byRatify

Hey guys, I decided to go ahead and start my own build thread of what I have done to my car and the progress.

Purchased December 1st, 2012.


I got the car cheap because they advertised it as a 'Scratch and Dent Special.' One of the most recent pictures I took of the dent that I bought it with.


Removed front license plate, Looks way better without it.


Rear brake pads went bad.



Replaced the rear pads.


Two weeks later, the front brake pads went bad. Look how dirty those old brackets were!


Replaced them with ceramic pads.


Took out my paper filter because there was pink on it and very dirty.


Replaced it with the classic K&N Filter.


Wanted a better sounding exhaust, so I had a muffler shop do the mid muffler delete. Cost me $76.


[URL=http://s1331.photobucket.com/user/byratify/media/IMG_0359_zps8e343e61.jpg.html]

April 20th, 2013 - Last week I had to get two new front tires because mine had bulges in them. Decided to grab Eagle Authority's.



This is how she currently sits right now.

01Blacuras

Lookin good man! I had the same color and year.. NBP is a pain in the ass! Lol.. But i miss it.. Sorta.. Looks good so far!

byRatify

Yeah, it gets around. I have a bunch of tiny scratches, which I guess is the down side to having a black car.

byRatify

Completely forgot about my accident I got into. I was at a car meet for 1320video (If anybody has ever heard of them). People were honking there train horns on there cars and a girl wasn't paying attention and managed to hit my back bumper, her insurance paid for it, so it wasn't a big deal. In the second picture, you can't really see it but if you look at the bumper you will see a big dent. I woke up the next morning after accident and they dent literally popped itself out.

byRatify

Took my intake manifold top plate off, and low and behold, the dirt! What would be the fastest way to clean it? Throw it in the dishwasher? or just wash it down with carb cleaner?

byRatify

I took my car to the track for Friday night 'Street' Racing a couple weeks ago. Keep note that I don't have any major mods at all, just newer tires and K&N filter and Mid Muffler Delete, so my time isn't going to be the best. But here is a time slip of what I was running all night. It varied, but it was right around 10.03. Also, the track is only an 8th of a mile.



One of my races was against my buddies 2002 Nissan Maxima SE (Mods: NOS, 370z ECU, Tune).



Just a few other snapshots.





After I washed her the other night and how she currently sits as of yesterday.

mikebikelife

iTrader: (3)

Good stuff man , I love CL's and its awesome to know others still do . Needs moar lows , it'll make the car much more fun and better looking . Car handles like a dream on coils .

Happy modding !

byRatify

I know. I didn't want to lower it in the winter, considering the snow. Looking more towards summer, once they get these potholes fixed I should be good. Just trying to determine what coils to go with. But need to definitely get rid of this wheel gap.

mikebikelife

iTrader: (3)

I'm probably putting mine back to stock and my coils may be for sale, if so I'll let you know . Function forms are excellent for their price , as long as you don't wanna go super slammed, because theyre a little soft .

byRatify

Just a minor picture update, since I just got out of school and haven't had time to do any major modifications yet. I blacked out all the chrome on the car with plasti dip, my idea for this car is to black it out. Intake is coming in next weekend, so hopefully I can move onto the engine performance side of things. I am also plasti dipping the wheels this weekend, not to sure on what color, I was thinking gold?

mikebikelife

iTrader: (3)

Please don't paint stocks .

byRatify

You actually like the stock rims the way they are?

mikebikelife

iTrader: (3)

Yes ,

o0o0o0

iTrader: (1)

.

I Agree.

byRatify

I may just keep them the way they are than. Only thing Is that I see people rolling around town with gold rims on there cars, and it makes me want some. So i figured why not just plasti dip them gold, considering I'm on a tight budget.

mikebikelife

iTrader: (3)

See , I don't want to put you down but that's kinda where ricers begin . They buy all these cheap parts instead of a couple nice parts and leaves them with a car that was worse than before . I would try to save for some wheels if I was you , or maybe lower it and put some spacers on . BTW, palsti dip on wheels sucks, if hardens from the heat and almost turns to paint .

byRatify

I may just buy some BBS's than, that way I can just use the OEM wheels for winter.

mikebikelife

iTrader: (3)

That's a decent idea .

byRatify

Well I went against my word and Plasti Dipped my OEM wheels because I am a little tight on cash. To be honest, I love having Blaze Yellow wheels. It turns everybody's heads whenever I cruise around. Not a lot of people in the car scene like them, but it's my car and I like to stick out.

