What Did You Do With Your Kizashi Today?

[joshuac2651]

Washed the kizashi before heading to Philly for the weekend. I think I'll try that clay next time (if I find several hours). Saw a nice EVO on the turnpike. The girl stayed on my tail for about an hour.

[KuroNekko]

Washed the kizashi before heading to Philly for the weekend. I think I'll try that clay next time (if I find several hours). Saw a nice EVO on the turnpike. The girl stayed on my tail for about an hour.

Wow, your car really looks like my twin.
The clay bar process doesn't take long. It's actually faster than waxing. What took more time was the compound and polish process, especially since I did it by hand.
If your finish isn't too bad with scratches and swirls, you can just clay and wax and save a lot of time.

[SamirD]

Looks like our twin too, except ours is a 2011.

Finally saw the Kizashi after almost a month. Found three pretty decent scratches/dents on the front and rear bumpers. And also a cut in the passenger side leather.

My wife didn't recall where the scratches came from, and claimed to not hear anything from hitting something. But the rear scratch goes all the way from the rear tire to the exhaust finisher, and the front scrapes are worse than anything I recalled were previously on the car. I know we hit some pretty hard scrapes on the front the day I left, so maybe the really bad one on the front (you can see it when looking at the car from the front) was from that.

I was pretty furious about the whole thing, but since the car has done its job about keeping her safe, at least the main goal is accomplished. I just wish she would have taken better care of the car that took care of her.

Since the front bumper can be removed pretty easily, getting that fixed shouldn't be too difficult. The rear will be more of a challenge. Anyone have a body shop manual for the car? (I haven't checked the service manual as of yet.) There's a part of me that really just wants to buy some unpainted bumper covers now and just put them on--and then I keep the good ones for me.

Went to Ray Chevrolet and picked up the factory sport 18s with the Potenza tires. And then I dropped one of the wheels face down on our super-rough parking garage surface, damaging the surface worse than it originally was when I took it in for warranty repair. This was the same day I discovered the scratches--very, very bad day.

I went ahead and got three oil filters and 15 quarts of oil that would have been part of the free oil changes. My work has me away for long periods of time and I didn't want to lose out on the free oil changes since the coupons had an expiry date. I haven't put the wheels on the car yet, but plan to once the temps stay above 40 permanently. It also depends on how long I can stay in MKE before leaving again. My wife mentioned that right before I came, it snowed 1/2in and it took everyone off guard because everyone had swapped tires. There was a 50 car pileup on the highway and people were all over the place--but not our sure-footed Kizashi. Now that it's warm, the snow tires handle like mush on the highway and actually slip before the abs kicks in under hard braking maneuvers--an interesting type of mechanical anti-lock where you can feel the 'feathers' of the tread grip and slip. I think I'm going to change to 215/65/16s next year to increase the height--I think we're even lower than the stock 18s on the 205s.

[bootymac]

Yikes! I see you're suffering from that Kizashi luck as well. Our cars are cursed...

I haven't done much with the Kizashi lately but I stocked up on Mobil 1 oil filters! They were only $8 each on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004D5L9N ... 15&simLd=1

[KuroNekko]

Looks like our twin too, except ours is a 2011.

Finally saw the Kizashi after almost a month. Found three pretty decent scratches/dents on the front and rear bumpers. And also a cut in the passenger side leather.

My wife didn't recall where the scratches came from, and claimed to not hear anything from hitting something. But the rear scratch goes all the way from the rear tire to the exhaust finisher, and the front scrapes are worse than anything I recalled were previously on the car. I know we hit some pretty hard scrapes on the front the day I left, so maybe the really bad one on the front (you can see it when looking at the car from the front) was from that.

I was pretty furious about the whole thing, but since the car has done its job about keeping her safe, at least the main goal is accomplished. I just wish she would have taken better care of the car that took care of her.

Since the front bumper can be removed pretty easily, getting that fixed shouldn't be too difficult. The rear will be more of a challenge. Anyone have a body shop manual for the car? (I haven't checked the service manual as of yet.) There's a part of me that really just wants to buy some unpainted bumper covers now and just put them on--and then I keep the good ones for me.

