Tyler's 03 Nissan Maxima

In the summer of 2010 i bid farewell to the car that started my modding years. My parents bought the 1995 nissan maxima brand new in late 95 and had the car until inspections after an accident i had deemed the car too pricey to repair. the damages caused by the accident were minor, but so many other things needed replacing (negligence from my parents before i had the car) that it was not worth bringing it back to life.












So i picked out a car to replace it. Couldnt afford to have it myself as im paying my way through university, so my parents helped fund for a 2003 Nissan Maxima SE. Bought from the original owner, it had 130,000km (now 160,000) and was in great mechanical and cosmetic shape (few nicks on the side skirts and bumper, but you had to know of them to see them). I swapped as many aftermarket parts from the old maxima into the new one as i could, added a few things here and there, and this is how she sits now.

Mods are few and far between with money being tight, but ive still tried to make her my own.

Exterior:
15mm rear spacers
LED corner lights, plate lights and parking lights
6000k HID headlights
6000k HID fogs with rewire

Interior:

Blue LED Dome, door and trunk lights
White LED map and visor lights
Deathmat soundproofing all over

Audio/ICE
Viper two way alarm with remote starter
Pioneer DVD deck w/ usb/aux in
Factory Bose speakers and tweeters (Factory bose subwoofer removed)
1600W Hifonics Brutus Amp
2x12" Kicker CompVR Subwoofers in purpose-built box

Performance:
Ghetto Block-off Plate (removed valve)
Timing advance
Knight-yzz custom built SRI

Some other little things include:
subwoofer control mounted in the driver cockpit
usb input integrated into centre console (where the coin holder once was)

Ran the quarter mile 15.6 @ 97mph with the car in street mode. spare tire in trunk, subwoofers in trunk, back seats in and all.

Dyno read 210whp with the a/c on (by accident ), and 220 ft.lb of torque. was a scorching 30 C out that day too.

Officially dubbed her Veronika a few months back Lol. Love this car to death, and will keep it as long as i can.

Nice car, nice pictures and great guy.

This post has been long over due.

havent updated this in a while. Not too much to report, just me being lazy not posting small changes .

so the little things out of the way first, i added blue puddle lights to all 4 doors, only come on when the doors are open. nice little feature so i dont step in puddles at night

and the biggie, LOWERED

from:


to:


got some used k-sport coilovers and have gone down about 3.5 inches in the front and 3 inches in the back. frankly, the coilovers i bought are pretty shite, siezed up dampeners and front camber bolts. For now they do the job, the cars stance looks great (IMO) and thats all i wanted. When i save up more money, i'll be buying a brand new set to replace these. Till then, i am still giddy everytime i see the car

now that thats all updated, some future plans!

i'll be back in mississauga with the car through the winter, as my daily driver. I'll be using the weekend to get stuff done. All small things to make the car better in my eyes, while not having to take it off the road for too long.

as you'll see by the list, im not big on performace, very visual myself. so its a lot of maintenance and cosmetics.

fix evap leak
replace/fix sunroof rubber seal, torn carpet, and torn seat
fix headlight housing condensation (and paint housing)
Repaint summer rims
spray beige interior trim black
tint windows if i have enough spare change

This weekend i'll be putting the car into winter mode (sad face). Got a rustproofing appointment set up, and have the winter steelies ready with the rubber floor mats. Gonna make some coilover sleeves to protect the set-up through the winter as well. I know its shameful, but will probably pick up some CT caps to cover the even shamefuller steelies Lol.

Then, get the garage cleared to create a decent workspace!

One clean Max, looks waaaaayyy better lowered!

so just spent the weekend tearing out the interior trim..
all the beige pieces came out: rear reck, a b and c pillars, "oh shit" handles, sun visors, map and dome lights and headliner. couldnt get out the sunroof cover, so thatll be left alone.
all the parts above got sprayed black. im gonna be keeping my interior as black n blue as possible. there still is a tiny bit of beige, but only on parts i couldnt paint.
i finished painting only at about 7:30 tonight, so no time to get the pieces back in. i'll be driving with only seats, a dashboard and stereo for the next few days or so Lol. ive already got some looks from people who've seen the state of my interior

not a pro job considering i did it in my garage with a spray can, but not bad if i do say so myself.pics to come once the pieces are in.

Do Work!

