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Project Nissan 200SX – Slimming down and cleaning up…
By Wes Dumalski
We realize this installment's title sounds more like we are getting ready to hit the dating scene and quite frankly that is what all of the odd's and end's we have been cleaning up has felt like… Only our crunches were done tweaking under the dash and the shaving of weight was done via mail order rather than a strict diet. That said this article is a few years in the making cleaning up loose ends here and there during the off season or down time.
One of the first things we wanted to address was prepping the car for track duty. Our gauges sorely needed a new home and the gaping holes left in the dash from previous weight reduction needed filling. Syndicate Kustoms was a Nissan specific company that produced some of the finest quality carbon fiber and fiberglass parts available anywhere. What we wanted them to do was create Carbon Fiber delete panels for the radio/HVAC control area, the passenger side airbag, as well as the switch panel that houses the dimmer and other switches. SK met our challenge of creating these pieces and a week later they were at our doorstep. When we received the panels we simply drilled holes for the HVAC control knobs, popped them off, put the CF panel on, and the knobs hold it in place. The radio finish piece still fits perfectly. To install the airbag delete panel we constructed a riser to make it flush with the rest of the dash. We then used button head hex bolts to bolt it through the existing dash.
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| Bolted down so as not to become a guillotine. |
While we were working on cleaning things up we took the time to mount the gauges in place of the center vents. Frankly we were sick of the pillar pod being a big blind spot for general driving and autocross events. We figured the gauge would be better viewed in the center of the car and we were right. The gauges are easier to monitor and we no longer have that huge blind spot we had with the A-Pillar. We also fabbed up a quick bracket to hold the Techtom MDM100 in front of our new SK carbon fiber radio delete panel. This provided a nice solid mounting position and still allowed us to remove or change the settings on the MDM100 with ease. We also moved our Greddy Profec B boost controller down the the center console. It previously was located where we put our kill switch so we had to find a new home for it. Because we frequently switch between boost settings and our boost controller was now slightly out of reach when harnessed in, we added the Greddy remote switch to our steering wheel. This allows us to toggle between high and low boost settings at the touch of a button. Now all of the aftermarket gauges and controllers are driver oriented and require minimal effort to monitor or control, this is a must for being able to focus on track!
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| All business with the gauges in plain sight in sano fashion! |
