[chelito92105]

2002 Se-R

Im kind of confused as to what would be better. My car has the pending recalls for the installation of the heat shield and reprogramming of the ECU, but I have not heard that many happy responses from people who got their ECU reprogrammed. Also, does the installation of the heat shield eliminate the problem of metal getting sucked into the engine?

I was planning to remove the pre-cat tomorrow but now I am not sure if it would just be better to remove the whole thing and not do the recalls. Wanted to work on the car this weekend so any help is appreciated. Thanks

 

[saint0421]

Get rid of the pre-cat w/o a doubt. I haven't heard of a recall concerning the heat sheilds. However, a heat sheild is not the cause of pre-cat failure. Btw, you should loctite your butterfly screws as well.

QR25DE Precat and Butterfly Screw FAQ - MSV

 

[chelito92105]

So skip the recalls altogether and just remove the pre-cat, and tighten the butterfly screws as well?

 

[revoltrise]

if your car is an 02 and the recall hasn't been done, then theres about a 80% chance your pre-cat has failed, and your engine has been damaged. if you remove your pre-cat, your engine damage won't be covered under the extended warranty that nissan is covering vehicles affected by the re-call with. take it in and have the recalls done, chances are good you will be in a loaner car for a week while nissan buys you a new motor! what could be better than off-roading with 7 of your closest friends slammed into a rental Ford Taurus while your nissan gets a *brand new* (remanufactured) motor?

 

[chelito92105]

I actually just picked my car up today and had the recalls done. Where they supposed to drain my oil or something though? They guy at the dealer told me the engine was OK and they pretty much just slapped a heat shield around the damn thing...but im just wondering if i should still remove the pre-cat. I thought they were supposed to drain my oil and check or something.....?Anyone know?

 

[revoltrise]

yeah the recall includes an oil change to inspect for catalytic converter shards in floating in the oil. if they just installed the heat shield kit then there was no damage to the converter, and you have nothing to worry about. if you have modifications to your car (intakes especially) and drive it at full throttle much of the time you should take the converter out and put it on a shelf till its inspection or resale time. if everything is stock and you drive within reason most of the time, aside from the couple of horsepower it restricts, there is no reason to take it out, and if you leave the cat in you wont have to stare and your SES light all the time.

im pretty surprised though that they didnt at least install a new converter. in fact i think the 02 and 03 require a new converter with the heat shield kit. on every one of these that come through my shop, if there is even the slightest amount of damage to the cat we replace the motor. im sure its the same elsewhere, so since you got it back i'd say you're in good shape.

 

[chelito92105]

Hmm thats a good thing I guess. I actually thought they had to drain the oil though to check for shards of metal. Since my oil is the same and they told me they did not do an oil change how can they know if there was any damage? And yeah the car is an automatic too so I dont rev it up too high, except for the occasional times, the only thing Im worried about is that I do drive it back and forth one to twice a month about 230 miles each way. Would that cause damage? Oh yeah the car does have a CAI.

Im tightening down the butterfly screws tomorrow so I was wondering about removing the cat as well. But I dont want to re-locate the sensor, sounds like a pain. Im leaning more towards just leaving the pre-cat on...

 

[revoltrise]

like i said, if you don't drive like a 16 year old, the combination of heat-sink and ECM reprogram are plenty safe and there is no reason to remove it. part of the recall is removing and inspecting the cat, if there is 0 damage top or bottom they wont do an oil change, i forgot that, that only happens when you replace the cat...if yours was fine then the oil change isnt required. are you sure the power valve recall hasn't already been done to your car? there are updated screws as part of the kit and a special tool to hold the butterflies in place...so if you can have it done at the dealer you should, because its not really fun to do, and if you drop one of the tiny screws or butterflies into the lower manifold you're going to wish you hadn't spent your saturday working on your car...

 

[chelito92105]

Sh*t....about the power valve recall...I dont know if it was done to my car or not. When I gave them my VIN the only recalls pending were the ECU reprogramming and the Cat Shield thing they just did. Any idea when this recall was issued? Was it an official recall or a custom service that was encouraged to get done? Thanks for all this info by the way

 

[chelito92105]

Sorry, I shouldve added that I bought the car about a month ago and know the previous owner got some recalls done but not sure which ones...

 

[revoltrise]

its been done if you were there today and they didn't do it, it was a recall i think it came out in 06...part of that recall is motor replacement too, technicians love it when we get to do these cat and power valve recalls because there is usually a good chance we will be replacing the motor, nissan pays a technician about 11 hours to replace a motor and do both of these recalls. most techs can have the car in and out before lunch! so like i said if there was even the slightest hint of damage to the cat or motor they would have replaced it.

 

[alexgo82]

Question ?
the 03 SE R spec V have the same problem with the Pre-cat and butterfly screws, because i have just a month with the car and i toked to a Nissan Dealer to make an Idle Relearn ( I pay for that ) , and I don't know if the Recalls still valid for the Pre cat and butt.... or not?
any idea , also the car was imported to Mexico , I'm in the border with EL pAso Tx.