so I was digging through a not near but relatively local junkyard to pull a brake caliper(don't ask, long story), which I ended up not buying, since all the Max there had drums. I bought my calipers rebuilt though, works great.

Anyway, while I was there, there were like 4 max sitting there, three had digital dash and all four had digital temp control, all four also had powered leather seats. The one thing that caught my eyes is the one with the digidash, digi climatecontrol, powered leather seats and and heated mirrors, and the elusive Sonar Suspension II system, now my question is, are these rare? especially with the digidash, digi climate control, and sonar suspension. What does it actually do? and how is the ride compared to regular suspension? Also, the weird thing about this car is that it had 89-91's trim model rims, and not the exploded sun design so common with the VEs.

on a side note, I also found a second gen max with 278k on it!!! It also had digi-dash (kinda, seems like its LED powered) and other digi goodies,powered leather seats with BBS rims made specifically for the car, and man, those rims looked nice, too bad its only 4 nuts instead of 5. what model trim would those cars be? And

from looking at the seat bolting pattern and judging from my eye-scale, I think a second gen seat is a direct bolt in to the 3rd gen right?

Any other gen's seat will directly bold into the 3rd gen? (my seat's cushion are disintergrating, yellow powder flying everywhere)

Thanks for any info.

U asked for any...

Generally comparing things with bluebird (2gen eu vari able) under and inside: Seats identical, I have rear bluebird shocks (means: 50% off price) with a ˝ inch shim... and many other functional parts seem identical.'

Keep wondering ? what makes 3g maxima's superb handling if components are 'equal', maxima's driveability totally never been designed near japan...

Just a guess, but maybe some of the Maximas you saw there were "floaters"
Read more...
http://home.earthlink.net/~maxfaq/history.htm#Floater

sonar was an option. the shocks are very very expensive to replace. most just switch to regular shocks. basically there's a device that senses the conditon of the road and actuators would adjust the struts to compensate for the road conditions. there's also a switch to go from sporty ride to comfort ride. they are not rare...but 3rd gens in general are a dying breed.

I have a 3 way switch on mine near the shifter that says "Power, (default), and comfort" from the manual, it looked like this merely adjusted shift points for acceleration and mileage - is this correct, or does it have the mentioned "sonar suspension"

Sonar has 2 switches, 1 for the suspension 1 for the trans.
unless there was a manual trans model equipped with the sonar suspension, but I'm under the impression that it was only available on the GXE

that's the tranny switch.

the switches for the sonar is where the coin grooves are...NEXT to the tranny switch.

Thanks for all of your replies, it helped alot.

One more question, do the digital dashes uses the same kind of sensor for engine speed, actual travelling speed, and fuel level ? what I'm really trying to ask is that, say, if you have a mechanical speedometer, and were to swap the entire thing out, and put in an entire set of digi dash, would it work? or do you need to basically hack up everything and reconnect everything.

In case anyone is interested, the junkyard that I mentioned above is located in Glassboro, New Jersey off of exit 13,
Parts the seems to be good from those cars are:

-Entire digidash which is fully intact, including the trim pieces and since it was an old rich folk's town, the cars there are babied.

-black powered leatherseats, front and back and have 3 sets available

-front light assembly, rear light assembly

-digiclimate control

-clocks, switches, Computers are fully intact

-engine bays are CLEAN, so I would think the engine and many parts are still fully functional.

IIRC the Sonar switch is also a thin long switch (compared to the transmission switch)that runs perpendicular to the Transmission Power/Comfort switch. The modes are Sport 'S' -> 'auto' -> Comfort 'C'.

I own one of them, digital dash, digital climate control, power seats (leather), VG engine, auto tranny with p/c selector, heated mirrors, Bose, sunroof, and no sonar suspension (but I saw one that had it like 2 months ago). Here in Mexico all the maxima’s I have seen had the digital dash. By the way you can select between mph and kph on the digital dash.