Lolz, not sure about the best cube in the world but certainly the best cube on my drive and that's what matters.
I thought I'd post up some of the background work - jump straight to the bottom if you bore easily or even if you rarely get bored, this time you might.
...
After a few e-mails back and forth (originally in spring 2010) I visited Ray at Rayvern to find out first hand how everything works, the options available and also so he could take measurements and give me an idea on how low it could go.
After this visit I realised I'd need to move the amps to make way for the tank etc.
Now we have an empty boot I made a sketch plan for where to put the tank / compressor -
26/02/11 -
Next thing to do was for me to remove my standard strut and spring to send to Ray at Rayvern so he could use it as a basis to make a custom strut to fit the cube. As the cube is my only car I couldn't be without it so after advice from other guys on the cubeownersclub I bought a standard K12 micra strut and spring to fit to the car whilst my cube strut and spring were with Ray.
Here's a photo of the standard z11 cube strut and the K12 Micra strut alongside -
Another thing I needed to ensure was that the suspension turret was big enough to fit the air bags - they're 5.75" diameter so a 6" diameter turret is needed to make sure no stones get wedged in between body and bag -
All good.
While I was at it I measured the gap between the two bolts on the front strut - 52mm. This is completely unrelated to air ride but during my research I also looked into coilovers and I'm 98% sure that coilovers for a Renault Clio with 52mm struts will fit the cube. I'm trying to get a scrap strut from the right model clio that might help someone looking for coilovers.
13/04/11 -
Next job for me was to sort out where to put the air pressure gauges, I designed a new template for a dash panel in Microsoft Paint and sent it to Mike at Ferriday engineering to fabricate in 1mm aluminium. (I'd sold my car PC at some point to raise funds towards the air ride and didn't have a monitor in the dash any more so made sense to have the dials there)
Here it is -
Scuffed up -
Stuck to block of wood to move it around -
Cleaned it up -
Dried off with a heat gun -
Halfords paint, you can probably get better paint elsewhere for less but halfords is easy to get to and I've had good results with it in the past for small jobs like this -
Primered -
Had to left it overnight to dry so removed the residue of the sticky pads from the old dash panel with white spirits.
Before -
After -
Next evening, wet and dry down the primer -
And a few coats in the matt black -
Test fit against dash -
No more nails is your friend -
16/04/11 -
Now that's my work out of the way and over to Rayvern to drop her off.
I did look into self-fitting the kit but I decided if I was going for it I wanted it done properly by someone who does it day in day out.
Plus if the nightmare I had hacking at rusty bolts to swap one strut over was anything to go by I wanted to steer well clear of having to do it all over again on the other side not to mention the tank / compressor / valves / dials / wiring / hoses / etc.
My front struts all made up, you can see the original bearing on the left of the photo which needs to be re-used, the struts are made using avo adjustable damping struts so the stiffness can be adjusted in minutes too.
At the station waiting to get back home -
22/04/11 -
Magical day has arrived which is full of a mixture of excitement and nerves and not to mention another train journey.
After everything has been run through with me and I've had a test drive and a play with different heights it's time to head home.
Dropped by for petrol -
And after a long Easter weekend of chilling and DIY I've had chance to give her a quick wash and take some photos (albeit I forgot to take photos of dials in place and boot, will post those up soon)
26/04/11 -
Now onto my different height settings -
For Speedbumps and lanes > Approximately 4PSI Front and 5PSI Rear -
For driving on normal roads / motorways > 2PSI Front and Rear -
And parked up -
If a picture paints a thousand words then a video must paint a million -
http://freshandminty.com/cubed/modifications/handling/0226-0422AirRide/NissanCubeAirRide.WMVI'm really pleased, not only with the look when it's parked but also the look for normal every day driving is still lower than the Eibach springs and the drive quality is better than I expected too.
It's on the softest setting at the moment which gives a nice bouncy feel over bumps, I might try to go stiffer to see what effect it has.
Hope you're still awake.
