1.6L direct injection turbo 190HP
Front wheel drive
5 doors
6 speed manual
2960 lbs
5 seats
Josh was looking for a car but when I saw this going for a good price, my family convinced me to jump on it and give Josh the Golf GTI. It has 250,000 Kms but the seller rust proofed the underside for me and it came with new brakes all round and all season tires.
To Do
- Diagnose strange cutting out (P0234 overboost?) issue on cold mornings – this morning when I was overtaking someone getting up to about 80kph, it suddenly cut out again. With the old MAF sensor it would cut out at just over 3000rpm when getting on boost but today it got up to about 4000rpm before it cut out. There’s also a strange fluttering noise sometimes when changing gear and it almost cut out again this morning when I was parking – no CEL yet though. I’m scratching my head here, maybe it will have to go to Nissan for some deep diagnostics?
- Did it again the other day on the highway, 20 minutes into the drive home. CEL with same code(s) i.e. with P0101 MAF range. Cleaned boost sensor and connections and after a week or so the CEL cleared itself, came back and then cleared again for a week although it has been warmer.
P0101 still fires sometimes, cleaned the throttle plate to see if that helps. - Remove DS door panel and check window clunking
- Lowering springs – when Josh orders his for the Golf.
Well now I have the Golf back I guess this isn’t going to happen? I like the handling but there is a lot of roll, feels like the inside rear wheel is lifting sometimes but it is dang quick and predictable through the corners. - Tune ECU? – still not ready to blow $1000 on a tune for the daily driver
Completed
Q1 2020
- Paint faded mirror covers – removed the covers and headlight surrounds and gave them a few coats of paint. Bought some double sided mounting tape for re-installing but it doesn’t seem as sticky as the 3M stuff that Rick gave me with the Nismo badge.
- When we removed the winter rims we found that they had centre bore adapters and one was missing (from the front right IIRC). The ones we have are made out of plastic and I don’t think they take much load so I figured I’d have a go at 3D printing one. I measured the OD slightly wrong on the first attempt but this one looks good. It’s probably obvious but the 3D printed adapter is on the right in both pics.
- Paint/powder coat rims – powder coat is a bind so paint it is. The centre caps have the Nissan logo embossed on them that would be hard to mask and the rims are in good shape so I decided to abandon painting them.
- Get summer tires – the BF Goodrich KDW2s I have on the RX8 rims should fit the new 350Z rims
- Get rims – picked up a set of 350Z rims that should fit as can be seen here, https://autotk.com/tuning/nissan/juke/10940/
- Install new MAF sensor – got new Hitachi MF0058 sensor from Amazon, CEL still came on and went off again, I think the throttle valve might be sticking a little
- Fixed gear select issue – wouldn’t go over to 5th or 6th and then later wouldn’t go into 1st! Found an acorn dropped in the linkage on the gearbox!
August 2019
Fix vacuum leak – erratic idle, P0101 MAF sensor range issue, STFT at about 10 but goes down to 0 at 2000rpm. Tried smoke machine and soapy water but could not find any sign of a leak – maybe needs to be warm?
Sprayed a load of brake cleaner around the engine bay while it was idling hot and it was rock solid, no sign of a vacuum leak and at the risk of jinxing it, the MAF sensor code hasn’t come back for several weeks now.
Seems to be burning a fair bit of oil with very little impact on performance, put 2 bottles of Lucas oil stabilizer in – had very good results with that in the past.
June 2019
AC not blowing cold – took it in to a local garage for system health check, they couldn’t find any leaks so told them to top up the coolant and we’ll see how it goes – $450!!!!! Seems a lot to me when the DIY kits are about $70 but they also use a conditioner that helps maintain the seals.
They also said that the cabin air filter needed replacing and one of the CV boots was torn, I got a filter from CT for $40 and installed myself and booked it in again for the CV boot (the Porsche is not reliable enough yet for me to tackle the boot on a weekend).
Checked the oil level at the weekend and it was almost off the bottom of the dipstick!!! Topped it up and will keep a closer eye on it but there’s no sign of drips underneath so it’s likely blowing past the piston rings and if that’s the case, it will mean major surgery.
May 2019
Since I have upgraded the air filter and muffler and deleted the resonator, I think I’m probably over 200HP now so I felt justified in having Rick make me a Nismo badge, installed it last night.
The CEL came on at the weekend with P0101 MAF out of range code again. Cleaned the MAF sensor again and checked the wiring, then cleared the code but it came back immediately?? Checked for vacuum leaks by spraying Quick Start (ether) around the engine bay but it seemed fine. Cleared the code again, stayed off for 2 days so far.
Idle was a bit off on the way home from work, it could be relearning stuff after the muffler but just in case, I cleaned the throttle valve with Sea Foam and a cotton bud.
Stillen Muffler: Picked this up from a guy on Kijiji, traded for an Xbox 360. When I checked mine, it is quite different and has no flange at the muffler. In fact since there was no flange installed when the resonator was deleted, the entire exhaust from the turbo back is all one piece including the cat!
It took some cutting and welding with a couple of adapters but we got it installed and I think it sounds great! Also made a significant difference to the performance, Stillen suggest +13HP and that seems about right to me, it definitely pulls better and is generally a better/smoother drive.
Tuning: it seems that getting a tune on this thing is not going to be easy. A lot of places say they can’t connect to the ECU and the ones that can want mega bucks (like $1100) and haven’t even tuned a Juke before – crazy if you ask me! The best option so far seems to be an ECU-Tek Programming Kit from Visconti that works out at about $960 with shipping and allows me to flash the ECU with ‘off the shelf’ roms. It’s a lot of money for something that is licensed to ONLY one vehicle and might well only be used once.
April 2019
- CEL P0101 MAF Sensor Circuit Range/Performance – cleaned MAF Sensor
- Straight pipe resonator – $120 at RJ’s
- CEL Misfire on Cyl #4 – New spark plugs, NGK 91215 DILKAR7C9H, also swapped coils 1 and 4 When I punched it to overtake someone the other day, I started getting some hesitation and then the CEL started flashing indicating that there had been some misfires. I pulled the pending code that indicated the misfire was on cylinder 4 only so I figured the first place to start was spark plugs. CarQuest was able to get me some at a very reasonable price so I ordered 4 and installed them, also swapped coils on cylinders 1 and 4 just in case. The plug in cylinder 4 was the worst and was well worn, wouldn’t be surprised if it was original!
- Check exhaust for leaks – small hole in resonator, cat flange rusted
- Oil change
- Install new K&N air filter $79
- Adjust parking brake