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Project Pathfinder


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Ok, so this is not my rig. This is a online magazine build that some know about, some dont. I have been trying to find it for a while, as the last place it was posted, was on nissanperformancemag.com. That site is bunk now, and the information as been moved to Motoiq.com. I will post the link if you would like to see the original, but I will be copying the text so it wont be lost again. Maybe a mod can pin this...

 

Ok, here we go......

 

http://www.motoiq.com/projects/project_nissan_pathfinder.aspx

 

 

 

Project Pathfinder Part 1

 

Project Pathfinder started out as a necessity, not because we are into SUV’s or off road but because of a need. For the last two years we have been racing in NASA’s SE-R cup series and using our old 1993 Pathfinder SE as a two vehicle. This taught us a couple of things, 1 a stock old Pathfinder is not a good tow vehicle due to a lack of power and brakes and 2 a SUV is probably not the safest vehicle on the road for carrying your loved ones due to its tipsy handling.

 

Our Pathfinder is saddled with an old school VG30E engine pumping out a Pathetic 160 hp and a lame towing capacity of 3000 lbs. When towing our race car, we exceed this by quite a bit, which caused drama at every hill. When there are crosswinds the big trailer makes driving a case of the tail wagging the dog. To properly tow, we really should have a ½ ton pick up or a bigger V-8 domestic SUV. Since new SUV’s and trucks are expensive, we don’t want to deal with a domestic truck and quality issues, and the Pathfinder is long ago paid for, we will attempt to turn our Pathfinder into a decent towmobile. Our Pathfinder runs perfectly well and is in great shape despite 16 years of use and 120 k miles on the odometer, a testament to Nissans reliability. The engine is smooth and doesn’t burn a drop of oil. Our Pathfinder has not had one single repair done to it due to a breakdown, only routine maintenance. Despite its age, we think we can get old paint up to the task of racecar hauling.

 

Our first chapter of Project Pathfinder deals with getting some of the handling issues solved by aiding in the traction and braking department. We will also take some measures to assure transmission reliability. I have always hated the styling of the Stock Pathfinder SE’s alloy wheels, which are jokingly called moon buggy wheels by Pathfinder lovers. The styling is hideous, they are heavy at about 30 lbs each and they attract brake dust like you would not believe. Although they seem easy to clean, they have many nooks and crannies that need a detailer’s brush and elbow grease to get brake dust out of.

 

We dealt with this problem the easy way by selling the stock wheels as scrap, replacing them with some ultra trick Rays Volk TE37X wheels from Mackin Industries. We replaced the stock 15x7 inch wheels with some 16 x 8.5” TE37X’s with a zero offset. This gives us over 4” more inches track width making the Pathfinder much more tip resistant, important to us as it will help keep our family safe when we are not towing. Our Pathfinder is the SE 4WD model, which has large fender flairs stock, which accommodates our larger wheels without sticking out alike a Tonka toy. The 16” wheels allow us to use a lower profile less squirmy tire for better handling but the sidewall will still be tall enough to air down for off road action as we occasionally do some offroading in this car.

 

 

The TE37X features light forged construction instead of the common cast. Forging means that the wheel, like all TE37’s is smashed out of a billet of aluminum at high pressures. This refines the grain of the metal and increases its strength, ductility and toughness greatly. The added strength that forging imparts allow the engineers at Rays to greatly thin out the sections of the wheel without giving up strength. Even beefed up over a regular road racing TE37 to withstand off road abuse, the TE37X weighs in at a feathery 18 lbs, vs the nearly 30 lbs of the stock wheel!

 

Since we mostly drive the Pathfinder on road and long distances for towing, we chose a more street biased tire, one that gives ok grip off road but way better traction than typical off road tires on pavement. We chose the Yokohama AVS S/T in 265/70-16. This tire is way bigger than the stock sized tires which will give us better grip on road and better flotation off road. The AVS S/T is a truck tire with an aggressive unidirectional tread for excellent wet and dry traction, which still offers adequate traction on dirt. It is a fine choice for us as even though our project is 4WD, to be honest, we spend the vast majority of out time on pavement.

