Mr.510

I have VG33 Six Bolt Crank Pulley Adapters in stock. They're $90 +shipping. I also offer modification of alternator ($35) and power steering ($10) tensioner brackets and cutting WD21 4x4 water pumps ($25) to clear the VG33 oil pump. With these four parts plus a fan belt (Napa 25-9380) the WD21 crank pulleys, accessories, and their brackets all work on the VG33. It's quickest to PM me on facebook but I'll try to check my messages here more often.

I'm sorry, I've been down with migraines and haven't been online much the last couple weeks. I'll PM you.

Thanks, I appreciate the vote of confidence. I *think* they are going to work great and last a long time. Exactly, sort of. I'm actually more concerned about selling what turns out to be junk than hurting my reputation. As far as I'm aware nobody has done this to a wheeler before so this is new territory. I know it works and lives on high powered 4wd street and rally cars, based on the Perrin parts that have been in production for... six or eight years? But we're dealing with a whole lot more unsprung and vehicle weight. Also we tend to generate low-speed, high-load impacts where they are mostly dealing with high-speed, lower-load (pothole) impacts. You could go back to stock but it would not be a whole lot of fun. After cutting the bearing housing off you'd have to cut a disc out of 1/4" plate with a hole in the middle that fits in the enlarged hole and weld it in from both sides. Then weld on bearing cups or whatever. It would work fine, and would be virtually as strong as it was originally, but what a PITA that would be! This is why I'm testing before making more....

I also got tired of pouring oil on my starter every time I changed the filter... so I built a VG34! Now my oil filter is just forward of, and a couple inches above, my steering stabilizer: It's easy to reach from the top with a Taurus E-fan, I'm not sure how much fun it'd be with a stock fan should. I pull the front skid plate and put my drain pan under the filter rather than end up with a bunch of oily paper towels to fish out from under the filter.

Damn, you must have hit that HARD! That's more than twice as bad as my driver's side was before I took the sledge hammer to it prior to welding the bearing housing on. I don't think there's any way the stock LCA/compression rod could bend that bracket unless the vehicle was in a major accident. I've seen lots of trucks in wrecking yards that were in head-on collisions where the frame is bent, the body is buckled, and the suspension is totally destroyed... but that mount is usually still intact and straight, at least to the naked eye. Right now the only set of parts that exist are the prototypes that I'm testing on my Pathy. I need to run them for a while and abuse the truck more than usual to make sure the parts are going to live. Once I feel confident in the longevity of the bearing I will put these into production and offer them for sale. I'm going to say worst-case that would be around the end of the year. It's just a matter of me getting enough off-road miles on the truck. That takes a whole lot of money and time... but sacrifices must be made!

I don't know of any scientific testing that proves it but I've read many places that due to the shape of the passages in plate type coolers their efficiency goes way down when the fluid is cold. That means they don't tend to over-cool as much in cold weather and supposedly the fluid will come up to temp more quickly vs. a tube type cooler. I run a 24k rated Hayden plate type cooler and Amsoil synthetic ATF in my Pathy. I highly recommend this combo for anyone that wheels their Pathy hard. The torque converter generates most of the heat in an automatic and it's working HARD crawling over rocks and stumps!

Here's a recent one: I sold it to a friend a few months ago. Silverton helped me drag it off my property in Belfair so it could be loaded on the slidebed for the trip to Seattle. It currently sits in my front yard until my friend makes room for it at his shop. There are 102 pics of it here, in case you're really bored: http://s284.photobuc... Nissan Patrol/ Woohoo! 510 love FTW!

I prefer the one of your Pathy... but I took the pic so that's no surprise!

In 1987 I had three vehicles. My '64 Nissan Patrol, and '71 & '72 Datsun 1200s. One a coupe the other a sedan. I was mostly driving the '71 1200 sedan. I bought my first 510 that year but it wasn't running until 1988.

It's possible your TCU is in limp mode. Silverton's Pathy has done this several times wheeling due to "excessive wheelspin". When it goes into limp mode I think it actually stays in 3rd gear? The truck is seriously gutless when this happens, even in low range. The truck is a total dog going forward but normal in reverse when it happens. I'm sure there are other scenarios (other than wheelspin) that can put the TCU into limp mode. Any word on it's condition?

