More Luxury - Heated and Massage Function Retrofit to Second Row Captain's Chairs!

So it turns out that 20 minutes from where I live, there is a shop called Union Leather that specializes in automotive upholstery.

Actually, this is their front office, with the actual workshop located about 8 minutes away in the car repair mecca of Tsuzuki ward

On reading their website, turns out they can also add seater heaters as well, so of course I had to call and ask.  They install only these units from TC-Style, all apparently made in Japan.

Then I found out by looking at the TC-Style website that they also sold seat massage units.  And hence, this project was born. As a small shop, I had to make a reservation in advance, which was perfectly as I was able to order the massage units and seat heaters with plenty of time to spare.

The work was shown on Union Leather's Instagram page, which is where I got these photos

Motor units for the massage unit

heat seater

Given how little space there is on the seat frame, decided to have buttons installed here.

Now of course I am tempted to add the massage function to the front seats... maybe next time?

Adding to the Elgrand Nismo look

So despite having most of the Nismo Performance Package (except the wheels and muffler - oh and Nismo does not have a tuned ECU for my particular car) installed at Nissan Prince Fukushima recently, there were a couple items they did not have time for, but were considered something a DIYer like me could easily do, or so claimed Ochiai-san at Omori Factory. And yeah, one was very easy, but the other would involve some "cutting."

Given that challenge, of course I could not wait to do this. The part in question is the Rear Side Spoiler.  The theory is that it helps to manage airflow that flows from the side to the back, and therefore reduce some drag. I think it just looks cool.

In any case, the parts came in this box.

With the usual instructions and small bits.

The shiny spoilers wrapped in styrofoam

Ooohh very nice.

The firest step to install this is to remove the stickers on the rear window.

Low emissions car apparently.

And a 5 star crash test rating

About 30 minutes later, after liberal use of sticker removal liquid, and a razor blade....clean!

Then it was necessary to start measuring for taping off the area of glass which the side spoiler covers

Then some taping

Then the side molding has to be removed as the brackets have to be attached underneath.

You can see the two brackets here. And yes I had to cut off the rubber molding here in order for the brackets to fit snugly.

Some closeups - top side:

Bottom side:

And how the bracket looks after bolting on the bottom of the rear door.

top side

Here is how the double stick tape is located on the backside of the spoiler

And use the provided cleaning solution on the glass

Follow the instructions for which areas need to be taped off

And this is how it looks after they get attached.

Another view

And from the back.

But this was not all. I also had these, which surprisingly required a bit more finesse than I thought.

While they are pre-cut for Nissan cars, in order to get them to adhere properly to the concave shape, especially now in wintertime, you need to use a heat gun. Center them, then apply heat to make them fit.　I tried to line them up on the top. 

So what do you think? If only there was a way to improve straight line performance too...maybe something I will explore in the New Year?

It's All About Stance

So OEM cars here in Japan have to pass the bi-annual shaken, and one of the inspection items is to make sure the wheels do not extend past the fenders.  Some people add flared out fenders and then run a wider tread, but in this case, I figured that would be weird and the car is already large enough when driving as it is, so I decided instead to see if I could add spacers front and rear to fill out the fenders a bit.

I did the rears first, and Ochiai-san at Omori Factory was kind enough to recommend which aftermarket part was acceptable from a Nismo persepctive.

Check out that overhang!

First step was to back the Elgrand onto some low ramps so I could jack it up.

Interesting that all these tools I bought for working on the GT-R work well for this car too!

So these wide-tread spacers are made in Japan by TK-Lathe

Pretty hefty!

Meanwhile, I was busy getting the rear wheels off -check out that pretty S-tunes supsension!

For the rears, 15mm is the way to go. Appanretly true for other Nissan minivans too.

After the instsall, pretty flush, huh!

For the fronts, I decided to go for something that was a bit easier to install. Regular 5mm spacer.

Before!

After!

Much much better. Although I do worry a bit about the fronts, the OEM studs are showing pretty short now....

Making this an Urban Chrome VIP

So the OEM VIP version of the Elgrand has lots of chrome. Way too much. But for the usual standard Highway Star versions, Nissan also released "Urban Chrome" versons, where much of the chrome bits - noticeably the wheels, headlights, and tailights (for some reason NOT the door handles or window frames) are darkened chrome.

Since I don't like excessive chrome, and my goal is an Elgrand VIP Nismo version, the bright chrome has to come off. 

Hence I got the rear tailights and wheels swapped out for the urban chrome during my last visit to Nissan Prince Fukushima, as I posted earlier.  But even on the way home, I was already thinking about improvements. Recall that for some reason the lower brake/turnsignal/backup lamp cluster was not Urban Chromed.

So, I needed to fix this issue. Hence I went alone and found some road legal/shaken-friendly dark film. But first, I had to tape off the lamp so I didn't end up scratching the paint as I cut the film.

This shows the difference in between how the Urban Chrome cluster on top looks so much darker.

And then comparing how the film would look.

And this is how it looked right after the film application.

Without the tape, it looks a bit dark from a distance, but this is indoors.

Outside, it looks like this. Pretty good, actually!

And the turn signal isn't too darkened.

But there was more I had to do. Although he meant well, I wasn't too keen on Midorikawa-san's creative making of the Nissan and VIP badging a bronze color.

It sounded good in concept, and while I will leave the VIP badging as is, since they only came in  bright chrome (so the darker version is preferable), the Nissan badges came in Urban Chrome versions. I actually however wanted to get badging that was slightly darker than the OEM Urban Chrome badges, and Yahoo Auctions did not disappoint. So once I got the package, I removed the bronzed Nissan badges and reinstalled - I think this was the first time I had removed and reinstalled badges so this was fun.

The Bronze version

Creative use of dental floss and a heat gun made it easy.

and here is the daker Urban Chrome Nissan badge.

Side by side, you can see the difference!

I like it!

And of course, I had to the same for the front too, but this required removing part of the grill.

And then it was as easy as removing the badge from the back. 

All done!

So, now the coloring on the car is pretty good, and consistent with the Nismo look. But, there were a couple of mods I still need to do before this can be called completely Nismo'd.  That I will talk about in my next post!