Nissan Elgrand E52 Lowdown

 As a new owner of the E52 one of the very first upgrades that is required is to update the audio system.  As a Japanese only car the Elgrand has no settings to change the language so you are stuck with the Japanese speech and text, so unless you know the language it is a priority to resolve!  There are range of options to choose from but they all have compromises, all range in price and all have a varied level of difficulty.  I will cover some of the options you could go for in a future post, but for now this update is about the one I selected. There is a company in Lithuania who offer replacement car audio boxes for us Elgrand drivers which is a real Nissan solution, it is easy to fit and you wouldn't know that it wasn't fitted at the factory.  It is a bit more expensive than some of the other options but I felt it was worth the extra money. In the E52, the car audio system is split into sections, so there is no easy single or double DIN solution.  The sc...

 Came across these and figured that others might be interested to see them.  They seem to be late design sketches of the E52 Elgrand that Nissan went forward with intro production.  Apart from the Rider body changes the pictures look pretty close to my 52 :)

It seems that every Elgrand owner gets the urge to tinker with their cars, improving, fixing and sometimes just fitting reasonably pointless 'upgrades'. This leads me nicely onto my recent fitting of my absolutely necessary gas struts to the bonnet to hold it open.  There are a number of places to purchase the struts, and its a simple matter of bolting them to the right places.  There are rubber covers to remove for the lower brackets to be fitted, but apart from that its quite straight forward. The pics below should help if you need to check as you go. The fitting is the same both sides. One tip is that the strut is about an inch too long so you have to fit it to the lower bracket and then compress it slightly to then fit to the upper one.

For anyone starting to look at a Nissan Elgrand one of the first things that you will find is a million discussions about cats and whether to have them decored.  Not sure about you, but it was quite confusing when I first began my search.  If it helps, lets start with a quick recap: On the older model E51 Elgrands, their exhaust system has four catalytic converters, lined up in 2 pairs. There are two front cats and two rear cats, prior to the muffler and exhaust pipe at the rear of the car. It seems that there is a chance that due to ECU errors and excess fuel getting injected, that some unburnt fuel in the front cat can cause it to break down.  When it breaks down it can cause debris which will move from the front cat to the rear cat.  There is then a possibility that the debris in the rear cat could block the cat/pipework.  This in turn will mean the engine cannot expel the exhaust fumes, and some complicated process can then cause the engine to self destruct....

 Saw this posted recently giving an original Japanese minivan battle with the new Elgrand E52 back in 2010.  The Best Motoring team took a look at both the 2.5 and 3.5 v6 models, and then took to the race track to see how they fared against similar models.  The Nissan Elgrand is apparently known in Japan as the King of Minivans (Nissan may of started that one..) and the reviewers seem to like the new model.  Best moment in the video for me was when one reviewer said that "it looks more expensive", the other guy replied with "I agree. The older one looked so lame." 

  After driving my Elgrand for the first time I was very surprised to see that all of the dashboard controls had pink lighting. Now I don't really mind the pink / purple colour, but it seemed odd to me that this was the default Nissan factory option.  I looked everywhere for a switch or a setting to select other colours but with no success.  I searched online for information about the car thinking that perhaps you could it with a colour of your choosing, but again had no luck. Anyway, fast forward a few months and I stumbled across some Yahoo Japan Auctions and now I have answers! It seems that there are a number of people in Japan that offer their services to alter the Elgrand electronic control assemblies and switch out the LEDs for a different colour of your choosing.  They offer brilliant white, cool ice blue, pink, and even rainbow coloured for some units.  Obviously the Japanese owner of my car had taken each control part out and had them altered to the co...

In the UK we still use miles instead of kilometers, so I needed to convert my Elgrand to MPH. I decided to fit the Lockwood dials instead of a chip as I had seen reports that the chips can fail causing problems. Hopefully the information and pictures below will help someone with theirs. Removing all of the panels in the car is relatively easy, the only fiddly bit I found was the needle removal from the instrument cluster. The fuel and temp needles split apart so I had to use a tiny dab of glue to put them back together. I would also recommend you get yourself a set of plastic car trim tools to lever things out and pop clips, and avoiding the use of screwdrivers. First thing, give the Lockwood page here a read before you start: https://lockwoodinternational.co.uk/how-to-fit-dials/ Lastly, before you start you should take pictures of the dials on where the needles are when they are at rest, and started (i.e fuel needle should show the same before and after). Anyway, here we go: 1. R...

 Apparently every Elgrand has to be named, so after a lot of discussion, I am introducing Elsie. She is a Nissan Elgrand Autech Rider E52 with a 3.5 V6 engine (VQ35DE) finished in Phantom Black Pearl paint.  The alloys are 5x2 spoke silver 18" wheels that are not the standard Rider wheels, they actually look more like the ones on the Highway Star.  She has the optional large rear spoiler, the window wind diffusers, a nice twin pipe chromed exhaust, along with the normal Rider chrome front.  She has uprated shocks that the previous owner fitted (Kyb Riter Sports), twin sunroofs, and a blanking cap where the rear window wiper should be (apparently a common 'cool' mod in Japan). Inside Elsie she has a full 7 seater black leather interior, with black deep pile carpets that are more comfortable than those in my home.  The audio boasts the optional Bose 5.1 surround sound speaker system (with centre speakers and subwoofer) along with a rear mounted DVD screen.  T...

 I cannot even remember how I stumbled across the world of imported minivans, but at some point in 2020 I saw a Nissan Elgrand E52 for sale online and jokingly showed my daughter as a potential new car for the family.  The advert seemed to show an impressive luxury 7 seater with way too much chrome and way too many electric gadgets.  The joke quickly turned into 'why don't we go and see one' and two weeks later we were off to a local importer to check them out. We visited Lakeside Imports who had an impressive array of imported cars including a long line up of Elgrands.  Nestled in amongst the older E51 models were two E52's poking out, both Autech Rider models in black. The 2010/2011 cars made an immediate impression with their raked chrome fronts, blacked out windows, sliding doors and high end leather seating.  A quick look at some older E51s showed how much of an improvement Nissan has made moving away from the boxy van shape with its 70s dashboard to a car ...