3S: A massive quality of life improvement…

Air Conditioning! Someone may say that it is an absolute requirement in Texas. That someone is me. So going 8 years in Texas without working AC has basically limited the Stealth’s usage to just the winter… if it was hotter than mid 80’s I didn’t want to be in the stealth. It’s as simple as that.

The back story was the AC on this car has always been a shit show. I bought the car in fall of 2002. The AC gave out within the first summer. It was replaced with another by a local shop. That one failed within a few months. The shop wouldn’t cover the labor (which was half the cost) so I had them evacuate the system and I decided to do it myself. It worked ok for a while. It clearly had a leak and I had to use a bottle to fill it up from time to time.

I would argue sometime in the 2010-2012 time range, I had a new error come up on the AC. It would show the “snowflake” icon on the digital dash for about 3-5 seconds, and then I would get a “red dot” error. Someone on 3Si mentioned they shorted the “green-orange and green-yellow” wires on the harness going to the “Compressor Lock Controller”. I didn’t know what any of that was doing, but I trusted in 3Si and did it. Nothing happened. The red-dot went away, but the AC never worked again.

Skip ahead to spring of 2025. I just got the LinkECU installed, let’s see if I can get the AC going now too? The digital climate control died in the fall of 2024, so I sent it out to get replaced by a shop I found on eBay that happened to be in Houston. I replaced the Dryer & Expansion Valve, vacuumed out the system, it held vacuum for multiple days and I go to fill it and no luck. I can’t get the AC Clutch to engage. I look in the LinkECU and it is not receiving any signal to “enable” the AC. I gave up. Defeated.

Round 2!

Alright this year I was 100% going to get this working. Hell or high water it would work! I’d either fix it or throw money at it and replace everything in it!

First thing first is to remove the “short” green-orange and green-yellow wires from before. I needed to start with a clean slate. Upon doing that the red-dot came back! However I could tell the AC was actually working now for the 3-5 seconds that the snow flake was showing. So I posted on 3Si asking for help.

With the help of two great people paul93VR4 & AlmosN8kd we were able to diagnose the problem was the compressor has an RPM signal sent to the “Compressor Lock Controller” along with the Engine RPM. It does a “comparison” of the two RPM’s and if it’s within a specific percentage it will turn the clutch on. Well with the use of a oscilloscope I was able to determine that the compressor wasn’t sending any RPM signal.

I checked the actual AC the best I could without tearing everything out and as far as I could tell the sensor was plugged in and the wires weren’t destroyed. So I needed to find a way to “hotwire” this thing into working… I was able to short two of the wires (pins 13 & 15) on the lock controller, and then short pin 15 to ground with a resistor so that it would drain and disengage when the AC wasn’t requested. This worked, but it was a janky solution.

Then I pondered it and questioned “what if it didn’t have the engine’s RPM either?”… after a major struggle depinning this I was eventually rewarded with a working AC without a weird “short” or resistor hanging around. I labeled the removed pin with a heatshrink and closed everything back up.

Now this isn’t perfect. If the AC seizes, I won’t know. The belt will snap and it can damage the timing belt. So I consider this a “solved … until” and that until is when I have to remove more of parts in the way of the AC so that I can really pull out the wires and test it out to determine if it’s the sensor or just a wire that got messed up.

3S: A little quality of life improvements…

The Stealth has always been a little “rough” to drive. It was loud hot to drive. So I spent a little bit of time this year to finally right this wrong…

Stereo – ATOTO S8 8-Core 7″ Double Din Android Stereo (S8G2A74MS)

ATOTO S8 Installed in dash

Let me start out by saying I am not an audiophile or anything of the such. I really just wanted something that could do Wireless Car play and sounded as good as the stock stereo. When I upgraded the stereo in my Tundra from whatever top factory one was in 2013 to a “Jensen” one in 2023 I was very disappointed in the sound quality. It got noticeably worse. I read some “questionable” reviews about the ATOTO S8, but also talked to a few people first hand and they felt it was pretty good…. I took the plunge and bought it along with the Metra 70-7003 so that I could still utilize the stealth’s factory amplifier. In March of 2025 I upgraded all the speakers in the car…. once again I don’t know what is the best bang for the buck, but I had saw these were recommended across the 3S platform consistently and felt it was worth it. The “tweeter” location is still a full range speaker. Everyone recommends the Dayton Audio RS75-4, and then I 3D Printed a little “mount for it to fit properly. For the doors I went with Kicker 46CSC674 (6.75”) Coaxial speakers, and the rear passenger area I went with Rockford Fosgate Prime R169X2.

Color me surprise, the thing actually sounds a lot better than the factory one. I guess that should be expected when you compare something from 1994 vs 2026… 32 years of innovation should help. The wireless car play works pretty well most of the time. The ability to have Google maps / YouTube music directly on the stereo is nice, but that only works for “offline” mode unless you keep your phone in hotspot all the time or you buy a sim card.

