My Pathfinder cracks - let me show you them

Doesn't look so bad, does it? After all, that's with the camera on it's macro setting. Let's zoom out a bit, and we'll see if you can guess (if you haven't already).


Any clearer? For those that are unfamiliar with the engine bay of a Pathfinder, that's the airbox. You can see the crank case breather line attaching at the top. It's an awkward photo - taken back towards the front of the car, hence the weird perspective.

No big deal right? Well, normally, no. But the crack being where it is places it on the engine-side of the air cleaner. Pathfinders have their air intake tucked up nice and high inside the inner guard, to keep dust and water away as much as possible. From there, the intake feeds into the engine bay and comes into the airbox from underneath. The air then passes up through the filter, and continues on into the motor. So, as it sits, it's likely to be sucking a small amount of air in through the crack and past the filter. The air itself is not the problem - it's whatever dust/sand/general crap is being carried along with the air that's Not So Good(tm). As you can probably tell by now, that's not something that you want happening in any car, let alone a 4WD that gets taken to some dusty, dirty and wet places.

Incidentally, I've got no idea how long it's been like that. Hopefully not long. But we discovered it on the weekend whilst camping when we had the bonnet up. So this weekend's job is to pull the airbox out of the car, and epoxy that corner back on. Hopefully that will hold, and we won't need to get it plastic welded or replaced. I doubt either of those options would be cheap.

While I'm in there, I might remove the ridiculously crap splash guard around the battery, which is more falling-apart than guarding splashes. It'll give me a good excuse to do some measuring, and see if there's any chance of stuffing a second battery in there. My currently plan is to mount a second battery in a big void under the car aft of the rear passenger wheel, but it would certainly be easier to keep it in the engine bay. However, I think that the size of the battery I want to run will dictate the rear mount position, where there's much more room than in the cramped engine bay.