At Pick N Pull's prices for everything you'd need it would probably be less expensive to convert to a 5 speed, assuming PnP doesn't have a good HD trans (I've never seen one there). We recently converted silverton's S12 to 5 speed and all the parts required from PnP were less than $250 I think. Pedal & pivot, hard line, trans crossmember & mount, transmission, flywheel, shifter boot plate, front section of driveshaft etc. Then we spent about $300 (wholesale) from Nissan on a new Z31T clutch and master and slave cylinders. A braided stainless line to go from the hard line to the slave while eliminating the clutch damper was another $30 or something. You would need different parts, obviously, but PnP's prices will be the same. So ~$600 for PnP parts and new Nissan bits for the clutch. There are awesome deals out there on Craigslist from time to time. If you can save up some money so you can jump when a deal comes up that's what it usually takes. That's the thing with CL, when an awesome deal comes along you have to be able to jump *right now* or somebody else will get it. Examples: 1) A couple months ago I got a VG33E & auto trans (non-HD) with 130k miles that I saw run and drive from a '97 caR50 for $400 pulled and loaded into my truck. The VG33 is going in silverton's Pathy and the trans is going in my '94. 2) About a year and a half ago I bought a complete 40k mile? VG33ER and SHD automatic from an '04 X for $800. The trans is now in silverton's Pathy, the motor became the VG34 in my Pathy, and I sold the supercharger and related hardware for $1k on eBay! On the flip side of this, when I blew up the original trans in my Pathy I needed it fixed "now". My friend runs an all Nissan wrecking yard and gave me a pretty good deal (at the time) on a HD auto from an '01 X with 80k miles for $1k. My back was too messed up for me to do the swap myself so I traded an NOS 510 hood worth $500 for the installation. So that endeavor cost $1500 but I had my truck back on the road in less than a week. ^ This. If you've got time/money/space to part out a truck, or at least take off the easy stuff and sell it on NPORA / eBay / CL you can probably do it almost for 'free' whether you want an HD auto or a stock 5 speed swap. Again it's a matter of being able to jump when needed to get a deal that comes along.

As far as overall layout and mechanical function it's the same basic part-time four wheel drive system used all the way back to the '20s and before. It does have automatic locking hubs, they are the only "modern" feature in the transmission of power. This is correct. Once the hubs are locked you can shift from 4H to 2H at any speed. You can also shift from 2H to 4H at any speed if the hubs are locked. Note that you should only shift from 2H to 4H when the front and rear tires are going the same speed. In other words, don't wait until the rear tires are spinning like mad and then yank the lever back to engage the front end. The shock loads when you do something like this are extremely high and can break almost anything in the drivetrain. For clarity, take 4L out of the equation since you can't actually shift directly from 4L to 2H, you have to go through 4H to get to 2H. When the hubs are locked the front CV shafts, differential, and driveshaft all turn regardless of what position the transfer case shifter is in. I would not worry much about wear to these components when running in 2H with the hubs locked, they are all seriously beefy components, similar to or stronger than the components in an R50 which has all that stuff turning all the time stock. (R50s came with drive plates rather than locking hubs.) You will lose a noticeable amount of gas mileage with all the front end stuff turning. The place you will most commonly want to switch the T-case to 2H and back to 4H at speed is when there is spotty snow and/or ice on a paved highway. You do not want to run on dry pavement in 4wd, especially at speed as it puts HUGE loads on all the drivetrain components after the transmission. When you come to snow you stop (more below on this), lock the hubs by putting the truck in 4H, and proceed. If you're bombing along at 60mph on compact snow and come to a stretch of dry pavement you should shift to 2H just before the snow ends. Then when you encounter more snow drop it back into 4H just as you hit the snow. While the manual says you can do this and the auto hubs will lock I do not recommend it. Often times one hub won't lock and will grind the living crap out of itself as you roll to a stop so it can actually engage. Auto hubs are not known for their durability and asking them to lock at speed is one of the roughest things you can do to them. When I ran auto hubs I always came to a full stop before the initial shift to 4H.

It is possible that your relay has worn contacts and there's too much resistance for enough amperage to get to the starter solenoid. It's also possible there's too much resistance somewhere in the wiring of that circuit. It's also possible the starter solenoid is toast and requires WAY more amperage to fully cycle than any 'normal' circuit can carry.