The other main thing that drove me to buying this unit in particular is the ability to run android apps (and connect to the CAN network). While I haven’t done that yet, I do plan to do this eventually.

Sound deadening…

When I first bought the Stealth, it was in great condition. Add 24 years and 60k miles, it’s missing a few parts… mainly in the trunk. I didn’t have the storage bins, the spare tire, or the cover / carpet / platform that cover all that. It was just bare metal exposed. This made the car very loud to drive always. You heard the exhaust really well. I started looking online for the storage bins / carpet / platform and found the bins for a reasonable price, but the carpet and platform were each $100+ ( with about half coming from shipping). Thankfully someone local in the club was willing to let go of all of it for $80 (in rough condition). I figured if I was going to add these, I should make sure to add some sound deadening to the car to really help.

Of course there main company in this realm is dynamat, but I’m not looking for perfection and I approached the situation as “anything is better than nothing” and bought “Kilmat” 50 mil 50sqft version of this for about 1/4 the price of dynamat.

Installation wasn’t hard, but it was time consuming. These do add a fair amount of weight, but I would guess the full 50sq ft is about 15lbs and it’s worth the tradeoff for a non-race car. I did buy “rollers” to help “roll it out” but I don’t know if those really are necessary. They add little indentions to the “foil”… Not sure if that is supposed to help or anything.

I’m very happy with the level of noise reduction that I am seeing coming from the rear of the car. I didn’t do an audio test of before and after, I also have the “storage” dividers in the back now but the board and carpet are still not there and it’s a pretty massive improvement for fairly cheap. I’m very impressed with the reduction in noise coming from the rear of the car, and I have plenty of extra to do the main cabin when I eventually replace the carpet…

Amazon list of the upgrades mentioned above and the prices I paid for them:

3S: Lightweight Hood Struts

Since I switched to a Fiberglass/Carbon Fiber (Hybrid) hood I have needed to use a hood prop to hold the hood up. The stock hood struts have been known to cause the “lightweight” hoods to bend up where the hood strut connects to the hood.

I found this post in February of last year by braincrater who used NRG Innovations Nissan 370Z / 350Z low pressure hood shocks. So in February of 2025 I ordered the NRG HD-300CF hood struts for about $190 shipped. The company alerted me they were special order and they would get them as soon as possible… A few months went by and I reached out and they gave me a new date, a few months went by and the same story. Finally I reached out a few weeks ago and they once again said the company has them listed as June now… they immediately offered a refund if I wanted.

I began the search for those hood struts online to see if anyone had them in stock. I reached out to many companies that listed them as “in stock” but every one of them said they were not and they were a special order.

Ultimately I decided I could figure this out myself and make them cheaper and asked for a refund [which the company sent immediately].

So to start off with the fender bolt thread is M6x1 and I wanted to stick with that thread for the whole install. The hood strut balls seem to be m10 for the most part, and I also decided to stick with that size. The hood fully open between the two points was right around 12″ long, and then closed it appeared to be about 9″. I didn’t find anything exactly that size, but there were plenty of 8-12″ options out there. While I wanted the “least” amount of strength in the gas pistons as I could get away with, I decided to order 30#, 50#, and 60# versions of them as they were fairly cheap.

Ball Studs used to clip the struts on.

M6x1 – 10 mm Ball Studs

Struts I ordered (and stuck with)

12″ Gas Shocks / struts ( 30#, 50#, 60#)

I started out by drilling holes in the hood hinge. The key to this is it puts pressure on the hinge instead of the hood itself. This by itself should prevent the bowing a little bit. I didn’t have a specific measurement for where this would be, but I tried to make it the same with enough “meat” on all sides of the hood.

Hinge that has been drilled out and tapped to M6x1

The M6x1 10m balls that I ordered were a little too long, so I had to cut them down by about 1/4″ but they fit great once I did that.

Ball Stud attached to the hinge.

The strut end where it connects to the fender needed a little bit of modifications so that it could extend beyond it’s typical range. I used a small Dremel to sand out the edge to give it more range of motion. They still clip in properly and I couldn’t pull them out without releasing the clip.

Hood strut needed slight sanding modification to fit properly.

The finished product! A hood that stays up without a hood prop!

All done!

Since I bought several of them here’s my feedback on each weight:
-30lbs – Way too weak, couldn’t hold the hood up at all.
-50lbs -Right about equilibrium for the SEIBON DVII hood. It wouldn’t really “lift” the hood until it was about 80% up. It wouldn’t hold any “work lights” without falling.
-60lbs – Has just enough lifting to hold my “work lights”. Still doesn’t lift the hood until it’s about 60-70% way up.

Overall I decided to stick with the the 60lb ones. Not a bad project that really was easy to do. The NRG ones may have looked nicer (being CF, or having a CF sticker I don’t know) but this was only $30 versus $190… I just wish I did this a year ago…