Leaderboard

Today I got the tires mounted and set about organizing / cleaning the interior. I tidied up the back and added an axe and fire extinguisher, plus a small shovel mounted on the rack. Good news is the tires don’t rub except mildly when I’m at full lock in reverse. I’ll see what I can trim to make this go away, but it’s not too bad as it is. My alignment is scheduled for tomorrow at 1, I’m sick of this crazy camber and ready for it to be gone I’ll get some better pics during the day tomorrow. And take measurements. After all the organizing I ran out of daylight. The last pic is the undercarriage monitor.

I have - years ago tried it from a stop to see what would happen. Clicking sound from both front hubs. No damage as far as I can tell but definitely didn’t sound like it would be good if it happened at anything more than a crawl. Warn hubs fwiw. No error light either.

You might want to try Nissan for many of the parts. You will want a timing chain kit. When you have it apart, you will want to inspect both of the timing covers closely for damaged gaskets in the internal oil passages. The front cover is known to have the gasket fail between the cover and the passage plates screwed in the backside of the cover. Those gaskets are not available as far as I know, but can be easily made. When I was at the dealership we just replaced the timing cover when they developed internal leaks. It was not terribly expensive. Those passages are for the variable cam timing phasers, so when they leak, you have cam timing codes and poor running pop up. There is a couple of tiny screens in there too, be careful not to lose them. Many of the gaskets are from a tube, but there is a bunch of little O-rings used. I suggest getting a FSM for your engine and read it. Use the exploded diagrams to make a list of all the little parts you are going to be replacing. I am going to warn you now, Nissan engines are not inexpensive to rebuild. Years ago I built a Z24/Z22 Frankenstein for my 1980 200SX, and it wound up costing about $1000. And it was a primitive SOHC 4 cyl. Also, they have very tight tolerances and will not tolerate mistakes very well. Good luck, do it right and you will have a very good engine when done.

Make sure you loctite the power valve screws while you put it back together, they're known for dropping into the VQ engines and causing problems. Also, the EM section of the service manual (which you can download from here if you haven't) should have all the procedures/torque specs/etc you need for the rebuild. Good luck!