JohnMasters

This thing is definitely fun to drive and the power is certainly more at your command. After a few days I am still having an issue with selling the '92 XE Automatic. I literally work in the city of Atlanta and my other vehicle is a 1990 Mazda RX7 Convertible 5-speed with a brand new rebuilt engine which is my fun weekend car. The idea of driving a 5-speed daily and then one on the weekend just doesnt seem ideal. Its pretty interesting that although the '92 does not have a sunroof, a tow ball, side rails, rear discs, a spare tire gate and it has 100,000 more miles and a frame rust issue. I may just decide to keep that one. Someone talk some since into me.

OK, I have been driving and enjoying the new 5-speed for the last few days and it is fun and has me feeling more connected to the truck but I am still missing the automatic. I think I can get used to it though. But... I feel like the engine is louder than the automatic as I am shifting from 1st to 2nd and into 3rd. I feel the desire to switch out of 1st well before redline as it seems louder at redline in 1st, decreasingly loud at redline in 2nd, and even more decreasingly loud at redline going from 3rd to 4th. Im not sure if it is valve clatter or what but it seems different than the automatic. Oh and... Does anyone know if the steering wheels are interchangeable between the 90,91,92,93,94 & 95. I need a new one in the 1990 but its design is different than the one in my 1992.

I guess the tow package could have been added on by the previous owner but its just a big chunk of steel bolted to the frame with a tow ball receiver and tow ball and there are some electrical connections in the back of the truck coming from behind the wheel well that plug into a trailer. Ill get a picture this weekend.

Well, going with the manual is starting to sound better... Another thing that I prefer in the recently acquired manual se is that it has a nice tow package and my XE was stricken with the dreaded frame rust so I welded/boxed in the frame with steel so I have never been confident enough to tow anything with the xe.

OK Great!... on both accounts... I guess Im a bit too used to talking on the phone and drinking coffee while I drive. Of course, I have been driving the automatic for 5 or 6 years daily and I have only driven the manual once so far. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the 90 SE had 4 wheel disc brakes. But that smaller emergency drum brake system hiding under the disk certainly adds time and money to a complete brake job.

Also, it appears that the shocks on the new truck are electronic in some way as they each have a wire attached to them however my current XE does not have this.. I would like to swap the shocks from the 92xe over to the 90se and vice versa as I have a nice set of procomp 3000s on the current XE. Is it ok to do a direct swap such as that?

I just bought a loaded 1990 SE 5-speed with 135,000 miles to replace a non-loaded 1992 XE Automatic with 240,000 miles that is getting worn out but I am having some difficulty in the desire to move from my very convenient automatic transmission over to the 5-speed. I have too many cars so I dont really want keeping both to be an option. Do you folks have a hardcore preference for which you prefer? Would that keep you from switching over to what would appear to be a better truck?

Good Afternoon Npora... I was about to start a thread when I saw this one and I think this is a better place to start. I had a similar problem this week as the OP, however not as extreme, and was looking for some clarification as to what may have happened. I had been driving the truck then parked it for two hours and then started it up and the problem began. I was going up a very small incline and the truck would NOT go more than 10 or 15mph. Unlike the OP I had not spun the tires or been in any adverse conditions. It would just bog down and go nowhere and try to stall until it was allowed to go back to idle where it was working fine. I drove about 1/4 of a mile thinking that it would correct itself but it did not. Before calling AAA I thought I had at least turn it off and then back on in case this were some kind of limp mode as in my RX7. It did, in fact, re-start and I was able to drive it home on the highway at about 65mph. While on the highway I noticed a small bucking of the transmission very consistantly about every 20 seconds. After letting it sit for an hour I then took it to fill up the gas tank and add some fuel treatment thinking that maybe there had been some trash in the gas. I tend to drive around with a 1/4 of a tank or less which is probably not smart. The check engine light never illuminated. The truck is now running just fine with no bucking but I feel a bit uneasy about possibly getting stuck in the future and I have no idea what may have caused this situation. Before this...The truck has been running fine with no transmission issues. It has had a trans cooler for most of its life. It has 220,000 miles. I put on a new MAF harness a few months ago so the idle is a rock solid 750. Occasionaly I feel as though I smell gas at start-up and a few times I have felt a very small hesitation when just starting to accelerate but nothing to cause concern. Does this sound like limp mode and does anyone have any opinion about what may have caused it. Thanks in advance and BTW Olblue... Did you get your issue figured out? John Masters

I thought this guys method using a cheap clothes steamer looked pretty good...

