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LR 9448 springs (one coil removed) with Bilstein 5100's in the rear, KYB struts and OME springs in the front. About 2.5" of lift.

Your gear ratio choices are limited on an R50, unfortunately. Hawairish explained it pretty well here. If you've got 4.3 gears, you could swap them for 4.6 gears, but those are the only two ratios available for the front diff.

I have no complaints running 33” mud tires with the stock gears. The truck still has plenty of power for daily driving and can still cruise 75-80 mph on the highway no problem. My speedometer is off about 3 mph but that doesn’t bother me. As long as you have a newer R50 with the vq35 then gears are not a necessity at all. Nice to have sure, but not necessary. The older rigs with the vg33 may be a different story.

Looks like the perfect stance between front and rear. Glad to see the rear springs are working for you!

Haha, get it...what’s the diff? Ok, sorry. Tough crowd. Thought I’d share some details about the R200 diff for a project that’s in my head. Lately I’ve been seeing a bit of chatter about gearing options for the R50, and I’ve been playing bubble-buster by saying the only gear options are 4.363 and 4.636, which are what came stock on 96-04 Pathfinders. Of course, even more bad news is that most R50s from 96-02 already had 4.636, while all 03-04 models had 4.363 only, further limiting the crowd that can actually benefit from a gear change after increasing tire size. I’m hoping to fix that. So if Xterras, Frontiers, Hardbodies, and Pathfinders all have the R200A front axle, then why can’t we interchange gears? Well, Nissan does some silly stuff sometimes. In this case, they put a front axle called the “R200A” in just about every truck and SUV from 1986 to 2004. Yet for an elite class of SUVs (the R50, of course), they put a bastard variant up front. Lucky us, right? Despite sharing an axle code, there are numerous other differences, the most notable one being that gears between are not interchangeable. The R50 version has high-pinion, reverse cut gears, while every other version has low-pinion, standard cut gears. That said, unless a vendor says a set of gears is for—and only for—an R50, will it actually work. With that aside, let’s talk about the exterior differences. R50: WD21: Passenger’s side: R50 diff cover: WD21 diff cover: High-pinion vs low-pinion: As you can see, very different. The obvious visual differences: Axle width CV bolt pattern Pinion height Chassis mounting method Diff cover Pinion offset from driver’s side CV flange Passenger-side flange (the manner in which it bolts to the axle tube) Similarities: Driveshaft flange Distance from axle centerline to flange

So I guess I should start my build thread, after 2 years of messing with the new to me 1999 SE I picked up from a Copart Auction. I wasn't able to make it out and do a pre-inspection on the rig, so I had to decide if I wanted to bid on it sight unseen. I figured if I got it cheap enough it would be worth it, if for nothing but parts. It was classed as run and drive and had 193K on the clock. It looked like the body was in very good shape, as was the interior. I knew with the milage the mechanical was going to need some attention, depending on how well the PO had maintained it over the years. First time I ever bid on one of those auctions. I got into a bit of a frenzy and ended up bidding against myself there at the end. I didn't realize that my ID was from the state that my broker was located, which was in Oregon, and some guy in Colorado, which is where I am from, seemed to really want it. Even with the confusion, I ended up winning the auction, although I thought I had lost. That damn guy from Oregon just wanted it worse than me, he outbid me every time. I was like damn! Not meant to be. That guy stole it from me for $750. A couple of minutes later I get an email from Copart congratulating me on my victory and to expect another email with the details from the seller if he accepted my bid. I was confused but happy that I won somehow. A few hours later the owner sent a counteroffer wanting $1500 for it. I countered with $1150 which was finally accepted. Kinda meet ya in the middle type of deal which worked out. Paying for a car or truck from one of the auctions is a bit of a learning curve if you have never done it. You basically have to have cash or cashiers check or funds transfer from your bank. Since the broker was out of state, it was a bit more difficult to move the money over there and was going to add a couple of days. I ended up taking cash to Copart and paid them directly. This complicated things with the title as it was sent to Oregon for them to process. Kinda weird and it ended up taking about a week to get the docs. It wasn't that bad just a little frustrating and taking into account I was a total noob it all worked out. Both organizations were great to work with and they sorted it out, for my unconventional situation. Just an FYI the local brokers in the state of Colorado that I found were way more expensive than the one I used in Oregon, so I think I saved in cash what I didn't in time and frustration. Live and learn. If you want to pursue this kind of thing and want more info just send me a PM and I can provide what limited experience I have and what I learned in more detail. I would highly recommend trying it at some point if you like to have new life experiences, the whole thing was a gas and I think I ended up with a pretty nice truck. The previous owner (there were 2 before me) must have been a kid or something, considering the CD that was left in the changer (ugh), was kind enough to leave me an estimate from Firestone with a laundry list of all the things that needed to be done to the vehicle. It was a pretty long list, to the tune of about $4,000. It "needed": 1. Valve Cover Gaskets 2. Fuel Pressure Regulator 3. Fuel Injector seals 4. Fuel Injectors 5. Timing Belt 6. Water Pump (cause we would be in there) 7. Tie rod ends 8. Sway bar links 9. CV Axels 10. Front Wheel Bearings 11. New Tires all around - They actually had about 10K left on them. I ended up buying most of the above parts and a few more things like all new vacuum lines, fuel lines, fuel filter, air filter, spark plugs and wires, dizzy cap and rotor. I ended up spending about 2 grand on parts and spent the first summer nights and weekends getting it all sorted out. I think the PO had driven it for a while with the failing injectors and might have ended up trashing the cats and the O2 Sensors. It is throwing P0420 now, and I think it has an exhaust leak up near the manifolds. A little tick, tick, tick when it is cold and then it goes away. So some more work and $$$ to get it to 100%. I have some big plans for bringing this back to a reliable daily driver, until the point when I make it my dedicated off-road rig. I put on the Rola rack last weekend (shout out to @02_Pathy for the write up on how he did his. I added some 1/2 aluminum blocks to get the height I needed so the sunroof would clear. Whew, long winded and no pics. I know you guys are gonna hate the way this is starting out. I will post some pics when I can and all the future stuff I am planning. Thanks to you all for contributing to such a great community.

