The Max

I'd recommend forking out the cash for something a little more decent than any of AliBaba's offerings. For the best performance in low-light (and because it has front and rear cameras), I got the BlackVue 650. It's a Korean product but for the $550-odd, well worth it.

Trouble is though, in his case, the problem persists even with the unit unplugged from the car's power, suggesting that it's operating on its own internal battery.

Wow. That's an interesting cause. What's the make and model of dashcam? Unplugging the dashcam from your +12V accessories line won't necessarily solve the problem if the camera has its own built-in battery to keep the camera going while the car is off. Which means that camera is emitting something that's upsetting the vehicle, probably the motion sensor if it's microwave. Don't shield the camera unless you want to lose the motion sensor and GPS functionality. Pass me the make and model details and I'll see what I can figure out from the manuals for it.

I agree with Colin on that one. I do prefer mild steel as well. My former exhaust guy, before he went into retirement, was all about mild steel and didn't bother with mandrel bends. He was more about equal lengths rather than ultra-smooth bends. The systems he produced for me were awesome in performance and in sound. Not only that, stainless retains heat longer as well. The whole idea of the exhaust is to expel gas and heat. It shouldn't retain it, within reason of course. The only reason why I'd go the Megan Racing y-pipe in this case is purely on cost, if nobody else could produce something decent here. I've been out of the game for a while now so I have zero idea who else could do something that good in mild steel. Are you sure that our vehicles don't come with an (unpolished) stainless exhaust off the production line? I had a friend comment on that once but I never bothered to check it out up on the hoist in his workshop when I was converting my headlights back to OEM HID.

Precisely why I chose to leave my V at the stock height. Saves the front end coming out of some carpark driveways too. Anyway, not to go rubbing any more salt in, definitely go custom if you can. Find a good guy and chances are it'll be at worst the same price but way better than getting the stock pipe. Alternatively: http://www.meganracing.com/product.asp?prodid=1071 Awesome value and I like Megan Racing's products as they're designed to perform without overemphasising the rice. Very tasteful mods. I'm happy with my Megan Racing muffler, which gives the vehicle a nice note without the shitty drone but if my inner wog were to want to come out just a little bit, this would be the path I'd take. Chances are the shipping will be as expensive as the pipe though.

Oh that's just too damn funny!!! On the one hand, what a spastic. On the other hand, at least he did it in a classy vehicle.

Time to focus more on the diagnostics and less on the symptoms. We've already established that things have gotten a little nuts. Do some testing and get back to us with the results.

Well, to be fair, when you mentioned you've welded together go-kart frames and whatnot, I found it hard to take you seriously. Anyway, it's not a too-hard-basket kind of thing. It's just that the vehicle itself doesn't really lend itself to any serious value in the end product. If it was something that's never been done before and could be a truly unique project, then I could understand it, to push the vehicle past its expected limits and put it to the test. But the moment you head down the modified path, it'll never end. Something will break, you'll improve on it, it'll break again, you'll find other ways to do it better, and so on. I did that with my old J30 Maxima back in the day, turbocharging, MoTeC M800, Level 10 auto transmission rebuild. Yeah, it was fun but when I look back on it, though it was a great learning experience, at the same time it was a colossal friggin' waste of money. Better to put the money towards a vehicle that's designed to be in the category you've hoped for rather than just a $10k car that's built well, but not that well. Not only that, with all the speed cameras popping up left, right and centre, that power goes to waste unless you want to beat someone from a standstill at traffic lights just to get to the next turn before them. In the end, it's your money. If you want to fork out that cash on the vehicle, go for it.

April Fools was two days ago dude.

Normally, you can lock your car without having to wait for the interior light to do anything, so even if it's already at the stage of beginning to dim, locking the vehicle will then skip the dimming and turn them off. I would start with one simple check ... does the vehicle know when your doors and boot are closed? With everything else closed, if you press the driver's door switch in, does the interior light eventually switch off? Check the same for your other door and boot. If it doesn't behave as it should with any of those switches, it's likely it's just the door switch that's giving you grief there and so it won't lock up because it's thinking the door or boot is ajar. Then the next thing to check is that the switches are indeed working and it's not your BCM. Get your hands on a multimeter and measure the voltages at the switch points on the BCM. I haven't got a schematic handy now to check which pins you need to test with your meter but you need to see if there's an obvious change in voltage (typically 0V for an open door, +12V for a closed door in most vehicles). If the switches appear to be operating normally, then it sounds like there's something horribly wrong with your BCM. Given your other symptoms you've reported, it's likely to be the case but you need to check the basics first just to simply follow the logical chain (not to mention it's cheaper if you find a dud switch as opposed to a dud BCM and then having to reprogram it with a Consult diagnostic tool).