I also did 35% up front and 20% in back. I wasnt sure whether to do 20% or 5% in the back but 20% is absolutley dark enough. That Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham d'Elegance sounds like an interesting project. All of the windows look pretty flat including the back window. I wonder, if it is in fact necessary to heat shrink the back film, if that vinyl top would get in the way.

OK, I finally received the front passenger window tint that I needed to finish the job. There was still some dew on the truck this morning when i took the pics and it could be washed but you should get the idea. There are still some minor issues that I need to fix such as some light leaks on the back glass around the hinges, shock mounts and vertical defrost lines along the left and right side of the window. Overall for the money I am very satisfied.

Update... You are definitley going to want to remove the back glass to install the tint. I actually had to cut some of the precut tint because it didnt fit perfectly. I went ahead and installed it without heat shrinking BUT once installed I had two pretty good sized fingers at the bottom of the glass so I pulled out the heat gun, on LOW heat and shrunk and squeegeed the fingers out and it worked out just fine. I do have a few air lines on either side of some of the defrost lines but they seem to be able to be pressed out as the tint dries. A trick on youtube that I did not try was lightly sanding the dfrost lines with 2000 grit sandpaper before install. I think what makes this a good DIY project is that you can actually fix some of your defects during the several days of drying out. I found many little fingers and bubbles on some of the windows after install but I have been able to work them out by heating up the glass side and then pressing the film out. After doing the drivers side front roll up window I am not sure how I could have screwed the passenger side film up. With the door panels off the roll up windows turned out to be pretty simple and you can get them installed perfectly with NO fingers without heat shrinking. I have ordered a new piece of film for the passenger side and will be finished with the project and post pictures next week. A few tips... Error on the side of too much slip in the water. This way you have longer to work and it takes a bit longer to dry. Which is much better than not enough slip where the tint starts drying while your still trying to get it into position. Use as much solution as possible on the glass and the adhesive side of the tint when installing. DO NO be conservitive with the use of solution. Be VERY patient and dont freak out when you think things are going wrong. Apparently there are lots of defects that can be corrected after the install.

Alrighty, I was wrong about the drying time. The sun came out a few hours ago and when I went to check on the pathfinder almost all of what I was hoping to be water blisters were gone. RELIEF!!! If anyone is reading this that has had good luck tinting there rear glass. Can you advise whether the back glass film needs to be heat shrunk or is the glass flat enough to get done without the dreaded fingers. It sure looks flat.

OK, I finally have some experience tinting and like all DIY projects it is not as easy as it looks. I totally buggered the first window that I tried which was the front passenger roll up window. I dont believe that I had enough Johnsons Baby bath in the water and I got a bunch of fingers and creases and just pulled the film and tossed it. I also think that I got frustrated too quickly. Tinting obviously takes patience and thats why a noobie like me probably needs more slip in the water. I did have good luck with the rear roll ups, quarters and cargos although I must admit that I initially thought the rear quarters would be the easiest ones to do and I now believe that other than the back glass the rear quarters are the toughest to get rite. The tint buts rite up against the gaskets and the gaskets are very rigid making it hard to squeegee the water out. I found a trick on youtube where the guy took his razor blade and shaved about a 16th of an inch of the gasket giving you a little more working room. I had several fingers in one of the rear quarters but instead of getting frustrated and pulling the film I let it dry for a while and then worked the fingers out useing a heat gun on the outside of the glass and the results were pretty good. If you work the fingers in the wrong direction you will create little hair like crease which you cant get out. I expect the back glass to be somewhat of a hassel and I think I will have to learn to heat shrink the film for that one so I will remove the glass from the vehicle to do get it done. The easiest windows by far to do are the cargo windows where there is no real gasket and they have the little black paint overlap. I do see quit a few of what appear to be water blisters which from what I have read should dissappear after drying up for a while. Of course up until a few weeks ago it was 100 degrees every day with no rain but it has now cooled off and its raining everyday so it should take a while to dry out. By no means will this be a perfect job but I think for $60($75 after replacing the film I ruined) on a 20 year old vehicle it will look perfectly fine. I am going to hold out on posting pictures until I recieve my new passenger side film and get the job totally finished. On a scale from easy to hard I think this project will turn out to be medium/hard to get done somewhat correctly.

