Torque is good.

Positive attention is good, especially when you share a living space with teenagers.

A less obvious but but no less welcome benefit of quiet cabin air is temperature control. In Denver, comfortable top-down temperatures are easily attainable year-round.

Bottom line: The climate control system does an admirable job once you get past the somewhat counterintuitive user interface. Once set, it requires very little adjustment.

By comparison, the rear wheels stay fairly clean. The bottom frame shows a rear wheel that hadn't been cleaned in over 3 weeks and 300 miles, again with stock pads.

Even so, a minute or two of wheel brushing can make a substantial improvement in the car's day-to-day appearance. Like most silver-colored alloy wheels, these 17" OE wheels are painted and should be cared for accordingly, but it's safe to dry-brush the brake dust off. At first, I used the brush shown at left ($3 from the supermarket, dust pan included), but an equally cheap long-handled wheel brush from K-Mart proved easier on the back and knees with no visible marring of the wheel finish.

If you get stuck with a Bose system, you might try setting the bass and treble at zero or even negative levels to give the mid-range a chance. Nissan and Bose both acknowledged the poor 2003 audio performance and promised a fix for 2003 owners back in 2004. How that's played out since I have no idea, but interested owners might check with Patty Bolack of Bose customer relations at (800) 231-2673 or via ^http://www.bose.com/contact_us.

Whatever you do, don't turn up the audio system to drown out the road noise!  

The ear-damaging effects of loud sound are both insidious and additive, whether from road noise,  music or both. If you find your audio uncomfortably loud when you bring the car to a stop, you're endangering your ears, period.

Scattered through the cabin are several storage bins and pockets, but most are small, inconveniently shaped, hard to access, or all three. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th frames show the bin in the dash and the coin and storage bins in the console. Not shown are two additional book-sized covered bins behind the driver's seat. 

The generous locking "glove box" behind the passenger seat (5th frame) is big enough for boxing gloves or a full-size brief case but access is awkward at best, even with no passenger. Don't overlook the "secret compartment" below the glove box floor pad. It'll hold several small or flat objects.

Also provided are small pockets in both doors (6th frame) and on the outboard sides of both seats (last frame) and a map pocket at the bottom of the back of the passenger seat.

As you might imagine, there aren't many places to stow beverage containers, either. The dog bowl in the passenger footwell in the last frame is my working solution for Nalgene bottles and wide-bottomed commuter mugs.

For $29 MSRP, Nissan offers an accessory seat-back organizer that looks like a good bet for 350Zs with removable headrests, but it won't work with the integrated head rests that come with the ventilated seat option. 

^Case Logic makes a number of caddies of potential interest to 350Z owners strapped for storage. To my mind, the most attractive of these is a front seat caddy that mounts to and theoretically moves with the seat bottom. Some have had luck with this caddy, but I couldn't get it to move properly with the seat using the supplied mounting system and didn't bother trying to jury-rig a substitute. Target carries these and many other Case Logic offerings at prices well below those found on the Case Logic website.

Packing the 350ZR for a long trip can be quite a challenge, particularly if you have to give up the other seat and footwell to a real live passenger. Fancy wheeled luggage wastes far too much precious space, so try this old small plane pilot's trick instead: Clean out the trunk and use the whole thing as your suitcase. Filling all the odd-shaped and otherwise unusable recesses with smaller items frees up a good bit of volume for larger items in the center. Stuff one of the recesses with a single large folded-up duffle for shuttling gear between car and room.

Cup holder shortage

With the 350Z, you get 3 holders for narrow-bottomed cups: A very fragile-looking fold-away single by the passenger's left knee (top frame), and a 2-cup insert for the center console storage bin (not shown). In place, the 2-cup insert is very hard to reach and to my mind wastes precious cabin storage space.