Went to Ray Chevrolet and picked up the factory sport 18s with the Potenza tires. And then I dropped one of the wheels face down on our super-rough parking garage surface, damaging the surface worse than it originally was when I took it in for warranty repair. This was the same day I discovered the scratches--very, very bad day.

I went ahead and got three oil filters and 15 quarts of oil that would have been part of the free oil changes. My work has me away for long periods of time and I didn't want to lose out on the free oil changes since the coupons had an expiry date. I haven't put the wheels on the car yet, but plan to once the temps stay above 40 permanently. It also depends on how long I can stay in MKE before leaving again. My wife mentioned that right before I came, it snowed 1/2in and it took everyone off guard because everyone had swapped tires. There was a 50 car pileup on the highway and people were all over the place--but not our sure-footed Kizashi. Now that it's warm, the snow tires handle like mush on the highway and actually slip before the abs kicks in under hard braking maneuvers--an interesting type of mechanical anti-lock where you can feel the 'feathers' of the tread grip and slip. I think I'm going to change to 215/65/16s next year to increase the height--I think we're even lower than the stock 18s on the 205s.

It could be other people hitting the Kizashi while it's parked. Nearly all of the cosmetic damage to my car came from other people, especially while my car was parked in public places like parking lots or curb-side parking. Everything from scraped bumpers, nicks, and door dings came from others.
However, that tear in the passenger seat... yeah... can't blame a stranger for that.

[glorybound4]

My rear drivers side rotor warped and caused uneven pad wear. It is making an a low pitched grinding noise. My friend has a garage and was able to easily order the rotor from Napa 40.00 USD. The dealer wanted 153.00 USD to fix it. I'll do it myself and post the results.

[joshuac2651]

Wow, your car really looks like my twin.
The clay bar process doesn't take long. It's actually faster than waxing. What took more time was the compound and polish process, especially since I did it by hand.
If your finish isn't too bad with scratches and swirls, you can just clay and wax and save a lot of time.

Yeah I've been reading up on the clay. I'll try it out next time. I'm also looking into HID's. I saw you uploaded a DIY how to that i'll make use of. Also, DRL's will be replaced with LED's once I find time and I definitely want to do it the way the guy who baked his headlight housing; best way I've seen thus far.

[KuroNekko]

Wow, your car really looks like my twin.
The clay bar process doesn't take long. It's actually faster than waxing. What took more time was the compound and polish process, especially since I did it by hand.
If your finish isn't too bad with scratches and swirls, you can just clay and wax and save a lot of time.

Yeah I've been reading up on the clay. I'll try it out next time. I'm also looking into HID's. I saw you uploaded a DIY how to that i'll make use of. Also, DRL's will be replaced with LED's once I find time and I definitely want to do it the way the guy who baked his headlight housing; best way I've seen thus far.

You are talking about adding a LED strip inside the headlight, correct? The factory DRLs are the halogen high beams on a very low wattage so unless you disable that, you'll still have the dim yellow glow from the high beam H7 bulbs in additional to your added LED light strip inside the headlight.

My approach was different in that I got a H7 bulb LED conversion kit to replace the halogen high beam H7 bulb altogether. I don't have an additional DRL LED light strip.

[joshuac2651]

There's another guy that used led's as daytime running lights. He unhooked the factory DRL's also cutting off the high beams and wired the led's Audi style. And I want to make the low beams the same glow as the led's. He went in-depth with this mod and It seemed to turn out great. If I don't do it that way I'll use the conversion kit, but won't have the led strip.

[Woodie]

My rear drivers side rotor warped and caused uneven pad wear. It is making an a low pitched grinding noise. My friend has a garage and was able to easily order the rotor from Napa 40.00 USD. The dealer wanted 153.00 USD to fix it. I'll do it myself and post the results.

That sounds backward to me, requiring some majik to warp the rotor first. I'll bet one of the caliper sliders hung up, causing the uneven wear and the rotor to warp. Take the sliders apart and give them a good look, at least cleaning and greasing them, or else you'll be putting on another rotor in a month or two.