Rochester,

I have seen these hoses in Blue as well, also clear so you can actually see the fluid in them

 

Not a performance thread, but yes... I share your priorities for the most part, Perk.

To that end, while the OEM exhaust manifold is less than optimal, I'm content with my Cattman y-pipe and 2.5" catback for the remaining time that I drive this car.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Call me crazy, but after all this talk about chroming things, I wonder how this adapter would look blasted smooth and chromed?

 

might look good...i hate chrome though so im not a good judge

B

 

Whoah Rochester! I didn't realize that you didn't have headers! (not that there's anything wrong with that)... just kinda assumed you would have them. Especially having a 5.5...

 

Man, seeing this picture makes me question why I didnt atleast clean my junkyard tranny before putting it in. lol Its getting painted for sure next time I drop it.

Do you guys cover anything at all in the engine bay before hosing it down? Or do you just hose it off, then just start the car?

 

Cost of mods, learning about the car, and total plans for ownership... over the last few years a combination of those factors brought me to where the car is today: cattman y-pipe, cattman 2.5" catback, but no headers. If I were to start from scratch, then absolutely headers, hands down. (Just so you guys know, the y-pipe for headers was not the same y-pipe Catts designed for the OEM exhaust manifold. They be different.)

Anyway, I have no regrets. The Cattman y-pipe is a fine mod when matched with his cat-back. I'm shy maybe 10hp give or take of the other approach. See my sig for mods, and you can rightly imagine the car is no slouch.

 

 

is that how it comes?

B

 

No, man. It was your idea. I painted the lettering red.

 

crap! you and your professional quality pictures are deceiving!

looks good!

B

 

"I see a MAF housing, and I want it painted black.
No colors anymore, I want them to turn black... "

 

Ahh, that's a witttle guy.

 

Inspired by this thread to do some details in the engine bay, but not so inspired as to drop a lot of coin, so I replaced the 3 couplers and brackets on my SRI with gloss black Spectre Couplers. That, and the painted MAF housing, make for a cleaner look. Purely a cosmetic change, and only for me when I open the hood.

Here is the "before" shot:



And I think it looks better in person than this particular photo, but anyway, here is the "after" shot:

 

Rochester, nice job!!! Why didn't you paint the midpipe as well? I had a choice between the silicone coupling from my Injen intake and some Samco and I chose the longer 3" x 3" Samco over the shorter 2.5" x 3" Injen couplings, too make my intake a little longer......More torque....Nice job though!

 

looks good, but I see you swapped the t-bolt clams with hose clamps. I think t-bolts look nicer.

 

When I detailed my engine it was not in the car and the IM and valve cover were removed and done separately. I did use masking tape and paper to paint those rusty coolant lines on the front of the motor.
Here's another before and after.



the pic in my sig is still the old motor. I gotta get rid of that picture. lol

 

The mid-pipe is powder-coated in metallic silver, and the car is sheer silver, so the combo works for me at the moment.

Appearance considerations aside, I actually think the t-bolts are stronger than traditional hose clamps, but my old ones are getting corroded, so I thought I'd see how well these simple hose clamps hold up. I did buy a 3" Spectre t-bolt clamp to experiment with, but it doesn't really work; too small for some reason. I think I need to research for t-bolt hose clamps and buy some online somewhere.

Here's the thing about the Spectre couplers: they are kind of thin, resulting in more play than the ones I replaced. That's good to support engine vibration, I suppose, but it concerns me a little. I'm probably over-analyzing it.

 

This site seems like a good source for couplers and clamps:

http://www.siliconeintakes.com

On second attempt, the Spectre 3" t-bolt clamp worked just fine. I dunno what I was smoking.

I need to pick up 5 more and replace these worm clamps. I don't like the worm clamps.

 

Good one Rochester, painting the MAF housing. Your intake does look better. Now I just need to have a free afternoon so I can polish my IM! I'll post pics when I'm done... I removed my engine cover and realized I haven't really cleaned underneath... I'll have to get around to that. I'm just scared to hose things down... Prefer to wipe. It's just so hard to get everywhere with a cloth.

 

up until i saw this...I never really thought about makin my engine bay look nice. i just usually make sure its clean and not retaining un-needed heat

 

The more I thought about it, the more I did not like the cheap worm gear hose clamps. So I picked up 3 more Spectre t-bolt clamps for a total of 4. The TB clamp and the TB-side of the MAF housing each need a 3.5" clamp, so I used two of the old ones, and put shiny new t-bolt clamps on the other 4 connectors. The resulting SRI setup is much, MUCH more solid with these clamps.

