2004 Infiniti G35 Coupe 6MT

Bala Sambandam

Sway Bar

I purchased the Hotchkis sway bar from Tirerack for $299. This is the revised bar with welded collars to keep the bars from sliding around. It appeared to be the stiffest bar available with front settings of +22%, +48%, +82% and +129% over stock. I only installed the front sway bar to stay FS legal. The rear sway bar has settings of +80%, +125% and +185%.

ESP Race Wheels and Tires

The wheels are 5zigen FN01R-C's (17x10/+25) that I purchased from Edge Racing for $748/set new. The wheels are listed as weighing 18 lbs on their website but according to my bathroom scale and the 5zigen website are 21 lbs. The tires are Kumho V710's (275/40R17) that I bought from TireRack for $956/set. The pictures from within the wheel well show the clearance between the front suspension upright and inside of the wheel and tire. I appear to have about 7-8 mm of clearance. There seems to be ample room between the corners of the tire and the wheel well to support an even wider wheel/tire combo up front like say 315's on an 11" wheel provided that you achieve the same backspacing. The wheels clear the Brembo calipers with room to spare. The tire stacks show just how wide the 275 Kumho is. On the left is a stack of 275/35R18 Hoosiers. On the right are 275/40R17 Kumhos.

Click on a thumbnail above to see the larger image.

Street Wheels and Tires

The wheels are Volk Racing SF-Challenge's (19x9.5/+28 f and 19x10.5/+23 r) that I purchased new from F1 Motorsports for $2900/set shipped. Both the 19x9.5 and 19x10.5 appear to weigh about 27.5 lbs each according to my bathroom scale. The tires are Bridgestone Potenza RE050A's (245/35R19 f and 275/35R19 r) that I bought from Tire Rack for $874/set. I've been surprised at how well these tires grip. They toss gravel around the wheel well like a race tire. As for the ride, going from 18" to 19" wheels has made it a little harsher, but the tires are actually quieter than the OEM Michelin Pilot's (225/45R18 f and 245/45R18 r). I'm tempted to take it out to an autocross sometime and see how well they do.

FS Race Wheels and Tires

The wheels are Enkei RPO2's (18x8/+35) that I purchased from Edge Racing for $500/set new. The wheels are listed as weighing 18.8 lbs on their website but according to my bathroom scale are 19.5 lbs. The stock 18x8/+30 wheels are 24.5 lbs according to the same scale. The tires are Hoosier A6's (275/35R18) that I picked up used for $600/set. The first set of photos are of my car with the stock wheels and OEM Michelin Pilot's (225/45R18 f and 245/45R18 r). The second set is of the race tires and wheels. After mounting and driving around a bit on the Enkei/Hoosiers I noticed that there was only 2 mm of clearance between the wheel spokes and front caliper and a light rub on the front suspension upright. I subsequently purchased studless hubcentric 5mm aluminum spacers for the front wheels. I am able to achieve 6+ turns on the stud if I torque the nuts down 90 ft-lbs.

Harness

This is the 4 point snap-in Corbeau race harness. I chose a snap-in harness so that I could conveniently run around on the street without the harness installed and in the way. It takes me only a few minutes to install and remove the harness. The shoulder straps are connected to one of the factory rear lap belt straps with a steel link. The left side strap is connected to the factory front shoulder belt bracket near the floor pan with a steel link. The right side strap is connected to a factory loop under the seat.

OBDII

To get at the OBDII data I use the Multiplex Engineering T16-014. This interface is about $145 and comes with hardware support for the following OBDII protocols: J1850 VPW, J1850 PWM, ISO 9141-2, ISO 14230 (also known as Keyword Protocol 2000 or KWP), ISO15765 (also known as CAN), and a special ISO pass-through mode that is useful for VW diagnostics (VW Intelligent Pass-through Mode). It doesn't however come with software. For this I have 2 options: OBDGauge and a Perl script that I wrote.

OBDGauge is free and allows me to connect to the car with my Treo 600 PDA phone (i.e. no laptop needed) via a serial HotSync cable to the T16-014; however, it only supports J1850 VPW, J1850 PWM, ISO 9141-2 and ISO 14230. Nevertheless, this setup allows me to view the standard OBDII parameters for the G35, which uses ISO 9141-2, in real time or to log parameters for analysis later. It also allows me to clear trouble codes if needed. Most recently I've been using this stuff to calculate SAE corrected wheel horsepower and torque curves.

I wrote a Perl script to communicate with the T16 mainly as a learning exercise and secondly as a demonstration for others wanting to write software for the T16. It runs on my laptop and allows me to log sensor data to a CSV file.

You can download the HP spreadsheet, T16 Perl script and some other associated scripts here.

Magnetics

Getting tired of shoe polish and masking tape, an S2000 buddy and I decided to look into magnetics. From what I could find magnetic letters and numbers for both cars would have set us back around $62, so instead I ordered 5 12" x 24" x 0.30" magnetic sheets from http://www.custom-magnets.com/Blank_Car_Door_Magnets.htm for $32 with shipping. I then printed patterns for tracing the letters out using MS Word with italicized and bolded Arial 810 pt font for the numbers and italicized and bolded Arial 610 pt font for the letters. This made for numbers a little over 8" high and letters a little over 6" high--all SCCA legal. Then it was just a matter of figuring out the layout and tracing and cutting. Using just 4 sheets my wife and I made enough numbers and letters for me and my buddy to combine and permute across 4 numbers and run in SCCA classes BS, STX and BSP for me and AS and BSP for my buddy. Here's one layout for someone wanting to run BS and STX with 4 numbers using just 2 sheets:

Brake Pedal

The factory brake pedal is pretty small--about 2" wide. In the picture below the factory brake pedal is the same size as the clutch pedal. I picked up a set of pedal covers from Autozone. I found it too crowded with all the covers installed, so I only used the brake pedal. I later spray painted it with some non-skid spray paint and installed some nuts under the mounting screws to raise them a bit so that they really dig into my shoe. Now I can confidently grab the brake by the edge of the pedal and heel-toe with the balls of my feet.

Camera Mount

My first set of videos were made by securing a tripod to the back seat using the seat belts and 2 bungee cords. It was very stable due to the dampening effects of the rear seat cushion, but the setup placed the camera too far back and also temporarily stretched the leather a bit--something I worried might become permanent after repeated use. So, I put together a head rest mount using 1 1/2 ft section of angle iron, 2 u-bolts, a tripod, foam for dampening and some duct tape to soften sharp edges and protect the head rest posts.