Fr8Train

Did you change out the filter in the tranny when you drained the fluid?

The airbags are $360AUD, but after chatting with some of the guys on the Aussie Pathfinder FB group, I am going a slightly different route now. I am fitting GU Patrol rear springs, the factory Patrol springs fit straight in, and give approx 2-3" of lift and still give a comfortable ride, one of the mods there have them in his and tows regularly with it, and is happy with their performance. Beauty is my local wreckers have some for around $50, so I am getting some of those, will keep you all updated.

Unfortunately the Land Rover coils are little more expensive to source here, I probably could get some through one of the spring companies down here, but I will cross that bridge if need to later. The rear springs had been upgraded to Kings raised springs with MaxiTrac shocks prior to my acquiring of the Pathfinder. My idea is if I invest in some bags now if I need to tweak the springs and shocks later I can, the beauty of the bags is that I can level my load when loaded, and maintain a comfortable ride when not loaded. The set I am looking at have high pressure sleeves that slip over the bags for added protection. I have several mates that have fitted bags to their vehicles and have held up to and over 10 years in their rigs.

Got Hoss out for the Easter break for a shakedown run on the van towing duties. The good news it tows like a train hardly knew the van was hooked up, the not so good news the arse end sagged like a mofo with the weight on the drawbar, time for some airbags. They will allow me to level out with the van and swags loaded up, and air down for when we go off road adventuring with no load allowing some flex

Found on the interwebs, hope that helps. Taper to top.

Fished the bits out of the bin, hopefully clears up exactly what was happening. Looking from underneath the upper spring seat, you can see strut top bush eating it's way out of the upper spring seat: Top side view (minus bottom half of strut top, now in car): Apart: Remnants of the strut bearing: Underside of remaining strut bearing:

I think you will find all bumper covers come complete without the cut outs, then on the inside there will be cast in the plastic marked out cutting guides to follow for various accessories like tow bar, rear tyre carrier, rear fog light etc... Well that was how it was when I was in the body works game some 20 years back, the plastic bumpers from all the big Jap companies shipped their bumpers like that and the body shop modified them to suit the vehicle and it's options in shop. A drill and a sharp Stanley knife or jigsaw will have you done no issues at all. If you purchase pre painted one a bit more care will be required with the cutting. Hope this makes sense and helps.

I recon he means one of these:

All that was left of the bearing was half of a wafer of it's remnants, the bearing had disintegrated. I will get some more pictures tonight when I get home. The strut top bush that goes onto the threaded strut rod top where the nut goes was what was wearing through the seat. Hopefully my pics will help show exactly what happened.

Interesting, I did not know that, mine has the auto dial, I will keep that in mind in the future if I get any shakes/wobbles, cheers.

One of them funny little unexpected things that pop up during a build, I was originally just going to fit the lifted springs with new strut bearings and try and get away with using the old struts, there had been clunking and noise from the passenger side front, but I was putting that down to a flogged out sway bar link and the crunching to the need for new strut bearings, well upon pulling the struts apart I found this on the passenger side upper spring seat (drivers side to you yanks ) So it wasn't the strut bearing as that was gone! and the sway bar link was shot, but I think that was a side effect from the strut trying to eat it's way to freedom. Just a great example of the snowball effect when you start opening cans of worms on these rigs, what was meant to be new strut bearings and springs ended up being whole new strut assemblies. Oh well at least I can sleep well knowing it is right for the next few years now

She's definitely a slippery slope hey? I'll just do this one little thing aaaannnnnddd.... now my bus is up on jack stands and in a million bits ?

Interesting, are you still running the free wheeling hubs? So are you running the hubs locked on the highway? I am just curios how you are getting the shakes on highway driving if your front hubs are free? I will be following to see the outcome

I would just use a regular RTV silicone gasket product from your local auto store. The skim would only need to be be very light only a few thou thick, you could do it two ways: skim and let dry then assemble, or skim and assemble wet. Either way should work fine.

Cheers, the two lines you refer to the top one that reaches back to the tail lights is just a black and blue vinyl pinstripe, that will be going. And the lower line is a self adhesive rubber bumper, they were pretty common during the 80s and 90s on Aussie cars, basically a door saver for the car parks. They are just fitted with double sided tape. The Hi-Lift I wanted it fitted in a practical position, and didn't want to crowd up the sides of the rack too much, as the rack's main purpose was for carrying the kids swags when the camper is hooked up. Normally the swags go in my work ute, but we are trying to move away from using the work vehicle on camps as we want to get out in the bush more, and trying to explain to my boss why the work ute has a massive scrape up the side wouldn't be much fun.

