mizumawari

In the past month I’ve had to replace the water pump and some skinny rubber hoses in my Crown as well as the radiator in the Cefiro. I had been refilling the water in the Crown every morning as it seemed to be losing 500cc or so per day. I could see where it was leaking from and figured it needed a new pump soon. The thing is, since I only drive it to work every day, I could afford to wait. Reversely, I couldn’t afford repairs right away so I just prayed for the old gal to soldier on until I could raise the scratch, and that she did. The shocker was what happened after the pump was changed out and the water replaced with proper coolant (it had been filled with water since I bought it, I think) – the running temp dropped damn near thirty degrees (celsius) on average. It went from 87 degrees at cruising speed to just below 60! Awesome.
Then, last week I noticed green coolant spatter in the engine room of the Cefiro and saw that the entire seam running around the top of the radiator was slightly leaking… Bad news! I always tell my wife to keep an eye on the temp gauge so that sweet-ass VQ30 under the hood doesn’t burn out… But really, this is a non-priority for non-gearheads who’ve never seriously overheated an engine. So that radiator had to get looked at, stat.
The Nissan dealer said it was very lucky we brought it in when we did because it was on the verge of catastrophic failure. Here’s the kicker: The stock Nissan radiator is made largely of plastic and costs 10,000 Baht ($300). An all-metal one made for my car by a third party supplier costs half that. It has the disadvantage of being heavier than the Nissan one. On the other hand, it can actually be fixed. So in this case at least, genuine parts were not the way to go (this is not always the case, though, as many of the cheapie parts here come from China marketed especially for the SE Asian market and are total crap).