All in a days work

Well the Sun has come up on us English and as we stagger blinking into the light. My thoughts turn to how much time I have put in at work, the fact that its Friday and the thought that I could have a couple of hours quality time in peace, working on the car!

Bulb replacements.
A while back I replaced both front wings (fenders) indicators (repeaters, winkers) with clear lens Nismo ones. For some odd reason Nissan supply the amber bulbs shown and naturally being a clear indicator you can see little amber bulbs. Who's bright idea was that!

 So having hunted around in my local motor factors shop I found a grand total of nothing! To eBay I went and turned up a plentiful supply! As you can see I have a 'chromed' bulb.

Fitting is simple when you know how and all you have to do to remove the indicator is pull forwards (towards the front of the car) and towards you. The unit simply pops out, which on reflection is a little alarming considering the cost of clear indicators!!

Pop in your new bulb, click the indicator back into place and the jobs a good one. All in all it takes all of a minute!

Replacing the Grill

The hardest part about replacing the grill is releasing the clips at the back. Ideally get yourself a pair of long nose pliers to compress the clips at the back, applying a small amount of forward force, pulling the grill towards you with your free hand.
As your aware I had already picked up and considerably reworked a Spec 2 grill. It was okay but not perfect, especially the logo and I strongly believe that the logo 'is' the car.

 As you can see the above shot is of my reworked grill, the S logo was damaged and the mesh was corroded when I obtained it originally. I replaced the mesh and cleaned up the logo as best I could. But as you can see, although still technically a Skyline logo, it has lost a lot of definition.

The above is a shot of the new grill in place. As you can see the mesh is larger and thicker. Made from steel it has a heavy, thick plastic coating, very similar to powder coat. The S logo is much more sharply defined and was in the original red colouring when I laid my hands on it. This was sprayed with enamel paint in gold leaf. It's quite interesting comparing the two different shades and effects of the Gold.

Re branding the Cusco Strut Brace
I obtained the logo from a place in Hong Kong, it is of very high quality and was difficult to apply. The decal came on it's own carrier sheet for positioning, although it was difficult removing the backing sheet without parts of the logo detaching themselves and I had to carefully peel back using a craft knife to keep all the component parts in place. Equally when positioning it in place again I had to employ the knife to remove the carrier film.

Although more difficult to do than first thought (its just a sticker right?) I was quite pleased with the end result.

Cleaning up the Intercooler.

Intercoolers are nasty.. they go dull, are dirt magnets and hard to get at. I got out the kitchen bowl and some 400 and 1200 grit sand paper. Laying on the ground, squatting and generally getting into all kinds of curious uncomfortable positions I cleaned it up, using the 400 and then 1200 to finish. Lastly some metal polish cleaned up the big sides.

 That job done, I had a quick wipe around the engine bay. Little and often works for me! Although it always amuses me when people say "duh, you must spend hours under the bonnet cleaning", really, it isn't that hard folks... Maybe getting to this point is a bit of work and a few hours!