If you prefer commuter mugs or other wide-bottomed containers, you'll need to get creative, but keep in mind that the only flat surfaces of any significance in the 350Z cabin are the footwell floors. Since  the driver's footwell isn't a safe place for loose objects of any kind, the passenger's footwell is your only hope.

The OE cup holders won't take a commuter mug or a 1.0L ^Nalgene bottle, but a 64 oz. rubber-rimmed stainless steel dog bowl on the floor in the passenger's footwell will. The bowl stays put, contains its cargo reasonably well and stays clear of the passenger's legs and feet if tucked up against the seat. Its contents remain well within the driver's reach, but you may have to negotiate access rights with passengers who don't recognize the driver's mandate to absolute power.

To stabilize loads lacking a wide flat base, I use a plastic mesh sack of glass beads from a bed and bath store. It fits the bottom of the dog bowl perfectly. Any flat round beanbag will do here— including some of those countless hoards of Beanie Babies languishing in your garage.

Dash storage bin doesn't always open

The small size and odd shape of this shallow bin limit its utility, but I'm thankful that Nissan elected to make the space available— they could have just covered it up in Zs without the navigation package.

If you observe uneven front tire wear, or hear excessive tire growl below 30 mph or under moderate braking, have your dealer inspect your 350Z immediately. Realignments and tire replacements for feathering are now warranted for 2 years, but why waste precious rubber?

That said, the feathering seen on some 350Zs is clearly excessive. An article in the Spring, 2004 issue of SportsZ Magazine claims that a specially formed Nissan engineering task force continues to seek the cause, but they doubt a fundamental suspension flaw at this point. 

See the online version of the article for more details, or this PDF of Nissan's latest official technical service bulletin NTB04-043, dated 4/12/2004. You'll find much more on the feathering issue at www.NissanTireProblems.com.

Whenever I mention the fragile paint to my service rep, who's generally been quite responsive, he falls into a blank look. 

But that's not all. Added benefits include more immediate throttle response at all engine speeds and, according to one dyno test*, an extra 5 bhp at 5,100 rpm and 6 ft-lbs of torque at 5,400 rpm, with lesser gains throughout the power curve. And all this for under $30 if you do it yourself! You'd be lucky to get gains like that with a cold-air intake and cat-back exhaust  costing over $1,500 in parts alone. **

With that kind of bang for the buck, it's easy to see why so many experienced 350Z enthusiasts recommend grounding as the first engine modification.

In ~2.5 hours, I fabricated and installed do-it-yourself engine grounding cables using only $29 in parts and supplies and the detailed illustrated online instructions kindly provided by the folks at Z-extreme.com. (If you like, they'll sell you a set of high-quality cables ready to install.) 

Bottom line:  I highly recommend this simple but highly gratifying modification. The claimed benefits— increased engine smoothness, responsiveness, power and torque— are real and noticeable, and the cost and effort are negligible. I used to be able to feel 6,000 rpm coming, but no more. That programmable "up shift" warning light now earns its keep.

* Turbo & High-Tech Performance Magazine, July, 2003

** Dyno-tested exhaust shoot-out, Sport Z Magazine, Fall, 2003

The rear plate (last frame) attaches to built-in threaded inserts taking 16 mm M6 1.0 pitch metric machine screws.

Track warning:  Hanging your plate in front of the grille will reduce radiator air flow, especially if you also install an after-market grille like the mesh unit shown in the last frame. With plate and grille in place, my roadster seriously overheated on its 1st track day, but temporarily removing the front plate fixed the problem. 

Whatever you do, don't mount anything on or near your airbag covers! Should the airbag ever deploy, an overlying phone or holder would instantly become a potentially lethal high-speed projectile aimed directly at your head.

Potential EMT report excerpt: The air bag would have saved him, but the cell phone holder ended up in his left frontal lobe. =8^(

<soapbox>Please try to talk hands-free whenever you're stuck DWP. The statistics on DWP are abundantly clear:  As an impediment to safe driving, DWP tops smoking and eating in the car and even tops alcohol intoxication! Hands-free or otherwise, mobile phones distract from the serious business of driving.