And it looks better, too, IMO. Good advice about the t-bolts, bryan163.

 

I just started dressing up the engine bay of my G and found this company that makes some real nice dress up hardware, it's a nice touch to replace all the ugly nuts, bolts and screws.



http://galleryfresh.com/index.html

 

nice

 

Oh-h-h... pretty. Perfectly on-topic to this thread.

Aren't all the bolts along the front frame piece M6? You know, the ones bolting down the radiator supports and the headlights.

 

One thing that i have done on my spec and i plan on doing on the max, is to cut the maf housing. basically eliminate the 4 bolts that hold on the maf adapter plate. This eliminates the ugly maf adapter and makes a clean uniform intake.

You will lose the ability to mount the stock airbox on but for some of us its not a big deal. You will also loose the screen in the maf, For me this isnt a big deal. Nissan eliminated the screen in a few 04+ vehicles. So its obviously not really needed.

Heres a pic of it. dont mind the ghetto worm clamp. My t-bolt stripped and i needed a quick fix

 

are those 2 turbos sitting on the table back there?

B

 

Obviously?

 

only thing i worry about when i clean my bay is my AE engine cover. i remove that then go Mel Gibson on my engine bay. spray it with degreaser and hose it down...all while the car is on

 

Where can I order the battery tie down and the oil cap?

I like how they look....very subtle but nice

 

The ones in my car?

If so, the tie-down is from Racingline Performance. Buy it from them direct through their website for $34:

The cap is from some eBay retailer. $20 shipped. Search on +NISMO +MAXIMA. It doesn't say "NISMO" on my cap because I didn't apply the decal. Cleaner that way.

 

Turbos are a dime a dozen, you should be looking at that beautiful custom feedpipe hugging that unmodified front engine mount...

 

The Gallery Fresh dress-up bolts/washers only come as a kit. You can't purchase a-la-carte. (damn it) 2 of the 4 listed retailers got back to me with a hard stop. So I reached out to the manufacturer to see if they would piece together a custom kit. Don't think that's going to happen, though.

Meanwhile, I found these JDM-Password dress-up bolts/fender-washers, that seem pretty ubiquitous throughout eBay, $15/5ct. I don't know what "JDM-Password" is supposed to mean. Seems kind of a dumb name. To add ugly to stupidity, they stamp their lame logo on the anodized fender washers. Still, it doesn't look too bad.

I was thinking of getting 4 fender washers in red, one pair for each headlight bolts on the front frame. Maybe the white lettering will come off with a little goo-be-gone.



As for the six 6M nuts (radiator clamp, etc.) I was thinking a set of these polished titanium flange nuts would look pretty good:

http://www.dressupbolts.com/products...&product_id=22

 

I too have a commando style MAF.

 

Here's another site for your hardware needs.

http://www.ballerbolts.com/index.html

Here's my oil cap pretty nice piece with or with out the shocker lol

 

Yup. I have a few turbos with blown seals that I use for feed pipe mock-ups. The one on the left is the Precision that I'm running in the car now. The other is a short lived ebay special. The feed-pipe, I built myself. The engine mounts have since been welded solid and the whole cross member and mounts are now clean and painted with wheel paint.

 

This is what I do...





Custom air brushed engine cover

 

Sorry for the massive pic. I never put the engine cover back on after my spacer install b/c I want to sand it down and paint it. Somehow I ended up with a yellow&red theme...completely unintentional. I guess it started when I initially bought the yellow-top optima b/c I was going to put a system in it but then changed my mind...as you can see, its filthy...

 

Of course, after I have to post my pic right "under" a custom airbrushed engine cover on a turbo maxima! lol! Looks awesome btw!

 

Yeah, very bad timing, there, Rhyno. Roy is a tough act to follow.

Your guy did a fantastic job, Roy! You have to be liking that. I see you decided to go straight rather than cocked towards the turbo, like you were originally thinking.

Some other observations:

• Where did your Nismo oil cap go? Your OEM cap is back.
• Worm-gear hose clamps on the upper radiator hose? C'mon, Roy! (I can say that, having just now learned my lesson about t-bolts vs. worm gear clamps.)
• In pic #1, those OEM yellow warning stickers are on the cross-piece, but gone in pic #3... is that right? Cleaner without them, I think.

So now you know what's happening, right? The high-gloss black is dulling down the rest of the parts, leading to the inevitable question:

 

I would love to yank the motor out and paint the engine bay to go along with it, but for right now this will have to do.
I wanted to use the OEM black cap as the NISMO cap would have taken away from the cover. I see what you mean about the stickers and clamps. Have you tried your local hardware store for the the t-bolt clamps?