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PAT 4 > Issue 2: Tint, Emblems, & Shorter Antenna
Written By: David Pitlyuk
In this issue, we'll be doing a couple smaller, simple modifications that help out with the look of the car. We're going to throw on 15% SolarGard tint, reduce the height of the antenna by replacing it with that from an S2000, and change the front Nissan emblem as well as the rear 350Z emblem.
We'll start off with the tint. The color scheme we want to do with this car is the orange (aka LeMans Sunset) with carbon fiber/dark grey/black. That combination looks really good on the car. Tinting the windows will help out a ton with that look! In a later issue we'll be tinting out the rear lights to help match everything up. For tinting services, we chose the guys over at Detail Oriented in Elkridge, MD. They did such a great job with our 03' Altima project, so we weren't hesitant to use their services again. Take a look at how it turned out:
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| Click pictures to enlarge | |
Next up is changing the antenna to something shorter. If you didn't already know, this is probably the easiest modification to do. Everytime I looked in the side mirror, I would see that super long antenna, and it really bothered me. Luckily, the antenna from a Honda S2000, fits perfectly, is much shorter, and doesn't seem to give any worse reception! There are also other options that you can find through eBay or various vendors.
To change the antenna, simply unscrew until it comes off, and screw the new one on. It's as simple as that, and take a look at the difference:
Much better, huh?
Last but not least for this issue, we'll be replacing the 350Z emblem on the rear with a FairladyZ emblem, and replacing the Nissan emblem on the front with a Z emblem. We're still unsure of what we want to do with the Nissan emblem on the rear of the car, so we'll leave that for a later issue.
Since the car is brand new, the adhesive on the emblems is still really soft, and didn't require any heating to get it softer. For the 350Z emblem, we simply took a piece of floss and worked it on the back until it came off.
The excess adhesive came right off by rubbing with our fingers.
You may need to get a hairdryer and just blow it on the sides of the letters to soften up the adhesive, and the floss to get them off. If the excess adhesive is not coming off just by rubbing, use something like GooOff or rubbing compound, and it should take it right off with a little bit of work.
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| Click pictures to enlarge | |
For the front Nissan emblem, it required a little more work to take off. What we did was take the foam that came with the FairladyZ emblem, used a small flat-head, and pried it off. It requires a bit of playing around, but it should eventually give.
The foam keeps us from damaging the paint...but you can use anything like a paper towel folded up for example.
Both the new emblems just stick right on with adhesive.
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| Click pictures to enlarge | |
That's it for this issue! In our next one we'll be installing the Evo-R front concept LED's, so look forward to that!
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