And just how does DWP differ from conversing with a passenger? For starters, a live passenger might well alert you to unnoticed hazards, missed turns, etc.

Hands-free phoning also spares your brain the attendant microwave dose. Credible research results raising concerns about cell phone-related microwave exposures continue to emerge. ^Science News covered several such reports in 2004 alone.

Mobile phone head-sets are cheap, convenient and ubiquitous. It's just plain common sense to use one whenever you can, in or out of the car.</soapbox>

BTW, the fold-away dash cupholder makes a great headset hanger. It will also hold your phone, but small phones are likely to slip under the rail on the left side and onto the floor without added containment.

* Thanks to Yobri of the 350ZMotoring.com forum for this great idea.

Granted, the Potenzas do very well when on warm, dry pavement, but below 50°F or so, they tend to get hard and slippery. They're reputed to be so-so in the rain and impossible in the snow, but I've done no real testing under such conditions.

The Potenzas are also fairly noisy, both on the highway and in the curves. 

In short, the Potenzas are ripe for replacement, but any alternative befitting the 350Z will be expensive, and used tires are hard to sell for true value, even on ebay. 

If only the 350Z packagers followed the lead of their G35 Sport Coupe counterparts, who offer all-season tires as an option. Here in Denver, I'd have taken that option in a heartbeat.

I seized the opportunity to switch to M+S-rated ^Michelin Pilot Sport A/S (all-season) radials all around when a nail ruined my right rear Potenza at ~5,500 miles. ^Tire Rack reports excellent to superb consumer ratings for the Pilot Sport A/S in all performance categories, and I couldn't agree more. They ride and handle beautifully and quietly, wet or dry. Two track days have shown them to be at least as sticky as the Potenzas on warm, dry pavement — and with a lot less groaning in the tight hairpins. (No, I haven't seen signs of feathering.) Short of heroic measures, I've been unable to break them loose on wet roads, even at near-freezing temperatures. Nor has there been any noticeable hydroplaning when punching through huge puddles at highway speeds during Denver downpours.

As of 2004, few other high-performance all-season tires came in sizes suitable for the 350Z's standard 17" wheels. Based on detailed tire specs posted by ^Tire Rack, the Michelin sizes most closely matching the diameters of the 350Z's standard 225-50/17 front and 235-50/17 rear Potenzas were 235-45/17 and 245-45/17, respectively. These sizes fit my roadster perfectly, as you can see in the photos at left.

Z owners with 18" or larger wheels will find a wide array of good Potenza alternatives out there, but I don't have details to share. 

Sorry, no photo

To inspect your ragtop for pinholes, get inside the car with the top up on a sunny day and look for light coming through the cloth —   particularly around the bends in the rear crossbar. Confirm any pinholes with a flashlight, then take your roadster in for a top replacement (cloth plus frame) right away. Nissan has been replacing leaking tops without hesitation, but they apparently won't replace tops with partial-thickness rub marks alone.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to my old friend Les Novikoff for sharing his leaking top experience. 

Sorry, no photo

By design, VDC/TCS is on by default at startup. The switch is there only to disable VDC/TCS when you don't want it — and you definitely don't want either one engaged on your Z club's track day.

Legitimate racers unhappy with the default may want to look into a ^VDC auto-off kit. The rest of us are unlikely to have the time or presence of mind to turn VDC/TCS back on when we really need them.

That said, I'd probably buy the ventilated seats again.

Winging out the side mirrors to minimize overlap with the center rearview mirror is always a good idea, even if it takes a little getting used to. That certainly helped the 350ZR's top-up visibility, but not enough for my comfort.  

The plastic ball joints in my driver-side mirror lost their hold after about 7 months of use. I haven't yet tried the spray adhesive the instructions recommend for keeping the joints in place.