j30t in the hizzouse!!

[pik0]

Hi all,

Just want to share that I just bought a 1994 j30t Gold package at 154,000 miles for $3,300. I take possession of this baby tomorrow night!!

The car is great and I can wait to get to work bringing it back to it's original glory. While the engine and drivetrain are in tip-top condition, the rest of the car needs some TLC to make it look good.

Fortunately, there's no accidents and no dents or dings. But there's a bunch of aftermarket crap that was added during it's 10 year life span. All that junk, like the wind deflector over the sun roof, the crappy tinted windows and whatever else I find that is not original ARE COMING OFF!!

Otherwise, the leather and wood paneling are just like new and the stereo and AC system works like a charm.

Couple of questions:

• Where can I get replace gold plate hubcaps? Or where can I get the original ones redone? The silver paint is about gone and the gold is worn.
• I have a line on a new set of gold plated emblems for $145 is that a good deal? Is there a better source?
• What is the small grill just to the left of the stereo for? Is it an audio sensor?
• What is the best place to get some new remote keyless FOB's? I've see them for around $35 on eBay.
• Finally, is the original owner's manual available online? Perhaps in PDF form?

I really want to restore this car to it's original showroom look. Any other advice or pointers will be GRATEFULLY accepted!!

TIAAndreworange County, CA

[Falkdesigns]

Congrats, sounds nice. Why gold? Chrome looks cleaner IMO, and for the key fobs, eBay is the best bet (they're like 150 at the dealer). Is the tint a poor job? Cause I live in S. Cal too, and I would never go back to a car with no tint. SOOO much cooler inside with tint. You definitley found the right place for questions/conversation/car-friendliness!!

[J-Owner]

The small grill to the left of the stereo is the Automatic Climate sensor. Be careful not to break it off if you remove the wood trim.

[NY94J30]

Call Scottsdale (ad on the bar on the left of the screen) for the emblems. As for the center cap, you're better repainting them yourself, or looking on ebay. And like someone said before, ebay for the fob.

[NY94J30]

and one of your best resources will be Carlos' page:

http://www.fuzzycats.com/j30.htm

[carlos_knology]

Welcome to NICO.

[elwesso]

Welcome to NICO!

1. Check ebay for a new set of rims.. New rims are the best thing, IMHO. Gold is too bling bling..... The alloys look much nicer

2. Check Joe first (scottsdale)

3. Agreed

4. Ebay. The ones for the G20, J, and Q are the same... You can get them for $20-40

5. email me..... I ahve those in PDF

[driverdriver]

I've got a gold package J too. Best and probably cheapest way to re-touch all the gold plating is to invest in a portable plating kit. Most good ones can be had for about $200 including all the solutions that you'll need. The plating part is easy, I've retouched my door handles and emblems as well as hubs. My car looks like day one.

[pik0]

Congrats, sounds nice. Why gold? Chrome looks cleaner IMO, and for the key fobs, eBay is the best bet (they're like 150 at the dealer). Is the tint a poor job? Cause I live in S. Cal too, and I would never go back to a car with no tint. SOOO much cooler inside with tint. You definitley found the right place for questions/conversation/car-friendliness!!

Gold, because it's original. We'll see how the car cleans up. I may just leave them on as is. More on that as the weekend progresses...

Tustin Infiniti wants $160 for the remote!! Can you believe it?! Definitely got a line on a few on ebay.

Also, the seller swears that he has no remote and that the only way to work the alarm is with the key in the door. I can't believe this to be true. Everything I've read says all Infiniti from this time period had factory alarms with remotes. I'm guessing he's just lost them and has disabled the alarm with the switch in the trunk? Yes?

The tint is a horrible job. It's bubbling in some places and peeling of in others!!

Anyways. My old car is sold and will receive the cash for that tomorrow evening. After that I will drive out to pick up the j30 and slide him about 2/3 of that...

