by Dano
Overview:
Ok, you’re in your car, rolling around, and it’s pouring outside, but you love fresh air, and even if you’ve changed your cabin filter recently, open your windows to let it in.What happens next is you get an unexpected shower coming off of the roof, passing the rain gutter, and landing in a pool on your leg/ arm/ door panel.Well, Nissan gave an option to eliminate this problem, OEM rainguards!
Difficulty: *
Time: 1-2 hours
Cost: $150
Materials:
– Rainguards and included alcohol pad
Procedure:
So, you order your rainguards and they show up.
Aside from your Driver and Passenger side rainguards, Nissan included instructions (only in Japenese, since these are from the JDM market) and a high quality, 3M alcohol-based cleaning cloth to prep the area for the adhesive.
Ok, you’ve got the box unpacked and thrown away the wrappings, what now?Now it’s time to test fit the guards before your install them: DO NOT PULL OFF THE ADHESIVE STRIP COVER!Just set them over the weatherstripping, there’s 3 metal clips that need to fit over the weatherstripping, make sure they fit over delicately, you don’t want to crack the rainguards, even though they are very robustly made.
Now that you’ve test fit and all is good, pull off the guard and you can now prep it for final mounting.
First we’re going to look at the directions, which are complete with pictures, that may confuse some, but not an uber car buff like you!
And a close up:
As you can see from the picture, you want the clips to sit nice and firmly against the weather stripping and it shows you how to pull the adhesive strip backing away from the rainguards to mount them.(DO NOT PULL THE ENTIRE BACKING PIECE OFF!!!)
Here’s the back of the rain guard with the red adhesive backing strip in place:
And here’s how to pull the backing strip away from the adhesive strip for mounting, as shown in the photo from the instruction booklet:
Basically your pulling the adhesive backing strip away from just the ends, but make sure you pull it past that first clip nearest the camera as if you don’t it would be nearly impossible to pull the backing strip out correctly without messing up the clip or adhesive strip itself.
Now it’s time to prep the area that will be in contact with the adhesive strip, make sure to clean the area very well with the included cleaning cloth.DO BOTH SIDES at this time as the alcohol in the cleaning cloth will evaporate quickly, leaving it dry and useless.
You can see below the cleaned/ dustless area around the window, with a strong cleaning emphasis on the black weather strip, as that is the piece the adhesive will be in contact with:
Now you want to slid the rainguard clips over the weather stripping, making sure you have all 4 ends of the red adhesive backing strip folded out so you can easily pull them away when the time comes!
Should look like this, making sure it it pressed all the way down:
SPECIAL NOTE: Make sure that the tip of the guard fits nice and tightly around the tip of the weather stripping, as also shown below!You want the guard to sit well as this will be it’s final resting place!
It’s finally time to pull the red adhesive backing strip away from the adhesive strip!
Pull away gently, keeping the backing strip 90 degrees from the rainguard as you pull it away, being careful not to disturb the rainguard.Every 4-5 inches of backing strip you pull away, push down the guard, softly, but firmly, onto the weather strip:
You now have this:
BUT YOUR’E NOT DONE…
Now that the backing strip is completely gone, it’s time to put gentle, but firm pressure on the guard where it makes contact to the car so the adhesive can attach itself to the weatherstripping.You may have to sit there for a while, I spent probably 10 mins per side applying pressure.Also we’ll go back to emphasize how important it is to make the bottom/ front tip to fit over the tip of the weatherstripping:
Here you can see the white adhesive after pressure has been applied:
*SPECIAL NOTE* You can accelerate the adhesive’s setting up process by using a heat gun on low heat or a blow dryer.
CONGRATS! You’re done, now it’s time to crack open an icy beverage and look at the fruits of your labor.These accent the lines of the S14 so well, especially when complimented by an OEM SE front lip and OEM MCS14 sideskirts!
The best part about this install… you don’t get dirty!
-Dan