They are way brighter in person, but I did three coats of White plasti dip, than five coats of blaze yellow plasti dip to achieve the bright color. My rear emblems are the same color as well. But, on the bright side I am ordering my Intake next payday, and hopefully after that I will be ordering a Throttle Body Spacer to add a little more push to my car. I am doing as many engine modifications as possible with little money I have before the Ice Cream Cruise (An huge event held in the Mid West).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9298533934/http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9298533934/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/94975319@N07/, on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9298446758/http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9298446758/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/94975319@N07/, on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9132195840/http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9132195840/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/94975319@N07/, on Flickr

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Not a fan of the yellow, but if you like it, that's cool

byRatify

A very sad thing happened today folks. I believe my transmission may have been shot. I was driving to work this morning and my car wouldn't go out of third gear, it kept getting higher rpms until it finally shifted into 4th gear. The transition between the two had a very hard thump. I got the Transmission fluid changed at my work. Tried driving the car home, but the rpms kept going up in pretty much all the gears. My Check Engine light came on, but my D5 light hasn't blinked yet. Oh and my VSA light comes on at times. I tried driving it home, but when I put my car into drive or Reverse, my car is essentially driving in neutral. Had it towed to Jensen Tire so they can check the issue.

byRatify

Had a couple races in my slow Honda last night. Wasn't much, but I raced a 5th Generation Honda Prelude after the cloverleaf. We did 50-55mph roll ended up taking him all three tries by a half a car to a car length all times. Although I didn't go over 120, but he was very slowly catching up. He came over and talked to me when we got to Ricks and I asked him what he was running because when the VTEC on his car kicked in, you could hear it roar loud through his exhaust. lol. He told me that his Prelude has a H22 engine Swap, Intake, Full Exhaust and a tuned ECU. He asked me what I was running, I told him it's all stock and he said 'it's pretty fast for stock.' Hopefully next week I can run against him when there is less cops out and see what we both can do over 100. The other race I had was against my buddies White 350z w/ Injen Intake and Dual Greddy Exhaust. I'm not even going to explain who won because you can already conclude those outcomes. We did several races, a couple of them we were neck and neck until about 2nd gear, so nothing to brag about lol. But those were just some races from the past few nights to update my 'Build thread.'

I wanted to get an Intake before the Ice Cream Cruise, but my transmission came first, since that happened, may just start saving small amounts of money to purchase a Infiniti G35 Coupe.

byRatify

Got a semi good amount of things done on Saturday and Sunday. I always heard about people with Acura TL's and CL's taking out there Intake Resonator's because it holds back 1 hp or so (lol) and it sounds nice when VTEC kicks in. I wish I would have taken progress pictures during my time of removing it, but I completely spaced it off and only got a picture of the actual resonator itself. The process was pretty easy, took a little bit longer than usual because it was my first time actually taking off my front bumper so I had to find all the push pins, screws and bolts. Took only about 30 minutes or so because some of the push pins wouldn't come out, so I used WD40 to get them out. After I took the resonator out, the bumper took only a couple minutes to put back on. I went for a drive after I put the bumper back on and you can hear the engine really good at WOT (Wide Open Throttle). I figured I would have to take off the resonator when I get a CAI, so I decided to just take it out now.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9403356173/http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9403356173/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/94975319@N07/, on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9406114290/http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9406114290/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/94975319@N07/, on Flickr

On Sunday, I decided to clear the haze off my headlights. The haze wasn't an issue, but I had nothing else to do and I wanted to test different things out. I heard about using toothpaste, water and a microfiber towel to clear the haze off headlights and wanted to put it to the test. Surprisingly, it actually cleared most of the haze up. All I did was put water on my headlights, dry it, put toothpaste on my headlight and rubbed it in to make sure I polished the whole headlights, I let it sit for 5 minutes or so and washed the toothpaste off with a wet towel, and washed the headlight off after all the toothpaste was removed. It got rid of most of the haze, not all of it. But I was still amazed at what something most people use daily can be used to clear hazing.

The headlight on the left is what the right one looked like before I cleared it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9403256393/http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9403256393/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/94975319@N07/, on Flickr

This is essentially what your headlight looks like when you have the toothpaste on it. The spot on the left hand side looks like there isn't much on it, but thats because I didn't wet my towel.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9403273009/http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9403273009/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/94975319@N07/, on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9406041388/http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9406041388/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/94975319@N07/, on Flickr

Annnndd...The before and after.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9403239191/http://www.flickr.com/photos/94975319@N07/9403239191/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/94975319@N07/, on Flickr

byRatify

Since college started back up, I don't have as much funds to play with until Winter/Tax return time. This is the latest thing I did. Bought some Yellow Tint film off ebay and tinted my road lamps. Makes the appearance look a little better IMO.

my user name

fog lights looken good im not a fan of the painted rims..you should look into getting black housings for the headlights

louzilla

I'm going to try the toothpaste DIY. Thanks!