Gas Bonnet Struts for the E52

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.





Comments

  1. JamilNovember 8, 2021 at 2:30 PM

    Hi
    Where did you purchase your struts from?

    ReplyDelete
  2. GaryNovember 8, 2021 at 6:52 PM

    Hey. I picked up mine from Ali Express which they sell in a range of colours as well:
    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003339221814.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. JamilNovember 9, 2021 at 7:23 AM

    thanks. Ordered. I hope you dont mind me asking for advice. Not much on forums and I am excited to follow what you do and maybe copy .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. GaryNovember 9, 2021 at 10:16 PM

      I also couldn't find that much on the forums so thought a blog for fellow owners could be useful. Do share what you learn too :)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

E52 vs E51 Part 1: Is size important?

Image
This is the first of a few posts that I will try and highlight the differences between the E51 and E52 Elgrand models.  As an owner of an E52 and a keen participant in the Elgrand facebook groups and forums, I have come across alot of posts that make comments about the E52 being 'just an estate car' or 'a Vauxhall Zafira on steroids' or that its 'lost the spirit of what an Elgrand is'.  Its very hard to find much information about the E52 so its also very difficult to show if these comments are accurate or not. I have managed to get my hands on information from Japan that highlights some of the differences.  For this post I will focus on the changes to the size of the Elgrand. Introduced in 2010, the E52 Elgrand made a significant departure from the previous model, opting for a front wheel drive setup instead of the E51's rear wheel drive.  This was a very clever change from Nissan as it allowed them to change the dimensions of the car for better performance...
Read more

Elgrand E52 MPG - How bad is it really

One of the first questions asked by any prospective Elgrand owner is what fuel economy is like, and there is quite a lot of discussion about the E51's economy, but very little about the E52.  I have kept a log of my fuel and mileage which might be helpful to you as an idea of what you are likely to get.  Be warned though, it might not be pleasant reading! In the last 6 months I have covered nearly 5000 KMs (my car is still recording in KMs) and the records I have are as follows: Litres KMs KM/L MPG 64 325 5.08 14.34 28 289 10.32 29.16 29 171 5.90 16.66 60 517 8.62 24.34 56 435 7.77 21.94 81 703 8.68 24.52 33 309 9.36 26.45 61 498 8.16 ...
Read more

English Stereo Replacement (Xanavi system)

Image
 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...
Read more