^I don't trust myself to do that... I'm tryna find a shop that car re-do it for me - all black errthing (inside)

this was the second time i took my interior apart (first for sound proofing) so second time around didnt take too long to do. my first time doing legit paint work, but i found as long as you take your time and dont worry about covering the whole thing the first time over, your fine. as many coats as needed to get even and full coverage.

one word of warning i would give to anyone trying this though: i bought glossy black cause i didnt think a flat interior would look good with vinyl seats and dash. the glossy black though, turned out to be very glossy on the plastic part (carpet material is fantastic though).. possibly too glossy for interior. i'll see how it is installed, but im kinda hoping it fades down to a slight shine.

also made a fun discovery the other day while retrieving a socket that fell under my car..

since my first day of work last friday i had been getting poor gas mileage. while under the car i found that the wired to my O2 sensor were cut clean in half. turns out when i parked on my construction site (drove for the first day of work, usually take the train), i bottomed out on what i thought was snow, but was actually a steel 10" pipe covered in snow...

gonna see if simply soldering the two ends back together does the trick, and hopefully nothing else got damaged :S

This makes me miss my 98 Max SE, good thing my girl still has her 95 max

twista wrote:This makes me miss my 98 Max SE, good thing my girl still has her 95 max

^this^ makes me miss my 95 max

so thankfully, it wasnt an O2 sensor wire i thought i cut through. was a ground that got torn out of one of its mounting points. screwed it back into place, and good to go!

Got my interior reinstalled and i think i turned out really well! It does look like it would come from the factory like that, but thats why i like it. looks oem, but is unique. Couldnt find any before pictures.. but basically, everything above the bottom of the windows was beige. Headliner, pillars, light covers, sunvisors, rear deck and grab handles. Now all black













i want to do the centre stack in gunmetal grey to match some oem interior pieces and what i plan to do to the rims, headlights and engine cover

now to get the smell of paint out the car LOL

proper,

DEATH TO BEIGE STUFF INSIDE CARS

Very nice! Good work!

Looks great bro

Nice, did you do that yourself?
I've been wanting to black out my ugly grey upper interior for a long time now.

Juice wrote:Nice, did you do that yourself?
I've been wanting to black out my ugly grey upper interior for a long time now.

ya did it myself in the garage. 1.5 days to tear out and lay the coats, and a couple hours to reinstall

Hey Tyler what product did you use to black out the headliner and all that

its called Duplicolor Fabric and Vinyl Paint. $9.99/can regular price at Canadian Tire.
Comes in gloss black, matte black, burgundy, dark blue, and slate grey.

Once it was all dried, the gloss black matched the vinyl on the dash and doors very well.

maxima_tyler wrote:its called Duplicolor Fabric and Vinyl Paint. $9.99/can regular price at Canadian Tire.
Comes in gloss black, matte black, burgundy, dark blue, and slate grey.

Once it was all dried, the gloss black matched the vinyl on the dash and doors very well.

i wonder what the matte looks like, probably looks like... cloth?

very tempted to try this out

I think i'm gonna do this too, but I gotta see yours in person first to see how it turned out

By the way, does the interior seem smaller now with black?

twista wrote:I think i'm gonna do this too, but I gotta see yours in person first to see how it turned out
By the way, does the interior seem smaller now with black?

i wouldnt say it feels smaller than before, like the cabin is "closing in on you", but you definitely feel more cocooned, like your in a cockpit. I like the feel of it. you can definitely take a look at the next meet.

zero wrote: i wonder what the matte looks like, probably looks like... cloth?
very tempted to try this out

im betting it will look similar to plastidip, but a smoother coat and wont look as thick. The best way to explain it is that my interior trim which is plastic is textured to look like vinyl. When the duplicolor dried it kept the textured look, which i wanted. The plastidip would coat over it all and turn it plain cause its thicker.

havent updated this in a while! so heres a few pics of some subtle changes that have been made:





I've added 23% charcoal gray tint all round.

I painted the stock rims a colour called Metallic Pewter Gray, a colour off the Honda NSX. it took about way too long for me to do this Lol. I didnt want to spend much on mods this winter, so i decided to take my time with these, and hand sanded them down as opposed to using an electric sander, so instead of taking me a week to do, these took me a month..... but i think they turned out alright.

I also took apart the headlights and painted the housing with the same colour as the rims. they are a little bit darker than the body colour, which i like.

What i didnt picture was also painting the engine cover with the same gray, and black. also did the centre console in the same gray. Also got some new tails with LED bulbs in part trade for some work i did on someone else's rims. i'll try and get pictures of these when im home for the may long weekend.

Overall, im pretty happy with the way the car looks now. the only thing i want to do is freshen up the paint on the body. even though there isnt any rust, its starting to show its age, but i think it still looks good enough to show off a little.