Friday 10 May 2013

Sickspeed Oil Cap

Changing the oil filler cap on your car is an easy way to add some colour to your engine bay.  The stock black plastic cap works nicely but it's a bit boring, especially when you open the bonnet at a car show or meet.  It's nice to have a bit of shininess.  With the NC using the MZR engine the oil cap is a twist/push fitment rather than the more common screw type.  This means you need to do a bit more searching for oil caps than normal as you don't want to end up buying the wrong type!

Sickspeed are based in the USA and carry a range of colourful accessories, mostly in universal fitment.  You can find a nice selection of gear knobs, dress up washers, seat belt pads, car horns, aerials etc on their website: Sickspeed.com I didn't order directly through their website as they seemed to be having some issues with it, so I resorted to an eBay store by the name of Auto Stars Outlet, here's the link: Auto Stars

The store has good feedback and lists stuff on eBay.co.uk but is based in the USA so you'll have to wait a while to get your parts.  I ordered my oil cap on 27th April and it arrived on 9th May so that's pretty good for the money.  The total cost to me was just under $18 which translates to £11.60.  Let's take a look at what you get for your money...
Here's the oil cap, first impressions were good.  It's a solid piece of aluminium nicely polished and comes pre-fitted with an o-ring.  You also get a sticky logo to add once you have fitted the cap so you get the orientation right, a wonky logo just wouldn't do!  It came with a sticker too, but mine was all folded up and had a rip in it, no worries there I'm sure I'll find somewhere to stick it - probably on my laptop that I used to write this blog.  Let's take a closer look...
You can see the twist/push fitment here, it takes a quarter turn to secure it.  Think of all that time you will save not having to unscrew your oil cap.  Would I recommend it?  Yes for just over a tenner I'd say so.  You can pay upto £60 for some oil caps (AutoExe I'm looking at you!!) and you could argue whether those are worth it, but for the money I think this is really nice.  It's also not trying to imitate something like the fake HKS type caps you can find in some markets.