What’s a B13 anyway?

Rollback50k said:

And as if the car isn’t annoyed with me already for some reason. It threw a hissy fit last night and forgot all about it until now. Had my foot on the brakes as I normally would when putting it from Park to Drive and this appeared before I could fully remove my foot off the brakes to start driving away. Any thoughts?

Hoping the car doesn’t become a headache because I’ve had it for less than a month and it’s already trippin out (first a yellow warning, then the click/crack sound when turning the steering wheel in either direction and now this red warning yelling at me :/ )


-Martin

Click to expand...

Whelp, I think I’m an idiot....I just went to jump out of the car and swung the door open as I was went to put the car in park (obviously after coming to a full stop)

And the warning came up again....I believe it’s just a safety precaution in case you forget to put the car in park so it doesn’t drive away lolll

No updates today but I didn’t take a few pictures while running errands.

Wheel gap is begging for at least some sort of springs (I just can’t convince myself to use the stock struts/shocks and shorten their longevity since the car drives and feels so nicely)


Packed it out with some groceries my wife needed for a surprise birthday dinner our friend is having tomorrow.


-Martin

So I told myself I wasn’t going to hack this car up and I’m sticking to it.....kinda?

Today I decided to take my headlight switch out and take a look at the insides to see why or what is preventing/blocking the switch from engaging the fogs without the headlights. To no surprise I found that it was as simple as the molded tabs inside.

Getting a euro switch without the Auto position has been on my list of things to get but i haven’t been in a rush to buy one so I figured there would be no harm in possibly damaging my stock switch. I probably won’t run this switch forever since I’m eventually getting a rear fog lamp which I would would then need a completely different switch and I’m not hacking up the wiring.

I’d like to mention that I take no responsibility if you decide to follow the procedure below, you will be doing this at your own free will and I will not offer you replacement pieces or take responsibility for any damages.

I started off by pushing the 4 tabs out of the way in order to split the switch up.


Next you’ll see two brown plastic slugs which have been molded to guide the two pins depending the orientation you put the switch in (Off > Parking lights > Full On > Full On with Fogs). I didn’t take pictures of the process to get the brown pieces out but it’s pretty self explanatory once you’re in there. Your best bet is to take them out and clamp them down with something while using a disc of some sort on a Dremel because this piece is super tough. Basically just trim off the ‘bridge that runs diagonally and then across. Make sure to clean up any pieces of plastic and make it as smooth as possible otherwise the switch will feel somewhat rough and jerky while you’re turning the knob.


I don’t have any after shots because I don’t have a Dremel and it looks kinda rough. Again, I don’t plan on running this switch forever but it’s nice to know that I won’t need to buy a euro switch until I’m ready to add a rear fog lamp.





-Martin

Very cool. I've taken apart the headlight switch before, because the chrome trim on the knob was loose and rattling and I wanted to repair it from within. So I was able to figure out how the mechanics of the switch work. I hadn't even thought to remove those slugs, that's ingenious. It's been awhile since then, and I've just lived with the restriction, but maybe I'll open it back up again. Do the slugs snap cleanly or do you have to grind them down? Is there a way to remove all the moving parts so you can thoroughly flush the plastic clean before reassembling? I can't remember all the details since taking my switch apart, it was like a year ago.

Rollback50k said:

Just wanted to share something quickly.....

For anyone who considered making their MDI cable stick straight out instead of at a 90* angle.....don’t bother. It’ll definitely work and is doable but it’ll probably look pretty bad.

I ended up taking a swing at trying it out on my 30pin which I have no intentions on using before I ordered a lightning cable to “correct the thought process behind the 90* bend”. The wire is clamped down using a ground wire which probably should be kept on if I were to guess. Unfortunately the only way I could figure this out would be to cut and mangle up the metal housing which is fine but then you’ll be left with a decent amount of it sticking out in order to reproduce it’s current position.

I went ahead and literally just bent the arm that had the ground wire clamped down onto and made do with what I had available at 11pm last night and it worked perfect. Yes, it looks terrible and way worse than I would have imagined. I probably didn’t even notice myself lose motivation and care for the idea but just wanted to finish it up. Found an old 8gb iPod nano with music on it and tested it out. Works fine....but I’ll just sum it up by saying there is Absolutely no good reason why I would ever bother bringing an MDI cable back in my car lol.

Bluetooth and satellite radio will work fine and probably even better (maybe not in terms of sound quality) going forward.

Hopefully I wasted enough of your time with these last two posts that you it saved you time trying to google any further for a non-90* wire loll

And as if the car isn’t annoyed with me already for some reason. It threw a hissy fit last night and forgot all about it until now. Had my foot on the brakes as I normally would when putting it from Park to Drive and this appeared before I could fully remove my foot off the brakes to start driving away. Any thoughts?