 

Even though our new tires are much bigger and wider, our lightweight wheels make up for it so we have surprisingly not sacrificed any of our much-needed acceleration! We were surprised at the greatly improved grip and stability these bigger wheels and tires provided. The added grip brought some issues to light however. The Pathfinder had a great deal of body roll and since the 120,000 mile stock suspension had sagged several inches, the big tires were rubbing in the wheel wells. In future editions of project pathfinder we will address these issues with some parts from Rancho, Energy suspension and Nissan Motorsports.

 

Next on the agenda was giving the brakes a hand. Trying to stop the 4000 lb Pathfinder and a 4000 lb trailer and racecar was an iffy proposition. Even though our Pathfinder was equipped with big 4 wheel disk brakes, we could not lock our big tires on clean dry pavement no matter how hard we pushed. In the short term we greatly helped out our brake system by installing a set of Axxis Metal Master metallic brake pads and replacing our stock brake fluid with Motul RBF 600.

 

 

 

 

This improved our braking greatly to the point where we could lock the wheels if we tried and stopping with the trailer was perhaps improved 20 percent or more. So great is the improvement that any Pathfinder should run these pads. They also cost less than a set of stock genuine Nissan pads! We will be looking towards other brake upgrades in the near future so stay tuned.Next the stock transmission cooler is prone to clogging up with clutch fiber. This starves the rear planetary gears of oil resulting in a ruined transmission. It also transfers a lot of heat to the radiator coolant, which can contribute to overheating. We solved this problem by eliminating the stock transmission cooler replacing it with the stock transmission cooler from a 1995-present Pathfinder. This cooler is a bar and plate type much like a racing oil cooler. We mounted this cooler behind the grill to the radiator using a Hayes oil cooler mounting kit that we bought from Pep Boys. This cooler will assure us of reliability when towing.

 

We also replaced all of our lubricants with Motul Synthetics. Our oil was changed to 300V, our transfer case and differentials were treated to a dose of gear 300 and our transmission received some Motul synthetic ATF. As most people know, synthetics are superior to mineral lubricants under extreme temperatures and towing is perhaps the worst punishment you can apply to an underpowered truck.

 

Well that’s it for this installment, stay tuned, we will be working on our suspension and engine in the next installments of project Pathfinder.

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Project Pathfinder Part 2, Making it Stop

 

When we last left off on Project Pathfinders brakes over a year ago in our first installment of the project, our simple upgrades to our brake pads and fluid brought our brakes performance up from the pathetic, unable to lock the wheels level to something a bit safer.

 

Safer still leaves a bit more to be desired. We would really prefer something like being able to uses the descriptive “good” when talking about our brakes. You can never have too much brake, especially when towing a decently sized trailer and with our racecar trailer weighing about 4000 lbs or 1000 lbs over our rated tow capacity, we need all the help we can get to make sure we are safe.

 

Even with our prior upgrades to Project Pathfinder, our brakes still had much room for improvement. Although we could now lock our wheels on clean dry pavement (amazingly the stock brakes could not lock our big sticky Yokohama tires!) it took pushing with all of our might and several revolutions of the wheels to get the pads hot enough so they could get enough bite to lock the wheels. This sort of braking added precious feet to our stopping distance and made pedal modulation difficult, critical for limit braking performance.

 

No more was this apparent when an idiot driver cut across 4 lanes of freeway in an attempt to make an offramp, suddenly slamming on the brakes and coming to nearly a complete stop in front of Project Pathfinder towing the Dog Car in the number two lane! The brakes were slammed hard and the trailer brakes jammed into emergency override to avoid punting the idiot into the next county. It seemed like death coming in slow motion and only a combination of threshold braking, manual and automatic trailer brake application and swerving avoided disaster.

 

If you tow much, then you know that a trailer with a race car on it is an idiot magnet and somehow people often either fail to see the trailer when changing lanes, want to drive close to stare at the pretty racecar only to nearly hit it or crash due to the distraction, road ragers who become furious that your big and slow rig is on the road or the most idiotic, ricers who try to race or cut off the rig on purpose for no reason other than being idiot ricers. Infuriatingly after such retardedness, ricers often flash their hazard lights as if to further add insult to injury. In heavily urban Southern California nearly every road trip has at least one encounter with idiots. Having good brakes is important when dealing with idiots safely.