The cowl does have two relatively large drains into the fenders. If you blocked the inlet grilles air would still be available through these but you'd likely have to run the fan at a faster speed to get the same airflow you do now. The air would also be a lot less clean if you drive the kind of places that I do. The cowl in front of the windshield has the highest air pressure when the vehicle is in motion. This is why air for the interior almost always comes from there, it's already pressurized and flows freely into the cockpit.

Sorry to say this but your transmission is almost certainly toast. Spitting out a bunch of fluid is really strange though if it didn't blow off a line. Figuring out where the fluid that leaked actually came from would be a good idea. You can't normally overheat an automatic to the point that it pukes out fluid. It's not like the pressurized cooling system, the transmission sump is vented to atmosphere and the boiling point of the fluid is somewhere in the 500-600F range. At 300F an automatic transmission will give off so much stench that most people pull over because they think the truck is on fire. If I've got this right 80 miles ago you installed a spin-on transmission fluid filter and 18k cooler and you're not running the stock heat exchanger in the radiator. Unless the transmission was acting up prior to these parts being installed one of them is probably the cause of your failure. "80 miles later" seems like it'd be a really crazy coincidence. I would be taking a very close look at how the cooler lines are routed to be sure there isn't a restriction somewhere from a pinched line. I would also take a serious look at the filter element and it's mount to be sure there isn't a flow restriction there and/or it wasn't plumbed backwards. If the filter element is similar to an oil filter element it's designed to have the pressurized fluid enter the outer can, then pass through the filter media and go to the main oil gallery in the engine through the center port. When remote filter mounts are plumbed backwards with the fluid flowing from the inside out the element comes apart and is often pumped into the engine to clog the oil galleries and rapidly kill the bearings. Perhaps something similar happened here?

On replacing the rod and main bearings without pulling the engine: I don't think attempting that on a VG series engine is a good idea. As far as physically doing it the crank cannot come out without taking everything off the front to remove the oil pump. You'd also have to drop the transmission to get the rear main seal housing off. Not to mention how much fun it is to get the oil pan out without pulling the motor. As for precision and cleanliness during assembly, VGs have tighter bearing clearances and closer tolerances than any other production engine I'm aware of. This is why they last so long, but it also means everything in a VG bottom end needs to be *exactly right*. These aren't like small block Chevs where you can just throw a set of bearings in a worn out motor, end up with .007" bearing to journal clearance, and run it another 50k miles. The upper limit of bearing clearance on a VG is .002". Many shops have failed when attempting to simply rebuild VGs, likely because they don't have the equipment required to hold the necessary tolerances. A very well known and respected Nissan/Datsun racing engine builder in California made four attempts at building a hotrod VG34 for a customer before finally giving up. The longest they ever got one to run was a 40 minute track day session. I don't know what they were doing wrong but each time the oil filter was full of bearing material.

There are two switches on the passenger's side of the T-case, one of them turns on that light. Mine stopped working a while back and I figured it was the just the bulb. I was under the truck adjusting my RH T-bar that had sagged a little and noticed the wires are ripped out of both switches. A rock or chunk of wood probably got up between the T-case and the frame and re-arranged things at some point. Can't imagine how that could have happened as I only drive my Pathy to church on Sundays....