Cheers for the welcome! All Aussie R50's are VG33E, with auto trannies, also most nearly all of them got the LSD 46 diff ratios. We were pretty lucky with the way they were optioned for us, but would of loved to see a Diesel one down here, there is an imported Diesel Terrano II nearby for sale but it looks totally different (ugly) to the R50, and I am already invested in Hoss now for the at least the next year or two. Cheers mate, yeah I forgot to mention how Hoss got the name, on the first test drive I took the misso with me, she wasn't really impressed, and was later telling her girlfriend (and the kids and I overheard) calling it a "heap of @!*%", the kids thought it was funny, and after we got it we were discussing names and my eldest joked about mum calling it a heap of @!*%, it got abbreviated to H.O.S = Hoss ?

Been lurking here a while, bout time to introduce myself and "Hoss" my '99 Pathy. We are based in Tassie (Tasmania, Australia) I picked up Hoss back in October last year, I was in the market for a 4x4 rig for our tow vehicle and off road adventure machine. It would be used to tow our camper trailer, and to to go out bush and explore the wilds of the Tassie wilderness. It had to meet several criteria: Cheap to buy initially Parts availability and parts pricing off road ability towing ability/power reliability So my search began, in Tassie and the Australia mainland all 4x4/camping/dirt bikes basically anything outdoors related etc... attracted the "covid tax" (a slang term down here for everything going up in price due to the new demand for camping and outdoor activities as people don't like to travel now) so all the Land Cruisers and Patrols that were generally pretty well priced were now pulling 2-3 times as much, $3k vehicles selling for $12k-$16k ? So I turned to internet searches of "list of most underrated 4x4" and "4x4 underdogs" and "Bang for buck four wheel drives" and so on... Three vehicles popped up regularly on the lists, and videos: Nissan Pathfinder, Ford Explorer, and Jeep Cherokee (the second two being as most of these lists/videos were American) Ford Explorers and Jeep Cherokees were not a very popular vehicle down here, they are here but just not in the numbers that Nissan Pathfinders are. I watched a lot of video reviews, and build logs, and made lots of parts and price searches across all three vehicles to build an idea of where I wanted to go. At the end of the day the Pathfinder just ticked all the boxes. So the search for the Pathfinder began. There was a white one on Facey Marketplace, it had been listed for some 6 weeks (hmmm, what's wrong with it???) so I went for a look, not bad, some knocks and rattles in the front end suspension, ran fine, and the CV joints were shot, over all the body work presented well, just had high kms and mechanical work that needed doing well within my realm of capabilities (probably a turn off to most), I left it there and told the fella I would think on it, I figured I was pretty safe walking away what's a few more days as it had been listed for 6+ weeks Went and looked at a green one listed at approximately $1k more than the white one, and it was a real mess, a real "single mum's taxi" kids rubbish and food and stains all through the back, no evidence of recent services or service history for that matter, shot tyres, scratched and flaking paint, and a mouthy lady owner who "Ain't budging on price, I know what I got!" So she got a Hard pass! from me. I went and had a look at a couple of Jeeps as well, they didn't really float my boat, being in Tassie and they not being terribly popular they tend not to be looked after as well, and a lot of the interior parts in them were falling apart and rattling, creaking or just didn't plain work, both had electric windows that had failed. So we come back to the first one, old mate had rung me asking if I was still keen? I said yeah, but I want to bring a buddy to look over with me to make sure I wasn't missing anything. He said he would consider offers, "oh hell yeah got him on the hook" looks like I was the only looker. So my buddy and I went, I had cash, and was willing to walk away if anything didn't feel right, or I couldn't hit my pre budgeted purchase price. Long story short, my buddy picked up a couple of little things I missed, raised them in front of old mate, and we got it for less than half the original asking price, winner winner chicken dinner. The cheap purchase price allowed me to budget rebuilding and servicing a lot of the vehicle as I seen fit. So I have spent the last few months in between Christmas and camping etc... collecting parts and have spent the last few weeks getting her done. List of works (so far): New CV joints/axles D40 Nissan Navara factory freewheeling hubs (2nd hand from wreckers) New timing belt kit New water pump New thermostat Cooling system flushed, and new coolant Automatic transmission serviced and new fluid Engine serviced oil, oil filter, air filter New steering rack boots New front struts New strut mounts New front raised springs (Kings) Second hand alloy rims (off a Patrol for offset clearance of the struts with bigger tyres) New Falken Wildpeak 265/75 R16 New Rear drawer 2nd hand Fridge slide 42 litre fridge (leftover from our old camper) 2nd hand roof cage, all repainted and tidied up Custom made roof rack mounts Hi-lift jack and holder Roll out awning UHF radio external speaker (UHF was already in car) The obligatory before picture: As she sits now: My custom roof mounts, these allow a lower mounting of the roof cage keeping wind drag down, and allow 6x bolt removal of cage. Awning and jack mounted: Rear drawer and fridge slide setup: Things left to do: Trim and straighten front bar Seat covers Missing link and skid plates Electric brake unit install Secondary battery install Get out and use her Thanks for reading, I aim to keep this updated as things get done, and hopefully have a pretty complete build thread before long. Cheers, Fr8Train

Ok, cheers

@hawairish are the front plate CAD files available to download if I wanted to get a local profile cutting company to cut me some out?