 

Help for our brakes came from the folks at Automotive Customizes or AC for short. AC is a company devoted to Nissan trucks and SUV’s and should be one of the first places you go to when looking for upgrades. It’s refreshing to speak to people who actually know about and care about Nissan trucks. AC’s customer service is also terrific. Due to a miscommunication, AC accidentally shipped up the wrong parts and jumped through hoops to get Project Pathfinder back on the road quickly, important when its your daily driver.

 

 

 

We started off with AC’s drilled rotors. Drilled rotors are probably not the greatest thing for race cars where their tendency to crack under racings brutal repeated hard use that drives temps up over 900 degrees F for long periods of time is an issue.

 

For trailer towing, the likelihood is that you will use the brakes extremely hard for short periods of time. In this case the drilled rotors really shine.

 

 

When brakes are used hard, a thin layer of the brake pads surface actually vaporizes. Its possible for the pads to hydroplane on this layer of vaporized material and not grab the rotors. The holes in the drilled rotor give the vaporized gas a place to vent to assuring that the pads can grab. The holes also give a mild cheese grater effect which helps prevent the pads from glazing over and losing effectiveness at a slight penalty in wear. The holes also give water a place to go, helping wet performance. The holes help cooling reducing the time it takes a rotor to cool down from heavy use by up to 25%.

 

AC’s rotors are high quality replacements made by Brembo, a well-known manufacturer of racing brakes in case you have never heard of them. The holes are chamfered and cast into the surface, reducing their likelihood of cracking. The Pathfinder SE has its parking brake drum as a part of the rear rotor. This makes finding upgraded rear rotors a difficult proposition and AC is the only company to have an upgrade for Pathfinders with rear disc brakes that we are aware of.

 

We also installed AC’s braided steel brake line kit. Pathfinders have long rubber brake lines. When the brakes are pushed hard, the rubber swells and the brake pedal gets mushy. This mush also makes the brakes hard to modulate. Braided steel lines do not swell so every bit of brake pedal travel gets transferred to the calipers. The only disadvantage to AC’s kit is that it’s designed for both drum and disc brake Pathfinders. On a 4 wheel disc SE Pathfinder, two short rubber lines to the rear calipers remain. Hopefully AC will be able to make braided steel lines for these soon. What’s good is that all of the longer rubber hoses on the vehicle are replaced with the braided steel parts.

 

 

We replaced our metal master brake pads with AC’s metal matrix pads. AC sources these pads from Stillen and they are an excellent choice having better cold and hot properties than the metal master pads they replaced. I would say that these pads should be mandatory replacements for any Pathfinder in need of pads, they are practically essential for safely stopping the car which is woefully underbraked whenever lager wheels and tires are fitted.

 

Of course we bled our system with Motuls excellent RBF 600 brakefluid, which our race testing has shown to be nearly fade proof.

 

When completed and after a short drive to bed in our new pads and rotors, we were absolutely amazed at the difference in braking prowness. The Pathfinder could be stopped with fully half the previous pedal effort. The pedal travel was greatly reduced and the pedal was much firmer and easy to modulate. We were skeptical that a simple upgrade as this would make such a huge difference but the difference is amazing. We now don’t even think about the brakes and our paranoia while towing is greatly reduced. We are now totally confident in our ability to stop. AC’s brake system feels like brake upgrades involving 4 piston calipers and much bigger rotors costing thousands more.

 

 

 

 

We are well on the way in making Project Pathfinder a good half-ton V-8 truck replacement. In fact we think our Pathfinder tows more easily with better handling stopping and power with more confidence than our friend’s prior generation V-8 4.6 liter F150 and another friends V-8 Dodge Dakota.

 

Stay tuned, in later installments of Project Pathfinder, we experiment with fine tuning our ECU program and other minor tweeks to really dial in our tow machine. We would also like to test Project Pathfinder offroad where our suspension should prove to work really well in rough conditions.

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Project Pathfinder Part 3 Getting Into The Suspension

 

Project Pathfinder started off with a need, the need for an adequate tow vehicle for our SE-R cup racecar. We also wanted to make the vehicle a safer transport for everyone. In our last edition of Project Pathfinder we started off with some new trick wheels and tires to increase the amount of rubber on the road for grip, widen the track for stability and safety all without compromising off road handling. We also did some improvements to the brakes.