silverton Egg Rock @ Walker Valley 2-8-12

I think because of how the LCA pivot works that one will have to be Delrin bushings, but I'm not sure yet. I haven't had that portion of a Pathy apart in a couple of years and I wasn't thinking in terms of eliminating all the rubber crap when I was in there. I'm getting ready to scrap my parts Pathy but I'm going to keep the front frame clip as it'll be handy for test-fitting and mocking up LCAs, my planned spindle mods, and stuff like that. Stuff like this was rubber mounted stock primarily to reduce NVH. (Noise, Vibration, and Harshness for anyone reading this that doesn't know.) Also, the stock rubber was likely much more durable than any bearing will ever be. My truck had 375k miles on it's original rubber bushings before they even looked bad. I will guess the maximum these spherical bearings could last is 100k miles. With the previously noted improvements I think $50 and a couple hours to replace the bearings every however often isn't going to be that big of a deal. This being a spherical bearing will definitely help front articulation and compliance of the front suspension. It moves more freely and that is always a good thing. Whether it will be enough to feel or measure I don't know. Virtually all of Nissan's independent front suspensions used "tension compression rods" (aka strut rods) and separate lower control arms. The two parts form a triangle to locate the lower ball joint and triangles are not easily bent or flexed. This is a very simple, cheap and easy to produce lower control arm setup that is quite strong and light weight. (Remember that unsprung weight *severely* effects vehicle ride and is the number one downside to a solid front axle.) The vast majority of T/C rods go from approximately the lower ball joint forward to the chassis as this makes the most sense, having the skinny rod loaded primarily so impact forces generated at the tire are trying to stretch it rather than push on it. The first IFS 4x4s Nissan sold here where the 720 trucks. They had long T/C rods going forward the way all the passenger cars (except early Zs) do. 720s also had torsion bars that plug into the LCA pivots so having the T/C rods go forward made all the sense in the world... until you ventured off road where they were very easily bent. Also, their mounting point on the bottom of the frame severely reduced approach angle. I wheeled an '81 720 on 32s for a few years and carried two spare sets of T/C rods and both bent and broke them on a regular basis. This was never from the tires hitting stuff, it was from running the rods themselves into stuff. My guess is that when they designed the WD21 chassis the engineers had "tension compression rod on the brain" and didn't think outside that box. it was a proven design that worked well in everything else so it made a whole lot of sense to use it. If these trucks had all been thrown away at 150k miles very few people would have any complaints at all about the compression rod pivot bushings. Just like with the stock automatic transmissions: Nissan didn't make crappy parts, they built a truck that lasts too damned long!

Thanks man. I would not take yours apart until you're ready to deal with fixing it. You don't really want to know what lurks in there! The bearing is going to transfer all rearward force directly into the frame. The factory frame mount is a pretty beefy part, fully boxed and welded into both sides of the frame rail. I cannot see damaging that with impact loads carried through that flimsy sheetmetal LCA! Hopefully the bearing proves to be durable in this application, that and NVH are the only things I don't have answers too. There's really no way to add a bumper or something to this, as that would involve parts sliding together that would wear out rapidly, especially when run in mud. The one upside that I didn't mention above is that there is almost zero friction in this arrangement so the suspension will move more freely. You can literally pivot the compression rod any direction and rotate it with your little finger when it's not bolted to the LCA. There isn't enough friction to even hold up the end of the compression rod. It would be nice but there is no way to do it. I looked at it from every angle I could think of and there's just no way. I thought about doing something like the T/C Kits I produce for cars with a ball and socket but we have to deal with fore-aft forces since our trucks drive the front wheels. In RWD only applications the tension compression rods are only loaded rearward while driving so it's a non-issue. A 'one-way' solution with the stock rubber bushing behind the chassis mount just holding tension on it works great. I've produced somewhere waaaaay past 1000 of these T/C Kits. Here's an "exploded view" of one of my T/C Kit pivots: Please ignore the white thread, I learned this trick from George Lucas!

I threw away the rubber bullschlitz that used to be on my compression rods FOREVER! I replaced the stock rubber bushing arrangement with a spherical bearing pressed into a housing welded onto the frame. And I will never look back. http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/topic/33581-eliminating-the-rubber-bushings-on-the-ifs-compression-rods/

A little baked on paint since the housing was 400F when I sprayed it (love that trick, paint dries in two minutes and is almost as tough as powder coat!) Screwed the Zerk fitting in, and it's ready to bolt in the compression rod: I guess I neglected to take a pic of the adapter bushings and stuff before I installed them. Here's a bottom view of the completed assembly. Note that I also welded the two pieces of sheet that Nissan sandwitched together to make the frame mount. This side had been over some rocks really hard and was a bit tweaked at the bottom too: A bottom view from the rear, so you can see the rear lip seal and the spacer required because the threads don't go far enough on the stock compression rod: The large flat washer only retains the lip seal. Looks like I didn't shoot a top-view pic of the driver's side so here's one of the passenger's side: You can see the lip seal runs on the face of the bearing housing. A stock Pathy compression rod washer retains the seal onto the adapter bushing inside and will also help to protect it from rocks and such thrown up by the front tire. The truck handles and steers 700% better than it did prior to this mod... but the crap I was running was just about as destroyed as it can get and still drive. The driver's side compression rod was worn more than halfway through from rubbing on the frame! I used the rods from my parts truck as they were nice and minty. Now that this is done I really need TO GO WHEELING! If this modification proves to work as well as it should and be as durable as I think it will be I will offer a kit so others can do this. If this does go into production rather than using adapter bushings and stock compression rods I may include heavy duty, heat treated 4140 compression rods. They would be easier to install, several times stronger than stock, and my thinking is that most people that do this mod are going to need new compression rods anyway. Oh yeah, if the mods think this should be in a different section please move it.