Piko

[pik0]

I've got a gold package J too. Best and probably cheapest way to re-touch all the gold plating is to invest in a portable plating kit. Most good ones can be had for about $200 including all the solutions that you'll need. The plating part is easy, I've retouched my door handles and emblems as well as hubs. My car looks like day one.

That's an interesting idea. How hard is it to apply? Can the emblems be re-plated in situ? I don't really want to peel them off and re-apply if I can avoid it.

Otherwise, the detailing work was AWESOME on Friday!! I payed $140 for the local car wash to go over the car from head to toe. They thoroughly shampooed the carpet which now looks like day one (it was NASTY). The paint job got an excellent buff job and they even steam cleaned the engine. It's a really beauty!!

After that, I took it to EZ Lube for a complete oil/filter change and a transmission fluid flush. The power steering was quite a bit low and is a bit of a concern. However, the car has not leeked any fluids since then (except for the normal water condensation from the AC).

The tint turned out to not be as bad as I had remembered. I only need to really replace one read quarter-panel and it will be in great shape. That I can do myself.

The AC seems to be a little lackluster. I think I will have to visit a mechanic and have them test to make sure the freon is there. It barely cranks out cool are over the hot weekend we had here. Just as a test, I took my 4Runner (1996) out for a spin and cranked it's AC up and it got REAL chilly.

Next long term thing to do is to get the paint touched up. The front and rear bumpers as well as the front hood suffer from a variety of tiny chips. From 10' it looks like a million bucks, but it's distracting up close.

I LOVE this car. It rides like a dream. It's real quick on the acceleration and braking/handling are tight!!

More as it happens,Piko

[Jesda]

Lets see some photos!

[1992Q45A]

Get that AC looked at soldier!

My J30 had the coldest AC I've ever experienced in a car..

Black on black with 0 tint.. in the AZ 110+ summers, I would have to turn it down after a few minutes..

incredible

[Black94Jay]

I have a '94 J30t and it came with the remote key fob. In fact, the car came with two upon delivery. Had to replace my A/C at about 48,000 miles. Compressor, condenser, and some other A/C related parts came to $1800. Runs extremely cold now.

[pik0]

Lets see some photos!

Okay! I ran out and shot a few. These show the innate beauty of the car and some of the prevailing flaws that I will address soon.

Check my links for more:

Here's a long shot showing the Front Left Quarter.

Here's the Front Right Quarter which shows the cars innate beauty.

The Hub Cap paint appears to have been hit by a sand storm! The gold plating also seems to be worse for wear. I will carefully scrape the old paint off with a glass slide (old woodworker's technique) and will mask/paint it to match the rims. Then to the brush plating.

The j30t Emblem is in good shape but will need plating.

Here, the Rear Bumper Wrinkle can be seen. Looks like they backed in to something. No severe damage other than the paint.

Here you can see the worn gold plating in the Rear Infiniti Emblem . I will try the brush plating technique in a few weeks to see if that brings it back.

Andrew

[VimyJ]

Welcome to the club. Transmission filter change ASAP.

I am currently on a vacation road trip with my J30 (and my wife). The J is a joy but I sure wish I had 2 more cylinders getting to the Eisenhauer Tunnel on I-70 west of Denver. Right close to 11000 feet! Glad I had syn ATF.

[pik0]

Latest update:

I spent some time this weekend and replaced the horribly worn wiper blades. There, I noticed that the old blade was too short and that the bottom clip of the wiper had worn a curved arc into the glass!! Ack!!

I made it a point to buy two new wiper blades of correct length (21" driver and 20" passenger). Now, I have to bust out the orbital and see if I can polish that worn spot a little.

I also removed the old sunroof wind deflector. As this had been on the car for all of it's 10 years, a layer of dust and sand had accumulated under the rubber boot. At speeds over 60 MPH, the turbulence would cause the deflector to buffet, which, over the many years wore scratches and pits in the paint.