 

This month we tackle an area of serious deficient for most SUV’s, the suspension. We were faced with some tough decisions here. Since we use our Pathfinder for everything from daily commuting, to drives to the mountains hauling mountain bikes and gear to off road exploring, we had to come up with a reasonable compromise. Our main goal was not to build a car crushing monster truck or a Rubicon Trail bolder crawler but to greatly improve on-road handling, to eliminate the SUV characteristic of flipping over when pressed and to provide a safer ride when towing. We wanted all of this with improved off-road capability as well.

 

Towing was the big problem. When towing our racecar, the Pathfinder would rear up like it was doing a wheelie, the steering would get light and the car would wander around the road. In crosswinds driving straight was scarier than taking turn 9 at Big Willow balls out in the racecar! Part of the problem was the 120k mile stock suspension. The Stock SE suspension was mostly designed for a plush ride and good off road characteristics. It has soft spring rates and electronically adjustable shocks that can be adjusted for stiffness via a switch in the driver’s compartment. What once worked ok when new was now showing its age. You could barely tell the difference between touring and sport modes due to the worn shocks. Also the stock torsion bars had sagged and Project Pathfinder’s front suspension was sitting on the bumpstops with its back in the air like a old school hot rod. Due to the bottomed out suspension the ride was abysmal.

 

Rancho and Nissan Motorsports came to our aid with some fresh underpinnings for project Pathfinder. Since our suspension had to a have a large latitude of flexibility of use from mountain road corner carving to off road dirt antics, we chose Ranchos new 9 way adjustable RS9000X shocks.

 

 

These shocks have a very wide range of damping adjustment from slightly firmer than stock to near racecar firm. The Rancho shocks feature a sophisticated 10-stage valve system with a triple tube construction to allow for extra valving stages between the tubes. One-way fluid flow helps keep the bubbles in the fluid confined to the outer tube. A cellular foam insert also helps keep the shocks internal gas necessary for shock shaft displacement volume under control for more consistent damping. The triple tube design makes the shocks less susceptible to rock denting that can take single tube shocks out of action. Most shocks are only twin tube. The Ranchos feature beefy internal construction with low friction bushings and a large 5/8” shock shaft. The 9 stages of damping adjustment are accomplished easily from an easy to reach external knob on the bottom of the shock body. Another plus is that the shocks can be converted to external adjustment from the drivers compartment with an easy to install optional kit. The Ranchos also feature firm and durable urethane shock bushings and red urethane boots to keep dirt and dust away from the seals.

 

 

 

Nissan Motorsports provided some heavy-duty torsion bars with a 30% higher spring rate for the front. The torsion bars are 27.5mm indiameter up form the stock 26mm. These bars are not designed to raise the truck but to firm it up to reduce bottoming in off road action and to reduce body roll on the road. We are only going to slightly raise Project Pathfinder from stock. Our idea is not to crate a monster truck or a bolder creeper but something like a rally car, which can take the dirt but still be competent under all conditions. In the rear we obtained some Nissan Motorsports rear springs. These springs raise the body by one and a half inches and are 30% stiffer. This should help correct our cars nose high attitude when towing. When really cranking on Project Pathfinder in the twisties, we noticed a somewhat nasty tendency to oversteer late in a turn.

 

 

We installed Nissan Motorsports front swaybar to reduce this tendency. It is also about 20% stiffer in roll than the stock swaybar. Its 26 mm in diameter up from the stock bars 25mm. It has urethane bushings and has fewer bends making it stiffer.

 

We installed the components, adjusting the torsion bars to raise Project Pathfinder’s nose 1 inch from stock gaining something like 4” in wheel travel from our previous sagged out state. With the 1.5” rear lift our rake was much like the Pathfinders stock nose down attitude. We gained about 3” of rear wheel travel over the sagged and worn stock springs. We experimented around and found that setting the Ranchos at 4 out of 9 in the front and 2 out of 9 in the rear gave a plus but very controlled ride. Project Pathfinders roll in the turns is greatly reduced and its bump soaking up capability is greatly increased by an order of magnitude. In offroad action Project Pathfinder can traverse rough roads better than our buddies 3” lifted Pro-Comp suspension equipped S10, much to our surprise. Our better suspension has brought more deficits in Project Pathfinders underpinnings to light. Our steering now feels loose and the response to steering input still feels poor. We will address these in future issues.

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Project Pathfinder Part 4, Suspension Part 2

 

Now that we have the sagging springs, excess lean in the corners, bottoming out, bouncy ride and high speed oversteer of Project Pathfinder taken care of, we now turned our attention to the front suspension in our quest to tighten things up and fix the weak points of the Nissan steering system.

