My Budget 99 SE Build
 

History: Hey guys so about a month ago I sold my 1997 5 speed SE which was fully loaded. That was my first car, and I had it for about a year but 17 NYC years were not easy on her. There was rust everywhere.

Don't worry I swapped that door ASAP. No real mods aside from a magnaflow muffler, Illuminas& Eibach's, & LEDS everywhere. Bought her with 182k and sold her with 184k

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I picked this fully loaded 5speed 99 up from Brentwood, Long Island one weekend. This car has 292,300 on the body and about 120,000 on the engine.

The owner, took care of this car and had a Valve colver leak at 260k which is when he swaped in a vq30 with 90k on it.

Here are some shots of when I picked it up. Excuse the altezzas, lol

Mods the Previous Owner Had-
1)Altezzas yo for teh mad HP gainz
2)FSTB and RSTB
3)Progress Sway Bar
4)3 inch muffler. Surprisingly not ricey at all
5)Gay A$$ stick on wood trim that my last 4th gen had
6)Clear Bumper Lights.
7)Bad Spoiler delete -.-

My plans for this car are ( in order from top priority )
1)Loose the mad JDM tyte Altezzas. Dont feel to great about losing the extra 75 whp though
2) Fix my rad support its gone & now teh cross member is hanging, Swap the driver door, and paint the fender and hood
3)Paint and install replacement OEM spoiler
4) Retrofit the r34's I have with Morimoto H1's.
5)DROP THIS MOFO
6)Rip of the wood grain, and plastidip the new panels or wrap them in CF
7)Full Stillen Kit (eventually)
8)Y-pipe
9)????????????? who knows
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First Things first, get rid of those Altezzas. I was dead set on doing the DIY red clear tail mod.

Im still in highschool and my dad was never really working on cars himself. So my tool set is relatively small and Im piecing it together slowly.

I went and bought the cheap $10 dremel from harbor freight to cut the acrylic sheet but that dremel was Sh*t. Bought a black and decker from Target and it was so much better at 3x the price.

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Here I have the tails open and open putting them back together I warped the inner driver side one.-.- My dremel job was no good either so I had to basically redo everything after finding a replacement inner tail

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Came out decent IMO but I will have to redo the inner tail once I find an even better replacement inner tail since this one is cracking. Way better then the before though.

Shout outs to SchmellyFart for all the assistance in attempting this mod!

So, when I bought her, she had some paint issues on the hood, and the passenger fender. The clear coat is fading away and I honestly could not be bothered with painting. That defeats the whole budget build thing.
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So, I hit up IslandMax and by luck he had a hood leftover in the same color. Drove out to him and he hooked me up. It looks so much better now.

*reserved for an after pic*

Here are some shots of the car while I was there


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If you can't already tell, the previous owner was a ricer and has a GTR emblem on the door. Almost like a Sentra SE-r Spec V.

Also picked up a door from him to have the driver's door paint match. Basically the PO was in a fender(door) bender and the shop didn't match the color properly. This is the second time Im going to replace a door on a 4th gen and the first time was no fun.

*reserved for after pic of door*

All in all met another really cool org'er who scared the crap out of me with his secret mod on his new car. Stand up guy too.

Now onto Lighting:
Bought a set of DEPO foglights locally for $25 bucks.

Now I have to get the broken bolts out of my foglights again -.- If you guys dont remeber my thread for my last car refer here: http://forums.maxima.org/4th-generat...ghts-help.html

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ThenI picked up some chrome r34's from a guy for a steal on the 4th gen fb page

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After receiving them: ordered some MH1's also for a steal too from the retrofit source and got them within two days.

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Gonna get to retrofitting these soon. Still waiting on my HID kit from DDM Tuning to get here. Big Shoutout to Chrisman287 with all the help with my noob questions.

As I was un-boxing these projectors it hit me: HOLY CRAP I HAZ THE MOD BUG yo! Lets see how much of a money pit this car becomes.

As Maxride 41's sig once read something along the lines "Ahh the never ending money pit" can not agree with you more brotha

Nice work thus far, but honestly try to cut down on the modding. You're still in high school so you're going to feel that you need to go all out on the car. Remember it's still a maxima, and you can save up for something better. I'm probably the only one who has this stance though lol, so I won't be surprised if I'm flamed

Thanks! I dont feel as Im going all out far from it actually, im just doing the things I believe that should have came on the Maxima on the factory. My whole point with this build is to do everything for as cheaply as I can.

By cheap I mean using good parts that I find locally or other org members.

Buy yeah, Im probably gonna pass on the stillen kit, and finish this car up after the rad support, tints, and drop.

Funny, I get flamed all the time when I tell other enthusiats that its Just a Maxima. I love these cars but given the chance I would deffinately jump into something newer.

Sounds like a plan, lets see it happen :)

It is a good car for sure, i can keep up with my friends MS6 for a bit on the straights, and set a good pace on corners, and my car is an automagic. Your car is probably much faster since it's a 5 speed.

Yeah i'm looking to get out of the maxima game as soon as the opportunity strikes. Rwd and stick is much more fun. Seriously for the price of a used 4th gen you can find some nice E30s or miatas bro. Both are great platforms. Heck you can even get a bike

Nicee
 

Nice car dude. You definitely have the right idea just keep it clean and simple. Then get something better!

Yup pretty fast. More than enough power to get me in and out of trouble if you know what I mean.

I would never get an older bmw unless I had 5k saved for various stuff that went wrong. I love e30's btw. As for a miata, great little weekend cars, not so much a daily.

As for a bike, pretty much everyone who has owned a bike is no longer alive due to accidents. I just have a stigma against bikes at this point.