For that, after carefully cleaning up all the dust and sand off the paint, I applied copious amounts of Rogue paste so smooth things out. The roof is almost back to normal. Next step will be to orbital polish the paint to make it look factory. Should be fun...

I also have a few other spots of missing or chipped paint. I'm trying to find some touch up paint that matches the car, but Pep Boys has been consistently out of that specific color. Any recommendations on what I should buy, perhaps online?

I purchased an A2...73 Keyless Remote from eBay the Thursday before Memorial Day and with any luck it will arrive some time this week. I can't wait to stop using the key to open the car.

As my car is a j30t, according to the service manuals, it's supposed to have the Super HICAS 4 wheel steering. I've tried turning the front wheels to see if the rears move, but I don't see anything. I'll have to crawl under there to see if I have the linkages. That and I'll have to try the self-diagnosis to see if the wheels turn properly.

Next major work is to get the AC working properly. Now that we are entering major summer heat, I don't want to be left sweating.

This is so much more fun than buying a new car... :P

Andrew

[VimyJ]

I don'thave the HICAS but I believe it is activated only at speed. The HICAS was dropped after 94. The sevice manual might give you info on how to perform checks on that system. There have been very few complaints about HICAS system reliability.

You have gotten ahold of a truly fine car.

[J-Owner]

For touch-up paint, go to your local Infiniti dealership (which should have a collision repair shop on site but not always), and ask them for a sample of your paint color. I did this and they gave me my color in a small bottle about the size of a Tylenol bottle for free.

This way you can ensure an exact color match. Check into it.

Just my 2 cents.

[1992Q45A]

When I looked up for touch up paint for my 94Q, the dealer told me they no longer had any available..

Another nico member hooked me up with this gym of a site

http://www.paintscratch.com/

Perfect match, for just about any car... Also can get as much/little as you need

[1992Q45A]

They have 10 different color configurations available for the J30..

[driverdriver]

To gold plate

It's basically a 6 step process on most machines.

(1.) clean the emblem throughly with with rubbing alcohol(2.) attach electrical diodes(3.) use rectifier solution(4.) plate with gold plating solution(5.) let the plating set(6.) Attach plated part to vehicle (if applicable). You cab do the J's door handles by simply cleaning and attaching diodes.

I would read the book that comes with the plating kit throughly, different kits have slight variations in steps. Gold plating emblems isn't that hard to do.

[phenryiv1]

The J30t looks nice in white. Only complaint about the J30 is the Buick-like rear end, and the lack or manual transmission. Enjoy the new car!

[phenryiv1]

Oh yeah, and if you want to totally refinish the rims in any color (silver, gunmetal, bronze, white, etc), let me know and I will sen dyou links to a great how-to.

[pik0]

I definitely need help in refinishing the hubcaps. As you can see from my earlier post, the hubcaps were silver to match the rims and the emblem was gold plated in the middle. Both are heavily worn and need to be restored, my plan for this weekend...

Thanks,Andrew

[phenryiv1]

What color are the rims themselves? Dupli-color has a wheel paint (available at wal-mart or any auto parts store) that is a pretty close match to OEM silver. Just get the primer and clearcoat from the same company. I am strongly considering refinishing my whole set of wheels with this paint. I know of a few people who have done this with good results.

[pik0]

Check out a pic of the hipcap here: http://www.ponowaiwai.com/~andrew/j30t/HupCap.jpg

[phenryiv1]

The Dupli-Color Silver wheel paint is the right color for you. You can either tape off the Infiniti logo and trim around it with a razar knife or paint it silver like the rest of the cap (recommended). If you paint over it and want it gold at a later time, you can always paint it Gold by hand. I think that it will look best all silver, but taping it off is still an option.

[pik0]

Ack!! I'm NOT going to paint it gold if I can PLATE it GOLD! I will go the masking/cutting route and just spray around the emblem. I think it will look MUCH better. Especially when I get the $50 brush plating kit and replate everything later next month...

Andrew