Nissan Elgrand E52 Lowdown

I have been wanting to clean the engine bay in my E52 for a while now, its a special car so why not make what's under the bonnet look its best.  I removed the air box and the cover from the air filter, and then to my horror noticed that there was a split in the air ducting. Checking on my favourite part diagram site I located the part number which is 16576-1AA1A.  Seems that the part is common to Murano's as well, but I found an aftermarket one on Ali Express for under £20, and so ordered that.  If you need one its here <Air Duct> : Admittedly it did take 2 weeks to arrive, but looked pretty much identical to the old one.  To replace the air duct if you have the same issue, you need to use pliers to move the spring clip from the bottom hose. Then loosen the metal collars using the two screw points highlighted here. Getting the old one off was easy, and a quick comparison picture for you to see how they look.  Top is the old one. The new air duct was a bit ...

I completed an oil and filter change a few weeks back and its actually very straightforward, nothing too surprising for any would be mechanic.  I opted for the Nismo oil filter which is part 15208RN011, it was £14 from eBay.  You can buy a standard replacement for £5-8 but hey I wanted the Nismo one on my E52. You will need to jack up the car either at the front or if its easier you can just raise the drivers axle.  First thing is to remove the plastic panel inside the drivers wheel arch. This should reveal the oil filter inside the arch.  Its quite a small filter compared to some cars. To drain the oil first, you need to just remove the head head drain plug from sump underneath near the drivers side.  The pic below shows the plug to remove.  Don't confuse it with the drain plug on the gearbox (which is the passenger side unit). Once its empty you can unscrew the old filter.  Mine was very very tight and fortunately I managed to get it unscrewed in the...

When my E52 arrived at Southampton docks a year ago I was very enthusiastic about making sure the car was serviced and checked over so that it would last forever.  Once I began looking at the car it seemed that I had been extremely lucky and had bought one that had recently been serviced.  (I bought it from a Japanese dealer who wasn't even advertising the car outside of Japan, and not from an auction so found one that was well maintained)  My mechanic who checked the car over described it as 'mint' and when we checked the oil, it was the cleanest I had ever seen in a used car. Anyway, fast forward now and its 12 months later and now I am keen to show my car some attention.  The big headline item as I'm sure you all know, is the CVT gearbox.  Let me just summarize what I have picked up so far from the various Facebook groups and forums: People often claim the CVT gearbox is bad or prone to failure (especially E51 owners!).  I haven't seen one post anywhere ...

 My Elgrand arrived with an interesting yellow colour bulb in the front fog lights, which neither look good or are useful on a dark or foggy night.  If you want to replace them you need H8 bulbs which you can buy from eBay or a parts shop. You have to remove two screws and a bolt in the wheel arch and then you can lever the wheel arch cover far enough out to get at the fog light fittings. You simply twist the black fitting where the wire goes into.  Either clockwise/anticlockwise to remove or fit back in place.  Then you can remove the bulb and replace with a brighter and better colour option.

I have been driving my E52 a year now and thought that I really should get around to doing some service items on it. First up, the air filter which I have found out is the same as the one used in the earlier E51 model.  After searching online I decided that I would try the K&N air filter which in theory lasts the life of the car.  It is washable so should never need replacing again.  It does also claim to improve performance but that feels like it might be one those typical claims, and not sure you need a few extra horses on a V6 van.  K&N 3320312 is the filter you need which is this: On the E52 you can simply unclip the air filter housing which is located at the back of the engine bay.  One clip each side and the cover lifts up enough to remove and replace the filter. I have driven the car about 200 miles since fitting the filter and it doesn't seem to negatively affect the acceleration.  I am not sure I can feel an improvement, but you never know....

It is trendy for Elgrand E52 drivers in Japan to remove their rear windscreen wiper, similar to drivers here who de-badge their cars.  Not something I noticed when I bought my Elgrand but after a few months of driving I am ready to restore the rear wiper back into position.  The big issue for UK drivers is that the weather here causes the screen to get very dirty and coupled with the very dark tint it becomes almost impossible to see out of.  As you can see in the picture my one had a round metal blanking cover which has seen better days as its not even very black in colour now. Unfortunately for me the actual rear wiper unit with the motor was removed from the car so it took a few months for me to get the parts together.  I secured a second hand wiper unit, brand new Nissan bolts and windscreen 'bung', and then a replacement wiper blade from Aliexpress. Steps to fit are as follows: 1. Remove the two pop out rivets from either side of the lock, and using plastic tool...

If you need to replace the gear shift selector / knob then heres how you can do it. (Useful if you need to replace the aircon or media control units.) IMPORTANT NOTE: You need to part on flat ground before starting this work.  The parking brake is not sufficient to hold the car if you are on a hill 1. Push down the Shift Lock button on the silver gear surround.  Use a plastic tool or something soft to avoid damaging the silver panel.  2. While holding the Shift Lock move the gear shift selector to Neutral position 3. Lever down and unclip the silver base of the gear shift handle 4. Remove the pin from the gear shift handle 5. Now just pull the handle off the stick.   6. I would recommend not moving the gear selector stick while you work on it.  

One of the easiest jobs to tackle on the E52 is to change the aircon filter inside the car.  As my own E52 had been a smokers car (hard to tell when you purchase from abroad) I wanted to get as much of the smell gone as possible.  The filter I used is a Blueprint ADN12519, just head over to eBay and you should be able to pick one up for under £10. To fit the filter you need to remove the plastic panel in the passenger footwell, which you just pull off.  Then you should see a thin plastic cover that you unclip and remove.  The filter has be squashed together a bit to get it out and the new one carefully pushed in place.  If you need a little help the following video should help.

 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...

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.

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...