I just finished modifying my Pathy to completely eliminate the squishy rubber crap on the compression rods (rear pivot of the LCA). I did this by replacing them with a spherical bearing in a machined steel housing welded to the frame. My goal is to eliminate all the rubber bushings in the IFS so the front wheels will point the same direction under high torque loads off road. After installing my Nismo front LSD and Swampers I discovered that with real traction up front the toe can change by a ton when climbing rock ledges and such. The biggest culprit is the rubber donuts at the back of the LCAs. My compression rod bushings and their retainer deals on the frame were in pretty good shape until I put the front LSD in. Five miles of trail and three of the retainer deals had sheared off the frame and the compression rods were trying to beat their way out of the hole in the frame mount! I thought of doing this mod several years ago but the junk I had worked fine and why fix it if it ain't broke?! When I worked at Joes Racing Products I did a bunch of design work for the Alta/Perrin Group. One of the things I designed for them was their PSRS assemblies that replace a giant rubber bushing at the back of a LCA with a spherical bearing or similar. They do it to eliminate bushing deflection and improve the handling while also re-locating the pivot point to add caster. I didn't want to change the geometry, I was after eliminating all deflection. So I drew up an assembly in CAD and this is a cross-sectional view of it: Red: Center line Blue: Pathy frame (steel) Green: Bearing housing (steel) Cyan: Spherical bearing (all steel) Grey: Spiralock bearing retainer (steel) Yellow: Adapter bushings (303 stainless steel) Purple: Lip seals (steel washer with rubber lip) The spherical bearings I used are 1" bore, greasable, and rated for 82,800 pounds of radial load. I used these large bearings as they have more than three times the surface area that a bearing the stock compression rod will slip through does so they will last much longer. Also, I won't have to re-do this assembly when I fabricate heavy duty, high-clearance LCAs at some point down the road. I'll be able to shove a 1" grade 8 bolt through the bearing and into a boss on my fabricated LCA. I like bomb proof. Here's the first housing on the lathe: This is the hammered dogschplit that was on the truck: I ground the face of the mount flat as there was rolled up material around the hammered-out hole: Made a template and marked the mount to open it up for clearance: Five minutes with a die grinder: And I had a 1-3/4" hole through the mount: There's no easy way to go back now so this better freaking work! LOL There were some remains of the spot welds inside the back of the mount so I cleaned it up with my little pneumatic belt sander: A lip seal runs on this surface so it had to be relatively smooth, at least smooth enough to not tear or shred the seal. Next up I through-bolted the housing with bearing installed to hold it securely in place for welding. When I made the housings I milled flats on two sides that act as indexing surfaces. When they're in the correct spot the bottom and inner edge line up with the edges of the factory mount on the frame: I'm posting pics of the 2nd housing as I actually did the passenger's side first. I learned a few things on that side. The most important being that it's nearly impossible to press, pull, or pound the bearing into the housing after it's welded on without removing the LCA as there just isn't enough room to work. Removing the LCA is a major PITA so I decided to flush all the lube out of the bearing with carb cleaner, press it in, install the spiralock, and weld it with the bearing in place. Since all these parts are steel welding heat will not hurt them as long as they are allowed to air cool. I TIG welded these on because... well... because I can! The weather has been hot and I was not in the mood to put on full leather gear and a Carbon-X balaclava (I have MUCH hair) under my welding helmet to protect against MIG splatter when welding overhead lying on a creeper. This was the first time I've tried TIG welding without a foot pedal. My torch has an amperage wheel and on/off arc button but I'd never used it. I'd say I did rather well:

Heims don't live nearly as long as TREs, even if you run joints with grease zerks and Seals It washers to keep the crud out. Also, I've read all over the web that heim joints are illegal on the street in a whole bunch of states. That said, I've never checked so it could be more internet BS.

I prefer through-bolted with nuts so that's what I've done with the exhaust parts I'm producing. Even where the roads are not salted in Winter the bolts often break off in the cat. Probably due to the massive heat cycling involved.