I didn’t see an install guide for the 2016 Maxima. It’s pretty simple but there are a few tricks.
1. Open the hood and on the right and left fender there is a fabric gasket that has 4 push tabs. Remove them and move the mesh out of the way. Now when you go through the wheel area you can see where to route your wires.
2. Move the wheel inward depending on which side your installing. Remove the 3 plastic clips and there will be a little tab on the plastic near the bumper you can insert a flat head and pull back the plastic to gain access.
3. Acknowledge the bulb position and the way you twisted to remove it. Then have the HID ready to do the same in reverse. Make sure it goes in and doesn’t wiggle.
4. Get up and stand over the side you are installing. Put the ballast and the igniter on the side channel and run the wires down to the wheel from the top.
5. Sit back down and plug it all in. Easy Red wire to red from the factory harness.
6. I zip tied the ballast or you can double side tape.
7. Reinstall the mesh fabric gasket and boom. You cannot see it and beautiful.
Mesh Gasket on the right
You can see where I zip tied and the wires running down into the wheel area
Decided to make a new from grill, the emblem is just way too big (IMHO) and detracts from the lines on the front end of this car. Bought a new grill to start working on, got a nice deal on it from a black friday dealership sale.
Dremeled and filed everything out
Fiber-glassed and compounded the base from where the emblem was removed
Primed the frame
I ordered the grill material from customcargrills.com i wanted something thick and as close to the factory look as possible
This next part was a lot of trial and error, fiberglass didn’t want to stick to the abs plastic, tried tiger hair stranded fiber and results were not good…third times a charm….ended up testing some JB quik and this stuff was money! really bonded well to the plastic. lot of time spent cutting/forming and sanding to get the grill to where i was happy with it
Final sanding before paint
Primed
Painted gloss black
Out with the old and in with the new:
Bumper back in place
Wrapped chrome trim in carbon fiber to match the rest of the car
As a few of you know, ptatohed (Josh) and myself (James) recently installed a water to air aftercooler on his car. After doing a lot of homework, we decided on a ‘barrel design’ (as opposed to a ‘box’ design). We ended up going with the Jackson Racing AWAC (Air/Water AfterCooler) made for the Mazda Miata. Here is a picture (although this is the older, unpolished, design):
The kit retails for about $900 new but ptatohed paid about half that for a used kit. We went with this ‘barrel design’ because we felt it was easier to fit in the engine bay and it (in theory) produces less of a boost loss compared to a ‘box design’. (Here is a picture of i30krab’s Maxima with a Vortech ‘box design’ AWAC, if anyone is interested).
The JR kit provided us with the aftercooler, the electrical pump, and the front-mount heat exchanger (and 3/8″ heater hose). The JR kits expects the Miata guys to use their stock overflow bottle as their water reservoir. That wasn’t going to cut it for us. We bought this water/ice reservoir made by Vortech:
The reservoir is a little big but it does fit. However, note that a smaller battery must be used to make the reservoir fit (or relocate your battery). Josh took apart a Wal-Mart mobile jump-start (as seen in the pictures below) but I bought an Oddyssey (PC680MJT):
Here is a picture of Josh’s Wal-Mart battery:
Our goal was to convert to a 3” intake system at the same time we installed the AWAC but we wanted to do so with no custom work needed. No welding, no bracket or pipe fabrication, no special-order parts, etc. And we accomplished our goal! We put the whole system together with easy to get parts. Most of our intake plumbing was purchased here.
Before I get to the pictures, I’ll give a quick review. Honestly, we don’t really feel anything on the butt-dyno. But that might be because we did lose 1.5 – 2 PSI of boost (peaking at just about 8.5 now, down from 10 PSI). Hopefully that will easily be taken care of with a smaller pulley. Right now we both have a 3.25″ pulley. Anyone know what size pulley we should drop down to, to get back to 10PSI? The system seems to work great! No matter how much we drive, the water always stays cool and so does the AWAC. As a test, we unplugged the pump, went for a drive and, sure enough, the AWAC was roasty. So, we are assuming the intake temps are being reduced. We’ll know for sure, soon enough, as we have an Autometer dual intake temperature gauge waiting for install. We will also be dyno-ing our cars shortly. As soon as we know, we’ll let you guys know our intake temperature drop across the aftercooler and our dyno results. It will also be fun to experiment with dropping ice in the reservoir!
O.k., enough talking, on with the pics. While I will post some of the pics below, please click here to see all the pics.
Before:
Reclock the blower:
90^ rubber elbow:
BOV adaptor from E-Bay. This can be purchased to accommodate various BOVs:
(Please note we are temporarily using cheesey rubber couplers and worm clamps. We will be replacing these with nice silicone couplers and T-Bolt clamps soon).
Jackson Racing Water to Air AfterCooler:
This is a picture of our 45^ bend. We really need a 60^ bend but since they only make 45^ and 90^, we used a 45^ and “cut it to be 60^”. We first marked the location where we wanted to cut, to get the length we needed. Next, instead of drawing lines perpendicular/radial to the pipe, we skewed the lines 7.5^ on each end (We need 60, but are using a 45. 60-45=15. 15/2 = 7.5):
This is the cheesey plastic MAF adaptor we bought from E-Bay but have since purchased nice metal ones from Cattman (Place Racing):
Special thanks to Chulo for the pics and prototype. This is a really different yet exclusive look on a 6thgen. Chulo’s shop hacked the bumper into the shape of the 04-06 bumper.
This bumper comes from an 07′ SLK320 Mercedes Benz.
As I looked for this mod for the FWD HR, I didn’t see anything for them. Z1 Motorsports had the option for the VHR engine. So I took it alone myself to try it. I started my polishing the the runners in the lower manifold. Then knocked down the lips on the edges of the top of the manifold. I also gasket matched the bottom.
After that I moved on to the upper manifold I knows down all the big lines in the runners and proceeded to match the ports to the lower manifold. I made a template matching the lower manifold ports and just cut the upper manifold to match. I made sure the all my ports where smooth and clean.
