just wanted to post up my 4000th post (reply) on this thread. hahaha.

 

so last night i moved my winter set for my '12 to my garage. Will pressure it up and swap wheels tonight, weather permitting. my '12 sits on the driveway and while i dont care getting rained on, i dont want my tools getting wet.

then i will wash my summer set tomorrow evening and store it away before the weekend. i dont have much room in my garage ever since our village started using those huge trash and recycle bins last year.

 

Ken, have you tried using no rinse washes in the winter?

 

yah, actually i use it quite frequently all year long. I use the Griot's SprayOn CarWash. you can buy it through amazon on prime.

it's a very effective product and causes no swirls just as long as you use fresh towels and dont rub the grit across the paint.

 

Awesome! Looking into it now.

 

yah, the green griot's towels are fantastic. they have the med length strands on both sides unlike typical detaling MF towels. i recommend to remove the tag completely and wash them at least once before use.



speaking of sprayon car wash, i need to do that tonight on my '12. got construction in my area at work and with the rain and drizzle, i got all sorts of water spots on my car.

 

swapped my wheels last night to winters. even had some time to wash the summers before placing them in my garage to dry. also cleaned up the lugs and added some polymer on there to prevent rust.

tonight i will retorque the lugs when i get home, and then bring the summers down into storage.

yesterday the air was super damp...kept my fan running inside the garage to prevent condensation on my cars inside the garage while i worked on my GE on the driveway. was up to 95%RH when i shut the garage door. i have a dehumidifier in there, so ran that for one hour at full and had 2 fans running. got it down to a nice 60%RH.

 

Actually put this in my cart on Amazon last night!

Going to order it in the next couple weeks.

 

sounds good!


i ended up washing the '12 tonight with a hose as i wanted to reinforce the polymer with Hydro. had some pretty stubborn stains on the car the hell. but all clean again.

i know it's going to rain tomorrow but i dont care. it was worth the trouble to keep my GE pristine.

 

retorqued my lugs last night, i will check them once more tonight just to be safe.

i also moved out my summer set into storage after spraying the wheels with some polymer sealant spray (prima hydro).

i made this little wheel dolly using plywood circles i bought at homedepot and 4 casters. very convenient. actually i have like 4 of them. between each layer of wheels/tires, i place a mirror sheet (foam sheet) over the wheel face to protect them, and a cardboard circle so the tires are separated from each other when stacked up. then place in a dry cool place to prevent dry rotting.

this weekend im thinking about swapping the floor mats from carpet to the aries mat i bought a few weeks back. will also make the carpet protector out of hard felt near the gas pedal.

 

been driving around with TPMS on my 205/50/16 DWS the last few days.

im so happy i can turn dynamic control off. feels good to be able to chirp the tires on demand without some computer telling me i can't have my cake.

 

swapped my floor mats to the aries that i bought last month. while driving the first few miles i felt my left foot hitting the hump that covers the dead pedal when i worked my clutch, but afterwards, i got use to not hitting it and no issue.

the mat itself does not move around at all, so this is great.

will need to see if the floor mat is getting into the way of the accelerator while hitting wot. i noticed that the back side of the gas pedal hits the floor mat. i might want to make a cut out of that area for clearance.

 

so i ended up making a small U shaped slit where the gas pedal hits the floor mat at wot to allow the pedal to go down all the way to the floor.

the aries mat takes up almost 10mm of the travel without this slit. i used hard felt on the other side of the floormat and duct taped it to the back so that there is no leakage if snow got on there.

you can also see the black felt cover i made on the right side where my right foot tends to rest while cruising.
the color difference is much more subtle in real life.

 

drove my '12 to work and immediately could tell that i can now hit wot with that slit i made on the aries floor mat. now very happy with my setup.

without that slit i think one can still hit wot, but they would have to mash the pedal to the floor hard. i dont want to, and shouldnt have to do that to enjoy my car to the fullest.

 

snow in the forecast... good thing my car's setup for this weather. i already put away my RWD cars for the season. mixed emotions.

im really looking forward to the tokyo autoshow where nissan will unveal the next gen Z and a silva class coupe.

 

nice weather this weekend for some motoring in my '12. going to go downtown for a change and check out wats going on. car's all fueled up from a few days ago.

finally was able to pull out and wear my brown/black piloti's today. been in my shoe bin since last year(?) when i bought it before all the stock dissappeared. didn't really go well with my summer cloths but with my sweater and all, looks nice.

TGIF! have a nice weekend, everyone!

 

hope you all had a nice weekend.

i had a good time in my '12 sat and sun. took it out to the city and roamed around a little bit, also checked out other forests i usually dont go to, to enjoying the last of the autumn colors.

the DWS tires stuck very well to the roads (average 35F) and while the car does sway quite a bit through faster turns, i think the instability feel was more in my head due to my other cars not having so much roll while turning.

i took my fit through some pretty fast turns through some bumpy (large humps and dips) on-ramps. i have much more confidence in how well the car handles now.

that said, i think im just going to leave the suspension the way it is right now... which is just Swift springs on stock dampers. i like the amount of suspension stroke i still have, the comfort, and soft yet solid handling. i can drive over pretty rough roads without thinking my car is going to break apart.

 

so searched around j-sites to see if anyone made a nice fender arch trim like the ones J-next makes... i saw a few, but none really caught my eyes.

i wanted to add a simple clean, silver painted trim on the front so that the wheels/tire dont look like it has poke. not interested in getting those rubberly fender/door trims dealers put on new cars. i hate those.

 

TGIF!

this weekend i have a few errands i need to do in my '12, but otherwise going to head out to the city with the wife and hang out a little.

planning on doing another session of SprayOnCarWash again sunday. im too lazy to pull out the hose right now and getting my cloths wet in the cold while i wash.

hope you all have a nice weekend!

btw, daylight savings ends on sunday, so fall back one hr. one extra hour to sleep or drive or watever.

 

Yay! I was going to Google when the clocks were changing but now I don't have to lol

I will also have to wash this weekend, got it all waxed and shiny and then drove through the desert in 50mph winds. Kids put their hands all over the dust on the doors so I was but then they said they were trying to help clean it so I just had to

Have a good weekend