High 5s is what you get from a 3.7L motor, so it would need a reasonable bit more to squeeze that out of your 3.5L, I believe. Not sure what I'm pulling with mine after the dyno tune but I know I was level pegging with a BMW M4 last night, unless he was a shit driver and missed a gear.[emoji14]

Because it's hard-coded in the head unit's software (and possibly the GPS unit located in the boot) to only work with the specific region's map. If you're a brilliant hacker, you might be able to crack that nut and make a mint out of it in the process.

Good humbuckers aren't really cheap. Expect to pay anything around $60 for a mediocre one and around $130 for a decent one. If you are feeling daring, you could use an audio ground loop isolator but the impedance of the transformer being mismatched to the video source may end up working against you.

Let us know then because I was thinking about your mirrorlink device, which is powered by the car. If it's happening on a completely ground-independent device such as your GoPro on battery power, then it suggests my ground-loop theory is wrong. Nope. If it's the wrong colour system, you would have an unstable (as in scrolling) picture as well as no colour. Reason for this is because PAL has 625 lines of resolution whereas NTSC has 525 lines. So if you have 100 extra or fewer lines than what the display device is expecting, the end result is that it can't lock onto what is meant to be the true end of the field and you get the resulting perpetual scroll. Then you have the colour subcarrier, which for PAL is 4.43MHz while NTSC is 3.58MHz. If they don't line up, you simply don't get the colour information coming through, hence why it's a black and white image. I set up my Mirrorlink device to operate on NTSC, since that's the Japanese standard. The herringbone pattern on the screen is definitely video hum though, from my past experiences.

What you're seeing there is video hum. I have it on mine as well, just haven't been bothered to get my hands on a humbucker (aka isolation transformer) to resolve it. It's highly likely because there's a ground loop happening between the mirrorlink device and head unit. If/when I do end up pulling my finger out, the plan will be to hardwire it into the cable path within the centre console so that it doesn't take up any valuable space inside the armrest compartment.

Time to rip it out and get a more manly Viper alarm or something.

Can you open it to replace the battery? That might be one way to find out. The pink bits has me thinking it's a garage door opener for a gay orgy clubhouse.

Nah, the AV input is nice and clean on these vehicles, albeit about 6dB quieter than the CD player. Without knowing the circuit topology, my best educated guess would be it's an unbalanced source as opposed to the balanced internal connectivity of the CD source. If you believe it sounds horrible, I'm willing to bet that it's your source that's to blame. I use the Sony NW-ZX1 on mine and it sounds as good as a car stereo can be expected to sound. If you're using a phone as your source, generally speaking, phones suck. There are some exceptions to that rule but to my ears, nothing beats having a dedicated player for the task. Can't explain what happened with my video still functioning while driving though. Maybe I got lucky or there's a clever guy in Japan who modifies the head units internally to prevent the blackout.

Thankfully in my case, though I've found no signs of tampering with the wiring or the headunit itself, my screen is always on in DVD/TV/AUX mode. As for running both audio and Mirrorlink together, in my case it works out great because my Sony ZX1 is my actual audio source for all my FLAC files and the Mirrorlink feeds the video. Granted, I don't hear any audio directions from the phone's GPS but then again, I used to read a street directory back in the day while driving so no big deal for this old school'er. But in your case, you should be able to Mirrorlink your GPS app on your phone but still play audio through the Mirrorlink at the same time, as a compromise, no? That way you will be able to pass audio through the headunit and control that audio with it, in the very least treble, bass and volume controls. I haven't tried it on mine but since the RCAs are sitting there, I'll give it a crack and report back.

Yeah, for that kind of money, they can go jump. I realise it's not a quick case of plug 'n' play but that's exorbitant for what the end result is. Personally, I like the stock AV headunit and it's complemented well by the audio upgrades I've made. However, the GPS solution I've implemented, which is just a MirrorLink device to screen mirror my phone via a composite video output, cost me only $40 if I remember correctly, took me about 20 minutes to neatly install and gives a reasonable result considering it's composite video. I can only imagine these jokers would want to charge around $500 for even that small effort.

That's why I have a shitbox BA wagon. Throw all manner of large things in there (my drums) and not give a damn about how I abuse the interior (or exterior, for that matter).

Well, you never told us that bit! You cheeky monkey.

The plot thickens and not just for E. Lee either: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-16/sydney-used-car-dealerships-tampering-odometers-nsw-police/7173646

At least we all know where we stand now. Seriously though, best of luck selling it. Looks good, except for the teething ring. If I want to taunt cops, I drive a little zippier.

BAHAHAHAH! I've been meaning to get a nutsack to hang off the towbar on the BA wagon actually. Thanks for reminding me!