I'm hopeing that at least all of the windows other than possibly the back glass are flat enough on the pathfinder to NOT need to be heat shrunk. I found one video on youtube with a guy who tinted his pathfinder roll up windows without shrinking and they looked very good. I'll bet its very easy to ruin your tint while shrinking if you've never done it before. Hopefully my tint kit will be waiting next to the mailbox this afternoon. :-)

OK, 3 years later I finally ordered an entire precut tint kit for the Pathfinder. 35% front and 20% everywhere else. For a GRAND TOTAL of less than $60 shipped from... www.northerntint.com I figured it was a no brainer at that price. Hopefully I'll have it done by this time next week.

25/25 test HC ppm - 74 CO - .48 NOX - 826 50/15 test HC - 32 CO - .20 NOX - 671 Above are the numbers from the PASSING run. I have looked around and since I did both my test and retest at the same time I must not have been given the FAILING report. When I FAILED the first test the NOX numbers were just a bit too high. As you can see, after retarding the timing, it PASSED, but not by much as the allowed NOX is 905/990 and I was at 826/671. I just pulled my report from last year and the NOX was 393 and 312 so something is different this year.

I was under the impression that the main pulley bolt had to come off in order to get the timing pulley off so I was going to wait until I picked up another air hammer for my air compressor to get it done. However, If it is in fact only the 6 bolts that need to be removed I will get it done this evening.

Finally, The radiator, cap and thermostat did the trick. I feel pretty sure that the radiator was the actual culprit. I couldn't get the gauge to move past the half way mark no matter how hard I pushed it last night. I went with the 180 degree thermostat and 13psi radiator cap. I am not a huge fan of the partially plastic radiator. I like to man handle things and I think the hose outlets could break easily. I did NOT adjust the pulley because I was in a hurry and didnt want to fool with the main pulley bolt last night so I will get that done this weekend. I think the next project will need to be the drivers side exhaust manifold bolts because now that the passengers side has been fixed I can hear a faint little tick coming from the other side while warming up. I think thats a job to do immediately after purchasing one of these trucks because it sure is easier to remove a complete stud than one that has broken off. :-)

Thanks guys, I have a new radiator to install this evening and maybe I will just go ahead and re-install the pulley correctly while I have everything removed.

To Tungsten... Since there are 6 bolts on the pulley and this is a 6 cylinder, does it also make since that you could set time using a different cylinder? I tried my timing light on each plug wire and discovered that the marks appeared at the top of the pulley when attached to cylinder #3. I have a seven notch pulley so I had it set to the 4th mark from the left believing that to be 15 degrees. The reason I am not TOTALLY sure about this method is that the truck failed emissions at this setting but then immediately passed when I retarded the timing by TWO notches. it did, however, run worse when retarded. UPDATE ON RUNNING HOT... No amount of burping has helped and I noticed a collapsed upper radiator hose the other day and then discovered the overflow tube to be clogged. I pulled all the hoses, radiator and thermostat and there was a lot of gunk, like some kind of stop leak product, in the system. I will install a NEW thermostat, Radiator, cap and hoses this evening and see what happens.