 

When attempting to align Project Pathfinder after last installments installation of parts we were frustrated because we could not seem to set the toe correctly. The toe settings would change every time we tried to check them whether we try to adjust them or not. The wife was complaining about loose and wandering steering as well. Having a friend move the steering wheel back and forth while we watch showed the Project Pathfinders steering linkage was seriously worn. The center link and idler arm had about ½” total play in them although the ball joints were tight and in good shape still. Those who off road their Pathfinder frequently know that the steering system is the weak point of the D21 and WD21 line of Pathfinders and Frontier trucks. Although the suspension is pretty beefy, the steering linkage is pretty wimpy when comparing it to what’s found under domestic half-ton trucks for example. Some hardcore off roaders have been known to break there steering linkages every few hundred feet of tough trail.

 

Spencer Low Racing and Calmini make super heavy duty steering linkages for Nissans but since this is not a hard core trail truck we decided that we didn’t need this radical of a system for our use, but we would like to beef up our steering somewhat, at least to improve response and for longer life. We replaced our worn out center link with a brand new genuine Nissan one solving that problem. We rebuilt our stock idler arms worn out wimpy plastic bushed idler arm with some solid bronze parts from Spencer Low Racing. These bronze parts press right in and should last an order of magnitude longer than the amazingly wimpy stock plastic parts.

 

We did not want our new tightened steering linkage to wear out so easily nor did we want to bend our idler arm so we reinforced it with Automotive Customizers idler arm brace. This sturdy steel brace reinforces the idler arm preventing loose steering flex and greatly strengthens the idler arm by bracing it to the frame. Automotive Customizers is perhaps the best source of Nissan truck off road parts on the net. Automotive Customizers also provided us with their steering damper.

 

The steering damper prevents steering shimmy and shake and takes a lot of stress off of the steering system by cushioning road shock increasing its life. The steering damper also reduces the amount of steering kickback, which can break your thumbs encountered while driving off road. Lastly the steering damper greatly reduces the loose steering feeling and wander in crosswinds and highway driving, just what we need for towing. The AC Steering damper uses a Rancho RS5000 shock modified for 50/50 damping. This provides the cushion for the steering system. A sturdy steel bracket attaches one end of the Rancho shock to the frame and another clamps onto the centerlink and secures the other end of the shock to the steering system.

 

To increase the amount of available wheel travel we replaced the thick Nissan top out bumper with Energy Suspensions Urethane low profile bump stop. This allowed us to raise the front suspension more, gaining wheel travel but still maintaining a good amount of droop travel so the truck would not rebound hard off of bumps. To prevent harsh bottoming we used some of AC’s poly foam bumpstops.

 

 

 

These bumpstops are made of soft microcellular urethane and are slightly taller than stock but progressive in stiffness. The idea is that they will gradually get stiffer as the downward travel increases so you won’t get a harsh bottoming out. In the rear we used AC’s urethane 2.5” bumpstop replacing the nearly 5” thick stock hard rubber bumpstop. This not only gave us an extra .25 inches of wheel travel but also improve articulation of the rear suspension. The AC rear bumpstops were for a D21 truck and needed to be slightly modified to fit on the back of the WD21 Pathfinder. This was a fairly simple task of welding the bumpstop plate to another one with the bolt holes farther apart. With the new bumpstops Project Pathfinder now has another 2.5 inches of rear and 1.5 inches more bump eating front wheel travel than stock without creating a tippy raised up monster truck.

 

 

 

To tighten up our suspension further and give improved steering response we replaced all of our mushy old rubber bushings in our suspension with hard polyurethane parts from Energy Suspension. We replaced our upper and lower control arm bushings, our tension and compression rod bushings and our front and rear sway bar bushing with hard urethane. If you did not have the budget, the tension compression rod bushings make the biggest difference for steering feel and handling of all the bushings. The bushings greatly increased steering precision and feel and reduced body roll due to the much firmer than stock sway bar bushings.

