It's also probably more than just tread vs. no tread. Depending on how old your tires were, that can make more of a difference than tread depth. Tire rubber composition changes over time, i.e. the rubber gets hard, so less grip. Actually, if you take a brand-new tire and shave most of the tread off, it will grip much better than if it had full tread. That's why racers who have to run street tires shave off all but about 3/32 nds. But that's certainly not recommended for the street, of course.

Enjoy your new PS4S's.

Installed a Mina dead pedal.
.

@resident_fng His car, his money. Don’t be “that guy”.

Saying "that guy" makes you "that guy". I think it's entirely reasonable to ask about adding a "dead pedal", especially if someone's going to post about it.

That's where your left foot is supposed to be to assume optimal position behind a wheel. It stabilises you in your seat and allows for a far greater control over the steering wheel.

I was amazed at the difference the first time I learned that.

It's baffling to me why it's just upholstery there in stock.

That's for sporty driving, for long relaxed distance, foot on the mat is comfier though.

Let's avoid confusion..... "....installed a Mina dead pedal trim piece onto the dead pedal carpet area..."

Looks good Kurt

I just found out my battery is dead! Woo Hoo!!
Drove the car two days ago with zero problems. Hooked up the CTEK and walked away.
Today, absolutely zero.
Hooked up a small jump box to the jump points, the parking lights came on and that's it.
Now I have a Schumacher charger hooked up to recondition so I can get the roof raised so I can access the dead poopy battery and replace it.
I THINK it's maybe three years old, can't rightly remember and can't see it yet.

Did your CTEK light it’s error lamp?

Returned from a roughly 1450 mile road trip.

Car performed flawlessly and returned 25.2 mpg

It was just too nice for me to just rub my soles against 😄

Used dedicated eva mats so it's easier to get the dirt out




On another note, I had my tyres filled with nitrogen instead of air. The difference is staggering, as if I installed brand new shocks! Better grip and comfort all around.

We get crazy ambient temperature amplitudes in Poland lately, also when correcting the pressure at a gas station and then warming the tyres on a highway was somehow causing the pressures to be too much (Conti SP7). Nitrogen solved that nicely, best bang for buck mod you can do imo.

Me, I use 76% nitrogen. I don't see any difference at all.
Maybe your pressures were just low beforehand?

Sure did. Battery voltage right now is 2.44. I'd say it's a goner.
Even at 200 amps, the Schumacher won't do anything for the car at all, so there's an internal open in the battery. Can't raise the roof!!!
Guess I do the manual roof reset. Not hard, but I didn't want to do it if I didn't have to. Oh well for me.

Agreed. When I read the post, I was about to say the same thing. I too use 76% nitrogen, 22% oxygen, and 2% other gases ;-) There is no noticeable difference between air and nitrogen in your tires for street driving. Nitrogen does other things - it will build temp without building PSI. That's why some racers will use Nitrogen.

Scenario with just air:
In the morning, I slowly drive ~1km to a gas station, top up tyres to 2.5 (back) / 2.3 (front) bar as per door placard and onto the highway. While driving through the city everything is fine (right after top up).
Then I get onto the highway, soon into the drive (around 140km/h), front tyres exhibit "drifting" behavior that I need to counter with steering wheel. Every road imperfection is pronounced too much (fresh bushings). On warm tyres, poor grip from standstill around the city.

With nitrogen all of the above issues are alleviated in exact same conditions (except from topping up with air ofc ).

It seems to me that Contis rubber compound warms up differently than other tyres, causing air to build PSI too fast, just like @David993S mentioned, no such issue with nitrogen only.

I may have not been clear regarding nitrogen vs. air and PSI. Air does build PSI with heat, but I did not say "too fast". During the summer heat, normal street driving will produce 5 +or- PSI......not enough to make the kind of difference you describe. Under certain conditions (track driving) what can happen is PSI can rise with heat to the point the tires feel a little greasy and begin to lose grip. That can and does happen on the track when pushing a car to its limits with street tires. However, that happening during normal street driving is very unlikely. Based on your first paragraph, if you're building that much heat and PSI on the street, you may be driving irresponsibly.
As I stated, that's why some racers use Nitrogen instead of air - it allows the tires to build heat without raising PSI. For normal street driving there's no benefit or difference between Nitrogen and air.

That's why this condition surprised me, I'm not "tracking" my xk in the city, hence my "building up PSI too fast" take (faster that it should normally).

I don't know what to tell you - since nothing else changed, nitrogen was the factor that made a difference.

Starting with the caveat that my graduate physical chemistry course was a long time ago (from back in the days when Jaguar was trying to convince us the XJ-s was cool), both N2 and O2 are going to follow the same pressure v temp curve, albeit N2 is going to be slightly higher. Between 0C and 100C the response lines are perfectly parallel. The atmospheric mixture is going to behave the same as well, with a parallel line in between the two gasses.

That said, the big difference between using air and using N2 could be water vapor, which decidedly does not follow the same curve at those temperatures. So if you air-filled your tires on a really hot and humid day without dehumidifying then the water vapor might make a difference compared to the nitrogen which would contain 0% water vapor.