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The inner joints on mine have a step. In fact, if I had to make any direct comparison, mine look like the picture of the Cardone remanufactured unit, p/n 606185, on Rock Auto: The shaft shape seems to be what we, so far, leaning towards being OEM. This reman'd unit could potentially be that.

Thanks @fleurys for chiming in. I especially wanted you to see this because I've seen some of the complaints on FB and they're totally unwarranted; there are simply "bad" CVs out there that will bind with with the slightest amount of lift. Hopefully this post becomes a means to identify them beforehand. Thanks, too, @mjotrainbrain. Rebuilding OEM CVs seems like the way to go, and I think that's why remanufactured CVs will be hit or miss since they might be made from OEM parts. I doubt we'll ever have a shop specializing in OEM rebuilds...the market's not there, and there may not be a good way to identify them. I'm hoping someone with a genuine part can shed light on identifiers. (@RainGoat, were yours ever changed?). I was also just reading up on Nissan's Value Advantage parts line-up and it reads like the CVs are all new but perhaps aftermarket..."a quality product validated by Nissan Engineers". At 4x-5x the cost of an aftermarket, I'd hope these are the "good" CVs. I refrained from mentioning it in the 1st post {puts on tin foil hat}, but what if this is a conspiracy by the aftermarket to sell more CVs but producing a product that can't range as well as OEM? That's defective in my book. Since Nissan still lists one CV to cover all R50 applications, I doubt the part number change they made in between was to lessen the angle range. Otherwise, it would surely fail on the early model. If the aftermarket is supposed to build to OE specs, several degrees off seems like a major oversight. It's nonsense to have an aftermarket CV that binds on an OE-spec strut, even a little, and that's defective in my book. I also wonder if it affects 1st gen Frontiers and Xterras...the only difference between those CV and ours is the shaft length (ours are shorter). The joints, bearings, and boots are all identical. Probably not an issue on those trucks because the only way to induce binding is with longer UCAs, and if they have as much wheel travel as ours, the longer shaft means they have lower operating angles. Anyway, don't dive into the conspiracy theory here, but just something to think about.

My 1990 Pathfinder definitely needs paint right now. However, I am afraid that even if I paint it, it won't look as nice as Teesetz.

I will chime in...even though I have tried to skip the subject because there is alot of "experts" on facebook and all that have their opinions and people that know me, knows that i'm not a big fan of arguing over a keyboard.. Some would say I lack diplomacy ..but i'll give it a shot Lifting a an ifs front with either stiffer springs or spacers does exactly the same thing to the half-shaft...which is to accentuate the angle.. I have said it many times, the quality of the half-shaft is essential and I am glad that someone actually made some tests and measurements... Thank you !... I have run my first trail pathy hard as I had 2 arb lockers installed on it and I ran at first the ac coils, then my spacers (2.5") and I never had binding in them. mind you they were OEM Nissan... One thing I did was to change the neoprene boots with thermoplastics ones made by rockford...I actually made a post about that explaining how I made them add this boot to their catalog...that's another story.. The only time I broke something with a cv was doing a full send climb, locked all 4 on a steep hill and my right tire got stuck in a rut while having the skinny pedal floored... that ended up in the halfshaft snapping in two.... not the cv joint....the shaft... you can barely hear it at the end :https://photos.smugmug.com/Trail-gazoduc-4-jours-juillet-2010/i-FrTDTBn/0/bf7a4533/640/broken-cv-640.mp4 That being said, I also did limiting straps on my struts in order to prevent too low of a drop..therefore saving the over extension... I have over 1000 kits sold and of course my kits are for the beginner off-roader that don't want to break the bank in order to start...but I have demonstrated that with some modifications (limiting straps, thermoplastic boots and good oem quality half-shaft), you can go a long way. That's all i'm gonna say as I just wanted to share my opinion and experience... I'm sure others will have something to say about this and I will respect that. Bringing a product to market is not an easy thing...there is always some that will say why it is crap and why it will not work or it cost too much etc... All I have to said to you is bravo and keep at it if you believe in it. I'm sure you'll end up with a great kit to sell and i'll be the first one to refer you guys when your kit is ready for primetime. S.

The WD21 paint is pretty resilient. I've still got the original black on my 1995 and it cleans up real well. Unless you live in some sweaty @!*% hole like Florida where the sun bakes it off lol.