Ian (Studio), BiggVinh, Sean (both of goodfeeling), Young, and I hung out Friday night. Here are some photos from the mayhem that ensued:
Too awesome. Young and Ian helped me put in a Data Systems nav unlock on my car, so we had to tear our the stock head unit, which is scary on such an expensive car. I’m glad to say that I have no mishaps to report! :P
I got a cool mod today — Norman at VIP Tint in Murietta/Temecula helped me put in Llumar Air 80 tint on the Lexus. It was super expensive, but it’ll cut down on interior heat quite a bit. It looks stock, which is awesome and what I was looking for since I’m not a fan of dark tints.
So I just got back from my friend’s Lexus dealership (at 2:17 in the morning, haha). Turns out the harness is being weird on the Data Systems controller, and that’s why the car was throwing AFS/height sensor codes. The ECU wasn’t seeing a reading from the front height sensors. Interestingly enough, a quick multimeter read of the harness showed it was OK, and after we put everything back together, the error disappeared. Must’ve been a loose pin somewhere. Hmm.
We also put in the 10.1 navigation map update for this car. Holy shit. 22 pages of instructions and 1 hour later, we were done, haha. Here’s an in-progress shot:
The printed instructions are sitting on the roof of the car, the nav update special service tool is sitting on the ground by the driver’s side door, and that’s a battery tender hooked up to the trunk-mounted 12v battery.
FML. I can’t believe it took all that for a silly nav update.
OMG
This is going to be my next car. No lie, haha.
I just got back from a front-end alignment at Island Tire, on Colorado at San Gabriel in Pasadena. Great guys — the alignment tech took almost an hour just to get the caster right. Everytime I come by, though, he shakes his head and asks me what’s the point. Hilarious. They also have a lifetime alignment special, which has saved my broke ass a couple of times. Apparently, if you drive an Evo and are a member of SoCalEvo, you get a discount. Nice. Too bad I never got that 9RS I really wanted back in the day.
The current specs are something like -4* camber front, -7* rear, 18×10 ET5 front, 18×11.5 ET2 rear, 235/40/18 front, 245/40.18 rear, and factory toe front and rear. I’m only able to get this alignment because of allllll the Peak Performance pieces underneath the car (front tension, rear upper control arm, traction rod, toe rod, all for an S14 240SX). There’s a bit more noise now from the front because of the pillowball in the tension rod, but steering feel’s improved a bit and there’s just a tiny bit more feedback, which is always a good thing.
Next for this car… Platinum VIP Phantom Cup suspension? Bold World x Roberuta? Wheel refinish? Less camber? Nankang NSII tires? Who knows? :)
Let me begin with a rant about Riverside: Why must your roads be so horrible? Why must your drivers be so inept!??!?!? ARRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I was waiting at a stoplight and two teenaged kids in a Chevy Silverado truck DO A POWERSLIDE into the lane next to me. They scared the crap out of me when they almost slid into my bumper. Sigh.
But on the the good stuff! My Alpine NVE-P1 (which is the navigation/Bluetooth module for Alpine IVA-Wxxx line of head units) died on me last week. For some reason, it would only display a blank screen — even after I reset it or pulled it out and blew on the connector, SNES cartridge style. I thought I was screwed, ’cause I bought it online through Amazon. After flipping through my purchase history on Amazon, I found out that the vendor who actually sold it to me was an authorized Alpine dealer — Pacific Stereo in Riverside. I called this morning and asked them what I could do, and the guy told me to just “mail it in” and that they would “change it out for me, no questions asked.”
Suspicious of the guy’s claims, I decided I would drop by the store instead, just in case they decided to decline my claim or pull the ol’ switcheroo (or delay the shipment). One can imagine my delight when I walked out after 3 minutes with a brand new, sealed-in-box unit that worked the first time I plugged it in. Score!
So, thanks, guys at Pacific Stereo — now I can rely on my nav instead of my underdeveloped sense of direction! :)