Thanks dude! I will probably end up keeping this car till it dies, and one day Im going to go all out on it.

Coming along great so far.

Looks great!

Thanks man. A lot more to come.

To the guy one post above you. HOLY SIG BATMAN

Small teaser :D

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:drool: the best thing to do with chrome r34s :nod:

haha yeah the second I bought those I knew a retro was in my future. Its going to take some time. Just wrapping up hs and I've slacked. Gotta make up some stuff for classes LOL

Had HIDS in my last maxima that i just dropped in. It did look cool I guess but Im doing this maxima right. Plus projectors arent too expensive just a little involved. Throwback of how my old setup was. INb4 holy glare batman lol

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So, I finished my retro.But put them on craigslist to see what I'd get and ended getting a decent amount so they're gone now.

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O hai there. Now i can put nismo stickers all over my car
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Quick exhaust clip. Try to guess what system I'm running !

Buddy of mine was getting rid of his car so I picked up some goodies from him. r34s and Megan Coilover to name a few.
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Got on the floor to see what was dripping and noticed something pretty horrifying. It was no where near this bad when I bought her. Getting it fixed tomorrow hopefully.

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Here is a tribute to my buddies Maxima
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This guy is just a silly ricer, he has epic body roll as his sig pic, clearly he has no idea what he's talking about :hide:



Continue on with what you're doing Max31273969 :cool:

I like this. It's a car built for fun.. Very few people do this any more. This is kind of like how I'm 3.5 swapping and keeping a 4at... haha

lol I was waiting for someone to call me out on the name on the forums.

But Im just about done with this car in terms of modding. Gonna be just oil changed and driving once i install the rear coils. Thanks!

Boooo. 4at on a 3.5 swap is no fun. Swap in a 5 speed or even a 6 speed and that'll be fun.

As for power mods, I have a cali spec 99 so finding a used y-pipe is going to be a challenge, and i don't want my exhaust being any louder than it is.

If my buddy picks up a 5th gen to part out, I might 00vi but my fuel economy sucks as it is.(13mpg) Wont be any better once I start flooring it everywhere with the 00VI.

Mine is about 17mpg.. and I want the 4at because I enjoy the stock feel and functionality, but when I get down on it it'll still have that 3.5 rumble and pull. Plus.. I haz some transmission tricks :hide:

Put in a Purolator Pure One Air Filter Along with a Purolator Pure One Fuel Filter and wow. These things were absolutely dirty. The fuel filter was leaking out black gas
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Got her washed up and here are some updated shots
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I've also ordered a set of 4 Ebay Motor Mounts to fix my engine hopping around and overall slop while driving the car. Ill put up a video of how bad it is shortly

You must not have read about the people whose ebay mounts failed not long after buying them.

oh really? crap.

I read nothing but good things about them on the 4th gen section and even the 5th gen section. Anyway cant be worse than what I have in my car right now:laugh:

Read closer most of them put es bushings in those mounts

Sent from my iPhone using MaximaOrg

Damn the only reason that I bought these were so that I wouldn't have to go poly. Guess I'll be the org's guinea pig for these.

Got my ebay motor mounts in. the quality of the metal and all is fine, but the rubber is ehhh.

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Hit a milestone!
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Car just came back from teh shop. Typed out a huge list of things and my browser crashed. Will update everything back in its entirety crashed

On a side note : damn iPhones. My last android would save everything in the textbox if the browser crashed

So just had a lot of work done on the maxima.
AC recharged- really needed this. It was in the 100 degrees in NYC the entire last week.

Ebay motor mounts installed. They were okay for the first two days. But i have a feeling they have failed. Have the same jerking back. Dont reccomend these to anyone.

Megan Coilovers installed in the rear. And lowered the front even more.

Replaced the cross-member. Thanks to maxfever for that. Mine was all bent up. Also Got some new shiny crossmember bolts from the dealer for $6 a piece.

Put in a shift return spring. My shift knob never sat in between 3rd/4th. It would always be between 1st/2nd. Turns out there was never a spring under there when I took off the heatshield.

Welded in my foglight brackets, long story.

Fixed my 02 sensor bank 2 sensor 1. Ordered the cheapest one of ebay for $17 bucks and it turned out to be an NTK sensor. COOL!

Passed NY inspection as well!

Oh! and I added a OEM rear spoiler. It looks a lot better with the spoiler IMO

So for now everything seems alright. Axles seem to be clicking with the low drop and my exhaust piping is banging on the chassis somewhere, but that will be dealt with at a later time.

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Finally installed HIDS in the foglights. Foglights are retro'd with the capusules from old Mercedes Benz. And the bulbs and ballasts are 3000k from DDM Tuning.

I have to use my 3m kit on these headlights soon. Maybe after I retro these headlights aswell. Gotta take the fogs out, people been stealing fogs in my neighborhood

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ooh, purdy...how easy was that retro, and does it make a big difference in light output with the fogs?

I didn't retro these myself, but the hardest part is getting the lense to separate. The glue is much harder to work with on the fogs than the headlights.

Idk for light output yet, ill have to wait for re-wire and some night time shots.

Got an alignment done on the car. Didnt really make a difference after the coilover install. But after they were done with the alignment the guy said I needed a new wheel bearing on my driver side. Scumbag. Shouldv'e told me before. The car looked really mean in this angle.

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And I also re-wired my fogs to come on independently. Probably one of my favorite mods. Lets see if i keep them on this time

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Things to Do:
1)Driver side wheel bearing.
2)Passenger Side Axle( when it snaps. Its spewing grease everywhere)
3)Need new motor mounts -.-. Ill probably end up poly filling the bullsh*t ebay mounts I have in there now.