Hoping the car doesn’t become a headache because I’ve had it for less than a month and it’s already trippin out (first a yellow warning, then the click/crack sound when turning the steering wheel in either direction and now this red warning yelling at me :/ )


-Martin

Click to expand...

The only time that I've seen that warning is when the front camera didn't have a view which kept front collision braking from working.

southpawboston said:

Very cool. I've taken apart the headlight switch before, because the chrome trim on the knob was loose and rattling and I wanted to repair it from within. So I was able to figure out how the mechanics of the switch work. I hadn't even thought to remove those slugs, that's ingenious. It's been awhile since then, and I've just lived with the restriction, but maybe I'll open it back up again. Do the slugs snap cleanly or do you have to grind them down? Is there a way to remove all the moving parts so you can thoroughly flush the plastic clean before reassembling? I can't remember all the details since taking my switch apart, it was like a year ago.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

Yeah the brown slugs slide out once you remove the back piece which holds the circuit board.

You’ll want to start by removing both springs that are attached to two plastic ‘pins’ (see picture below) which locks the switch unit in the dashboard.


Then you want to use some sort of thin long flat head (maybe a butter knife would get the job down to be honest). Slide it between the brown slug and the wall of the switch (see picture below)


At this point you’ll have to push the white tip of the pins which glide up against the slugs, away from the slugs in order to slide the slugs outwards. (See picture for reference)


Unfortunately it doesn’t ‘snap’ clean. It must be made of some super heavy duty plastic....or I’m just weak [emoji2371] lol. You can most definitely attempt to save the time of taking them out but I strongly suggest against it. You’ll be wasting your time and not doing yourself a favor. I would assume a Dremel would be perfect for it.

For reference, these are the 4 positions it is molded to work with;

Off


Accessory/City lights


Headlights


Fogs and headlights


Fogs and Accessory/City lights
(I goofed and didn’t take a picture....hehe sorry)


I hope this helped, just don’t forget to add some lube and make it as clean as possible so it doesn’t feel so ‘notchy’ when changing positions. I’ll try to take it out tomorrow and take a few pictures.



-Martin

jimlloyd40 said:

The only time that I've seen that warning is when the front camera didn't have a view which kept front collision braking from working.

Click to expand...

True, my car doesn’t have any cameras though. I do think I might of accidentally discovered why it appeared. I hadn’t put the car in Park and was rushing to get out of the car, so I was multitasking and opened the door while putting the car in Park but before I could, the warning appeared. I’m guessing it’s to prevent people from forgetting to put the car in park before getting out?


-Martin

Not much has changed since my last few posts but I did just hit 39k miles ([emoji24]).



I had originally scheduled to drop the car off and have it serviced on Thursday March 21st while i was away on vacation but I landed a new job which am dated to start 4 days before we were suppose to go away.

With that being said, vacation plans went out the window since this is a great step up from my current (in several aspects such as pay, location, hours and dates the branch is closed due to federal holidays)

Hoping to reschedule my service appointment to Wednesday March 13th. Fingers crossed that I get the car back in time so I don’t have to rent a car.


-Martin

Update from Saturday, Sunday and Today:
Went over my friends house to wash the car on Saturday since it was really nice. Then went over a few different options as for detailing the car. We decided ceramic coating will be best for me since I won’t really have the time to really sit and give the car a full bath as often as I would like.

He sent me a short list of things to get which he is running low on or just doesn’t have. So far I have to get the following;

(We will be doing my car and my wife’s Tucson so some items are being bought in a larger size)
- Cquartz 3.0 50ml kit which has a bottle of reload even though we will only be using it to lay the coating on the car
- 1 Liter CarPro Eraser
- 1 Liter CarPro Reset
- Gallon of P&S Bead Maker which we are going to split

I’ll add to the list when I check in with him again.





Added some tire shine when I got home and cleaned up the exhaust tips with some Never-dull stuff (might of missed a few spots but it was starting to get dark and chilly lol)











It was raining all day long yesterday while driving around the island looking for the right puppy to adopt. Didn’t find a pup but did find some nice beads all over the car lol. The stuff my friend helped me apply on the car after the wash is great (don’t remember the name) but he said P&S Bead Maker is suppose to be better so I’m pretty excited to see how that stuff works.







Today:
Went to a self carwash and pressure rinsed the car off and wiped it down. Feels and looks as if I just washed it! (No picture but you can probably guess what the car looks like at this point lol)

I got tired of running a lightning cable out of the armrest charging section and making sure it wasn’t getting crushed by the armrest. So today I intended on drilling a hole in the armrest cubby and by the shifter area.

Luckily adhd kicked in before I could even reach for the drill lol. I lifted the rubber mat in the armrest cubby and found a slot small and out of the way enough where i could snake the snake through and make its way around the shifter and up out into the cubby. I did have to drill through the rubber mat in the cubby above the shifter area but other than that I only enlarged 1 of the 4 existing holes just enough to fit the tip (giggity) through.