Thank you!

There is actually a lot of information about this topic here on the forum, just gotta poke around a bit. The long and short of it is, you're not gonna get more lift than that without an SFD, and even that is kind of pushing it depending on how you set it up; if you do that much lift with spacers expect CV damage if you actually go offroading. Since these vehicles are unibody, body lift is not an option. The "Land Rover Lift Springs" thread in this subforum is a great resource for information about an excellent lift option combos.

Bilstiens are on, part no. 33185569, same as @02_Pathy. Thanks for the help!

Isn't there supposed to be a foam air prefilter that slots into a drain at the top? I wondered how well it actually worked, I guess now we know lol. I wonder if the stove pipe cap type that the guys seem to run on the land rovers over in Oz would A) run dryer \B) fit on these snorkels. I like the look of the scoop type but if they are gonna just dump water down the intake ... No Bueno! Mine is getting hand carried back from Miami on a domestic flight next Sunday. Excited to see what I actually bought. We were going to ship it, but fedex wanted almost $100 for the "service". Only $50 to check it as an extra bag on Frontier. No brainer.

I deleted the second airbox, and used a flexi hose from supercheap auto and a 3" PVC elbow from Bunnings to connect the snorkel to the standard airbox. Plus lots of silicone to seal it all up. I also run the snorkel head backwards now, as I found that the ram was introducing too much crap into my airbox. Opened it up and found that one side of my filter was coated in "mud" (from where water had wet the dust) and insects and the bottom of the airbox was full of water. Looked like the ram head hadn't been ejecting water properly. Runs much cleaner backwards, I'm only getting dust now & no water. Also check your air filter fits the airbox, the previous owner had fitted a filter that was 3 cm too short and so heaps of crap was getting sucked straight past it onto my MAF... I had to replace that as it wasn't running right. Luckily the turbo seems OK.

I just posted some old pics of me on a 4 day off-road trip in AZ with 2 sea kayaks on my roof. (raing0at on IG). You can see the simple mounting I did with my load bars & cam straps. After the 10 minute shakedown retensioning those things stayed on like glue, despite seeing some fairly rough terrain & alot of miles. I literally have decades of experience doing this with canoes, river kayaks, & sea kayaks on assorted cars with Yakima bars & trucks. Despite potential concerns, I’ve never seen hull deformation in these thermoplastic boats, even with up to a week strapped down tight in the AZ sun. I do like the cam straps with pads under the mechanism for my boats & these days there are even locking straps - I always used a cable lock through the locking loops on the boats & under my bars.

Redpath88's link above still works for me. It's not Terrano-specific but covers the engine pretty well.

Wanna make clearance with 33’s hoping I won’t have to do any metal body trimming. Is that possible? Still using 15inch rims/wheels. Current tire size is 265/70/R15 uses a 2.5inch strut spacer to lift it.

the search button is your friend

1 bolt per side and you’re done, assuming it’s easy to access, which in my case it was. I saw them sitting nice and exposed on a naked frame, which is what gave me the idea in the first place

Here's my cheap and as a joke bumpstop, a hockey puck which works well bolted to the perch Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

I pulled bump stops off an old F250 at the JY, $3. They stacked nicely on top of my old bump stops. They’re about 1.5-2” longer. I would’ve used the top mounting location, but I snapped a bolt, so they’re anchored to the lower perch, which is probably functional but not ideal.

Longer bolts (M8x1.25) and body lift spacers (3" diameter) is what I've heard being done.

The EL section of the service manual has diagrams of the Bose and base systems. Should help you track down what's up. The base system shows the door speakers and tweeters wired together after the amp, the Bose looks like it's got a little amp of some variety on each door speaker. The schematic makes it look the the amp is built into the speaker or attached to it in some way. There's probably a location of electrical units diagram or something in there as well. Good luck!

Steve announced that he is closing shop. Doesn't seem to be taking any new orders, but is still fulfilling current ones. He is in talks with different people about buying the business. Hopefully someone picks it up and continues providing our niche market. Thought this may interest some people.