaupunkt as pretty good? From what research I was doing, they have a fairly good reputation. They make some of the "high" end stuff for stock model cars. By aftermarket standards the stock units wouldn't compare... but the aftermarket universal head units and stuff like that apparently are pretty good! Now... Chris will shoot us all down! ;o)

Oh... pain in the butt... The seats are easy to remove. Search for posts on that one. After that, the stock shelf is clipped and bolted in place, but has two slits that your c-pillar plastic covers clip into. If your shelf is OLD and tatty, it'll bend really easily, and you can bend it down and slip the covers past the slits in the shelf. Otherwise, if you want to keep the shelf, and it's not so bendy... remove the c-pillar covers. Dunno how to do that though.

Maybe the internal amp part of the HU is blown? They get pretty hot back there! Only sure-fire test is to hook up another speaker off it, with no others attached.

So... when you give it half throttle, it stutters? Or it drives normally but with no boost? When the boost comes on, it shouldn't launch you TOO hard on a stocker. What does the boost guage read when all this happens? How far are you putting the boot in? If it IS just the boost, and not a fuel or coilpack or whatever problem, then maybe you have a sticky wastegate actuator? You'd have to be gunning it and not just normal traffic driving to generate that much boost that you feel it though.

Didn't I see this concept car about 2 years ago at The Motor show? Quite sure I did?

I have the same thing. It appears to be leaking oil from a broken/missing stud. A friend pointed out some oil from my rocker gasket and suggested that it's just running down the back, and then around that last manifold pipe. I dunno.. I recken i've got a tiny leak there, but my pressure and temps are fine, and it doesn't lose oil. I HAVE heard that if you drill too far into the hole to get a broken stud out, that you can go too far and puncture into the head fairly easily. Either way, with a new stud in there, it should seal that hole up pretty well I think! Hopefully i'll be getting all new studs in the next few weeks.