I also cracked the brushed trim a bit .....worst thing about it, I was finished and decided to pull it apart to make sure the cable wasn’t getting caught on anything lol



-Martin

So I dropped the car off yesterday for the DSG service but figured I would take this opportunity to bring up the few flaws I’ve been experiencing.

• Loud click/pop/crack sound when I turn the steering wheel left or right (I’m thinking strut bearing but someone suggested it could be a bad steering rack)

• Oil markings around the oil filter housing and around the engine bay including underneath between the engine and transmission area which I thought seemed to be a combination of the rear main seal and valve cover

• Yellow warning signal with a message “Error: Service vehicle. Only leave vehicle in P position”

• Water seeping into the rear door jams

• Coolant smell

• CEL which came on about 2 hrs before i dropped the car off. (Stopped at the dealer on my way to pick my son up so I can talk to the advisors since I expected them to be gone by the time I could drop the car off. The light came on the second I started the car to leave their lot which I thought was funny)

Picture while still at the dealership before leaving to pick my son up from school



Hoping the warranty gods are watching over my shoulder because I didn’t realize how big the list was until the advisor said “wow, I dunno if we’ll be able to get it done today because you got like 7 pages of stuff here”. And the only thing I could think was how much I wish I didn’t either because I just bought the car 7 weeks ago lol


-Martin

Update: Picked the car up a little while ago.

So as it turns out they had to replace the following;

- Oil fill cap
- Oil filter housing
- Selector levee micro chip
- Steering rack along with new hardware for it
- Water pump along with new hardware, seals etc.
- Thermostat
- Resealed one rear speaker
- Replaced one rear speaker

And finally got the DSG service done at 39,370 miles.

I’m going to clean off any oil I see in the engine bay and keep my eyes on it to see if it leaks again. I have a funny feeling it will.

Overall I’m happy to have my car back and the services completed regardless if some people would be upset of needing all this extra work done. The way I look at it is.....it’s a used car, it is never going to not have any faults as I actually drive the car.


-Martin

Update: a buddy of mine helped me out with the prep wing the car for ceramic coat.

First picture is Friday evening after the car got washed with strip soap, then iron remover (thankfully the car was pretty clean of that) followed up with clay bar. It Sat in the garage drying up Overnight.


Saturday morning we hit the car with Meguiars D300, Meguiars M205, CarPro Eraser, Cquartz UK 3.0 (total of 2 coats) and finished it off with some reload. Left the car in the garage overnight to allow the coating to cure.




Picked the car up earlier today and god! I’m so happy with the results. Although the paint was pretty clean of light scratches, I’m still happy we took the time to go around the entire car to get them off. We left a few behind that are going to be pretty hard to spot out but I think this would be better than sacrificing any clear coat protection.




I ordered some P&S Bead Maker which I will be using during maintenance washes along with CarPro Reset (I’m not washing it for at least a full week and probably not for a few days afterwards depending on how the weather looks)


-Martin

Little update:

Received 2 packages over the last few days.

First was the liter of CarPro Eraser which I have no use for it anymore since i was hoping to have in time to use when I was ceramic coating the car. Luckily my friend had plenty left over so I’m debating on returning or keeping it to use on my windows, otherwise I don’t think I have much use for it. I also received in the same package the liter of CarPro Reset


Second package was a Gallon and a smaller spray bottle with solution of the P&S Bead Maker along with 2 super fluffy rags which I suppose should be designated for this product. I’ll be using this stuff in replace of CarPro Reload.


The third update is just as exciting as al of the above (to me IMO) I picked up a Magnaflow Catback system when I wasted no time on installing. Unfortunately the 1-2 hour job turned into 4-5 hours because the hardware to the clamp between the test pipe and downpipe were rusted (thanks to the Northeast lol). Cut the hardware off and ran to the hardware store to acquire new nut/bolt/washer to complete the install. I still need to adjust the right hand side tail pipe as it seems t be pointing downwards a bit compared to the left side.

So far I’m really pleased with the quality and sound I was hoping to gain (deep tone) although it does have a bit more drone in the cabin than I was hoping. I’m going to ride it out and see if i get used to it otherwise I’ll look into a resonator to swap the test pipe out with.
(Top is before with stock exhaust, bottom is after with the Magnaflow setup)



-Martin

what happened to the sentra? Did you sell it to someone in BK? I swear I saw it

navindralr said:

what happened to the sentra? Did you sell it to someone in BK? I swear I saw it

Click to expand...

Sold it unfortunately. And it’s possible you did see it because the new owner is from somewhere around that area :/


-Martin

Hit 40k on my way to work this morning


-Martin