Nissan Stagea Front Mount Intercooler Series 2 FMIC

Rabster
Posting Freak

10,234

14-11-2018, 07:19 AM

Borrowed from elsewhere

Bargain Japspeed kit off Ebay. It didn't fit very well, but I don't know if that was because it was a cheap kit or because it was for an R34 GTT. Though from what I've researched, R33 and R34 kits should fit a Stagea fine. Of course my Stagea has an R34GTR front end so it's all a mix n match.

First off, remove front bumper and side mount intercooler. All the mounting positions are plain to see so I won't go into more detail.
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All Fmic kits require some cutting of the bumper bar.Using an angle grinder I just cut out the bottom, preferring to retain the front face for strength. Not a great deal of the top of the fmic is obscured and due to the angle I'm sure air will still be forced through the top of the fmic too. Here you can see where I cut out the bottom of the bumper bar.
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Next, you will notice that the ambient air temp sensor and one of the horns will be in the way of the new fmic. I removed both and fixed them in slightly different positions.

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I drilled 2 holes 500mm apart to match the mounting bosses on the top of the fmic in the rear edges of the bumper. Due to the angle of the top surfaces of the bumper, this also angles the fmic backwards which I needed to clear the oil cooler,aircon fan etc at the top and the inside of the front bumper at the bottom, your bumper may have more clearance here.

In this pic you can see the top mounting bolts and the new positions of the air temp sensor and n/s horn.

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Test fitting the first pipe and it lines up pretty good.

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Notice, I haven't fitted any bottom mounts to the fmic yet. That's deliberate, so that I can ensure all the pipework lines up before final mounting.

Now that was the easy bit. Onto the driver's side pipework.
On Stageas and R34's the washer bottle is under the wing wight where we need to position the pipe for the ic return.

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On the inside, below the battery carrier is a large wiring harness junction, this need to ne unplugged and moved out the way because this is where we will be cutting the hole for the pipework.
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Now unbolt and disconnect the washer bottle and remove it. We'll come back to that awkward bit later.

Next I measured the driver's side pipe from centre to centre at the point it would enter the inner wing and after carefully checking several times that I would not hit any mounts,wiring or unneccessary metalwork, I cut the hole using a 79mm Starrett hole saw from my toolkit.

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Here's the waste piece to give you an idea of positioning from the mounting holes that are in it.
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Next I cleaned up the edges and painted them and added some vacuum hose slit down the middle to protect the edge and the piping.
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Now comes more fun. As can be seen from the next 3 pics, the top pipe and the bottom driver's side pipe were never going to meet up. This is something that there is no way to tell before you have cut the hole in the inner wing and put the bottom pipe through.
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Now I had a choice. I could try to move the bottom of the fmic back and open the hole in the inner wing backwards, or modify the pipework.

Moving the fmic backwards would have meant re-positioning the oil cooler,air con fan and nearside pipework and that would have been a real nightmare, so I decided to mod the driver's side bottom pipe.

I removed the fan and fitted the top pipe to give me a good idea of what was required. Then I cut the bottom driver's side pipe just after where it enters the inner wing, turned it slightly, bellowed out the ends to stop it blowing off and used the silicone hose that comes in the kit for the top pipe to join the modded parts. I just re-used the original perfectly good top pipe hose as it would have been spare anyway.

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Now onto the fan. I know with this style of kit, the fan blades have to be trimmed slightly. I wanted to trim tham as little as possible, so after a look through my spares box I found four gearbox dowels and I used these between the viscous fan unit and the fan with longer bolts to move the fan forwards. There's masses of room and no problem doing this except that it's a tight fit replacing the fan.

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Next I still had to trim a little of each blade.

I cut the corner off one blade with my Dremel and then used the offcut to mark off each other blade for cutting to ensure the same amount was removed and preserve the fan balance.

Now I could refit the top pipe

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With everything positioned and the hoses adjusted and clamped up, I checked that nothing on the fmic would rub or vibrate against anything and I turned to the bottom fmic mountings.
Using the plates that came with the kit, I lined them up with existing captive nuts and bent them up to match.

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Now the washer bottle.

I turned it though about 80 degrees and made new mounting brackets from various bits of aluminium and old induction kit brackets that I had hoarded away.
The biggest problem was when I cut the mounting off the bottle. I didn't realise it was hollow and all the water poured out, d'oh
Anyway a little bit of ally plate and some epoxy resin and that was sorted.
The hoses were long enough to remain in position, but I had to extend the wiring for the rear washer pump. No problem, but this bit of the job had been a bit of a nuisance and had added a couple of hours in time.

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Before I refitted the bumper I ran the engine to check for leaks, cable tied a couple of bits and sprayed wax in and around the front end.

The bumper only just went back in place with limited clearance especially around the driver's side bottom pipe. I also had to modify a couple of bumper mounts to make them use captive nuts instead of nuts and bolts because there would have been no access with a spanner due to the Fmic.

All in all, would I do it this way again ? Yes, because I saved quite a bit of money even though it was awkward and time consuming. If you aren't quite so confident with your own fabrication skills then I would suggest a kit that uses the original smic pipes and runs the fmic return back to the nearside, but that's probably going to cost you at least 3 times what I paid for my kit on a lucky ebay auction.

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