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| Project INFINITI |
The NMS Project INFINITI keeps moving along! Down at NMS-South, the 2002 INFINITI I35 recently received some work on the oil pan, as in taking it off, and installing a new gasket. Along with this procedure came an oil change, so we'll be driving it a bit and seeing if we still have an oil leak anywhere. Fixing the leaking oil pan, along with the previous work on the leaking valve covers, and the leaking hoses should have us well on our way to eliminating the leaks at least! I was able to research common leak problems on this particular car on the ProDemand software system, and those three types of leaks were the 3rd, 4th, and 5th most common, so that is good to know. The top two most common leaks on an Infiniti I35 were radiator and coolant related, and we weren't really seeing coolant leaking, so it was good to address the oil leaks.
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| The oil pan was leaking, so Brian took it off! |
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| No oil pan leak with a new gasket! |
Over the Thanksgiving NMS Team Dinner, we also installed some new low beam headlights since one of them was no longer working. Guess what? It's a LOT SAFER driving at night in a car with working headlights! This fact came in handy when I drove the car back to NMS-North, about an hour and a half on the Interstate, at night. In the dark. With the lights on! The car ran fine, so we're moving on to some more work not involving the engine.
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| Project INFINITI at NMS-North, now under the careful watch of Kimi Raikkonen! |
The next day saw the car get four brand new tires at a local shop, and just for good measure I spent a few minutes in the NMS garage and reduced some of the haze on the 23 year old plastic headlights. Shoot, that might make those new headlight bulbs even brighter! We discovered that Goodyear makes a tire specifically for Wal-Mart, so went with the Goodyear Reliant.
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| New tire installation at Wal-Mart. |
Coming up next will be an alignment on all four wheels, so that should also fix the not-straight steering wheel. I probably caused part of that problem, because when the car was up on the lift at Adams house, and I was in the driver seat pumping the brake pedal to bleed the brakes (following new shocks and other suspension work) I did NOT have the steering wheel straight. Oh well, it's important to learn by doing, and learn from your mistakes.
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| Not sure if your battery is up to speed? Throw it on a charger and test with your digital multimeter. |
The front seats were very worn, as in 163,000 miles worn, so we just covered them up with some new, uh, seat covers! |
| Worn out seats, before... |
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| and after! |
We also replaced the worn out windshield wiper blades, and as you can see above, we covered up a really worn and broken steering wheel with a black cover. Hey, it's not a perfect color match, but we're not entering any fancy car shows here either!
Another thing you see on older cars is plastic headlights that get hazy, and Project INFINITI had that problem too. We pulled out our handy-dandy Mothers Polish headlight kit, a handy drill with a buffing pad, and went to work. Here's the before and after versions after just one short polishing treatment.
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| Passenger side before... |
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| Passenger side after! |
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| Driver side before... |
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| Driver side after! Hey, we've got to be able to see those new light bulbs in there! |
With lots of good progress on the car so far, we might even try to wash it and get around to taking care of the cracked windshield too!