Sewebster and Kingman... Thanks for your time! I will try to get a complete flush done by this weekend. I had read that having your timing to far advanced would contribute to some cooling issues and today I discovered that it would also keep you from passing emissions... The reason I have been in a hurry to get this thing running good is that I have a birthday tomorrow and need to get it to pass emissions. Although I have been having the running hot issue, I went ahead and took it to the emissions shop today where it failed. Keep in mind, I am not totally sure that the timing is set correctly because I believe that the pulley has been removed and reinstalled incorrectly so I have been using cylinder #3 to set the timing because #3 puts the timing marks rite where you would expect them. I had it set to the 4th hash mark from the left as I have a pulley with 7 hash marks and was aiming for 15 degrees. I told the emissions guy about this and since he knows me he told me that timing being too advanced would cause it to fail the NOX part of the test. He allowed me to adjust the timing before we ran it for the 2nd time. I adjusted it to where the timing mark was just between the first and second hash mark(between 0 and 5 degrees?)and although the truck seemed to run worse, it DID pass the test. So, thats good. During this process I was very concerned that the truck would start running hot but it DID NOT. We were using a big fan in front of the car during the testing. After leaving and driving 10 miles or so in the city the temp sensor started to rise a bit, not as far as before but higher than normal. Would that suggest the clutch fan since it seemed to work fine with the big fan going? Regarding the Head Gasket... Would those symptoms be similar to other cars I have worked on where you would mysteriously loose coolant, oil may smell like coolant and vice versa, hard to start with white smoke at startup and champagne bubbles when viewing into the radiator fill?

Hey guys, I am still having some issues with the Pathfinder and since they have occurred directly on the heals of the issues that prompted this thread, I thought I would continue our conversation. So, the day I finally decided the issue with the distributor was fixed, I took a test drive and although it was running fine it was obvious that the passenger side exhaust manifold leak was going to need to be taken care of as it sounded awful and it appeared as though only TWO studs were left holding the manifold on. In fact FOUR studs were broken off so I spent almost a week working on it. Got the manifold studs fixed and BAM, runs and drives great. I take a 40 mile test drive and the truck starts to overheat, I immediately notice that there is a pinhole leak in the coolant line coming from the drivers side of the upper intake manifold just behind the EGR? Valve and the coolant in the engine was BOILING. While fixing this coolant line I notice that all of the coolant in the system is @!*% brown and totally nasty. I emptied the overflow bottle and it had big nasty petroleum type goo in the bottom. I cleaned as much of the crap out as possible but have not yet done a complete coolant flush. Now that the coolant line is fixed, the truck is running HOT. It will slowly climb up to over 3/4 on the gauge and I expect it would keep going if I didnt turn it off. It used to stay at 1/2 or below religiously. Obviously a faulty thermostat or clogged coolant lines may be to blame but I wanted to see if and how you guys think that this running hot issue relates to the previous distributor and or exhaust manifold issue. All of this stuff happening at once just seems too coincidental.

That is pretty much what I did the first time when instead of realizing that the pulley was installed incorrectly, I was thinking that the distributor was installed backwards so I did in fact pull the distributor and reinstall based on the timing marks which rendered the truck useless. Something I was thinking about last night and fooling with this morning was the idea that if there are six screws holding the pulley on, which should mean that it can be installed 6 different ways and since this is a six cylinder vehicle, would it not be possible to set your timing based on which ever cylinder is at its top most position when the first timing mark is lined up with the arrow. I tried the timing light on all cylinders and #6 put the timing marks at the exact spot that you would expect if timing off cylinder #1 and the truck seems to run fine.

THAT IS CORRECT... After I realized the error of my ways I used the #1 cylinder to find TDC and then re-stabbed the distro pointing at point #1 and it fired rite up. I should be able to get the pulley reconfigured this evening. I was thinking about the procedure mentioned above for using the piston stop tool to find TDC and something wasnt making sense in my mind... If, on an original engine, when the left most timing mark is lined up with the timing arrow, thus the rotor is pointing at point #1 and the #1 piston is all the way up. But, on the other hand, you use a piston stop, thus marking a line when the piston is all the way up and another line when the piston hits the stop again and then marking a line in between those lines indicating TDC, doesn't that mean that the piston is all the way down at the TDC line since that line is directly in between two points where the piston was all the way up. Does my confusion make since here? My brain says... Why not just set piston #1 all the way up with rotor pointing at Point #1, and then make a mark on the pulley at the timing arrow which should be the exact same place the mark would be if the pulley were installed correctly. NO? Also, before this situation occurred I was noticing a small exhaust leak from the passenger side of the truck. After getting the truck back up and running I believe the leak is worse and louder. Do you guys think that its possible that the intake backfiring could actually cause enough pressure to make that leak worse. I guess the exhaust stud issue will be getting addressed next. Thanks again for all of the help. Although its nice to drive problem free for long periods of time it is also nice to have some issues that force me to get more well acquainted with my Pathfinder. :-)