Sunday, April 24, 2016

Mission Possible: Buying Up Parts (Before They Are Gone) and Freshening Up the Car

So a free Sunday today.  I had gotten a call from Yamazaki-san at Nissan Prince earlier in the week about some parts I had ordered a while back that had finally come in, so I swung by to pick them up.

Parking was tight, so I just pulled in and...
Left my car there in the middle of the shop entrance lol
In tinkering with my car, I am noticing that some things are starting to show their age - for example, some interior parts have some scratches that can't be removed or have some lettering that has faded, etc. So, before Nissan decides to stop production on some of these parts, for the last few months I've begun ordering those parts which, once they are gone, would be hard to replicate or find substitutes for.

This time, I had ordered 3 parts - one small, one medium (hint for both of these - they are interior pieces) and then one relatively large one.

The two small boxes and the large flat box are the parts...nothing with "Reimax" on them today unfortunately!
The parts were ready and waiting for me.  For the two interior parts, I will install and blog about another time.  But the large piece was something I decided to take care of, while at Nissan. No technical expertise required to replace it!

This is not pretty. 
As you can tell, the large piece in question is the big piece of heat/noise insulation that is found under the hood. Not only was it beginning to sag in some places from age, but as the yellow arrows above show, mine showed the scars from my experiment creating a ram air intake (where I had taped foam to insure the incoming air flowed into the airbox, and not onto the engine).

Taking the insulation off was easy, using the proper tool which they lent me.
You can see how the edges of the insulation are beginning to fray.

A few minutes later:
It actually looks pretty nice without anything there under the bonnet...race car like?

Old piece is rusty brown, new piece is light, almost yellow
I was surprised to learn that the new Nissan OEM replacement piece, for some reason, did not exactly match the shape one that was on my car. Either, my car had an earlier R33 piece on, or for some reason Nissan got rid of variances between the model years for replacement parts.

The old piece - yellow where it is different than the new piece.
The quality of the new part appears better (it appears darker and more plush?), not sure if it's the material used or due to age of the original part that was on the car.

Here is the new part, attached. Yellow circle on the section that is now gone.
Anyway not sure what to think of this. I decided to have them dispose of the old part for me so no going back.  I have to assume that, at some point Nissan decided that this new part did the job.  And, the missing section makes sense, it is above the airbox where frankly there isn't as much heat generated as the rest of the engine.  On the other hand,  when sitting still heat dissipates all over so not sure why this is supposed to be a better design.  I have to have faith that the actual material used is improved.

I will continue to research this, but since I had promised my Facebook friends to post what I did today, here it is... in my next post I will post another freshening up/parts purchase I did BEFORE this one...

8 comments:

Unknown said...

On a mission to have the best BCNR33 on this planet - thumbs up mate.

Aki said...

Thanks BT!! I try...but I'm finding some other BCNR33 owners are giving me a run for the money...

Rolf said...

Hi, nice upgrade! I notice that my 1995 R33-GTR have the same shape on the heat insulation as this new one. Rolf

Aki said...

Thanks for that information Rolf! Now I wonder more if I just lost a "special" piece...good luck on getting yours registered!

Aki

Rolf said...

Hehe,thanks I'll need that! At least this heat insulaton looks fresh and it's new! You could look at it as weight saving, and giving better weight balance to the rear wheels ;-)

Karl said...

The under bonnet heat insulation was a pain for me, the original Cusco strut brace was always rubbing on it with the GTS inlet and J pipe being a mountain to climb. By the time I switched to a carbon bonnet I had completely forgotten about this! I must admit things are becoming increasingly difficult to source.

SkylineSi said...

nice touch Aki. can only assume its in the event that you would have a vent on the bonnet there for the air filter/box hence why no insulation there. maybe?

Aki said...

Karl - ah yes well that is one way to solve the problem!

Simon - thanks. Haven't see any with a vent in the bonnet in that location... but actually that is a good idea!

Aki