 

As the final step, we took Project Pathfinder to Darrin Nishimura, of West End Alignment, the best damn chassis shop in town. You probably notice that all of NPM’s project cars and personal street cars come here for work. There is a reason; Darrin is simply the best chassis guy out there. We still pay for our work with Darrin but the entire staff will agree that Darrin works miracles on your cars handling. West end set up Project Pathfinders front end to have about 1.2 degrees of negative camber with 3 degrees positive caster and zero front toe to help keep the rubber to the road without compromising tire wear. Darrin noted that Project Pathfinders tight front end made it much easier to align than the typical Nissan truck.

 

The transformation to Project Pathfinders handling is amazing, although not a sports car, Project Pathfinder can now probably out corner many sedans and just about any stock SUV. The wider track of the Volk wheels with the wider more highway biased Yokohama AVS tires and the greatly reduced body roll reduces the chance of the vehicle flipping greatly. Extreme cornering was tried in a controlled area by some of NPM’s experienced race driver staff and the Pathfinder showed no tendency to roll just showing a slight tendency for understeer at the limit. We don’t claim that we made the Pathfinder roll proof but it is a large improvement over stock. The ride is not harsh but firm and well damped, an improvement over the stock bouncy seasick ride.

 

When testing over big dips and railroad tracks we compared Project Pathfinder to a modified Chevy S10 with a complete Pro-Comp suspension 5” lift suspension package which consisted of control arms, shocks, spindles, and springs. When hitting big bumps hard, the S10 would bound off its top out bumpers step sideways and nearly go out of control. As far as regular cornering performance, forget it. Project Pathfinder would just go bloop and soak the bump up and was capable of going as fast as the test driver was brave enough for. We also compared Project Pathfinder to our team tow vehicle, a highly modified Ford F250 super duty with a custom long travel kit consisting of Pro-Comp springs, control arms and spindles with custom hoops and dual Fox long travel remote reservoir racing shocks. Unbelievablely, Project Pathfinder was better at soaking up the bumps and handling than this greatly modified truck, which seemed underdamped and floaty when pounded hard.

 

Stay tuned, in the next edition of Project Pathfinder we put the final touches on our suspension before we tear into the engine for better pulling power.

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Project Pathfinder Part 5, Basic Engine

In the first few rounds of Project Pathfinders build up, we focused on getting the chassis and brakes sorted out. As you know SUV’s are notorious for poor handling and braking and that was something we could not tolerate. Now we set up to tackle the other negative attributes of an SUV, total sluggish lack of power and poor fuel economy.

 

To say that our Pathfinder sucked on power was an understatement. Our Pathfinder could not beat anything in any contest of speed, except for perhaps another SUV. Joggers and bicyclists gave it trouble. It guzzled fuel like a turbo car on boost as well turning in a miserable 15 MPG around town and 19 mpg on the highway. When attempting to tow, entering the freeway was a scary proposition and you had to depend on the mercy of other motorists and you all know that LA drivers basically have no mercy.

 

Things had to change. The first step was getting rid of the rusting and rotted 130,000 mile old exhaust. We wanted something with less backpressure, nice quality and not too loud for daily driving. We chose Nissan Motorsports cat back exhaust. Constructed of non-rusting high quality 304 stainless, it also had a free flowing Borla Muffler with Borla’s polished intercooled tip (this is just a cosmetic feature). The Nissan Motorsports exhaust is good for about 5-7 wheel hp and has a nice quiet note, hardly louder than stock from the inside of the car. It was an easy bolt in installing in about 20 minutes with simple hand tools. The exhaust noticeably improved power above 4500 rpm with no loss in bottom end power at all.

 

 

 

Next we decided to uncork the intake. The VG30 engine breaths through a ridiculously small neck in the airbox, the hole is smaller than the MAF and throttle body. The air box and the filter element are on the small side as well. We figured that this was a restriction to the engines breathing and hampering power. We replaced the airbox and filter assembly with JWT’s POP Charger air cleaner assembly. The POP is an open-air cone type filter with a cast aluminum MAF adaptor that has a shape like a velocity stack to reduce the effects of MAF turbulence. The POP charger is good for 2-3 hp over the stock filter. The POP increases intake noise quite a bit and is pretty loud at wide-open throttle. At part throttle its only slightly louder than stock. The POP element is washable and reusable when it is treated with special oil after washing.

 

Finally we replaced the ECU with JWT’s POP tuned ECU. The JWT ECU has optimized maps for fuel and ignition timing. The closed loop operation envelope has been expanded so the car will cruse under closed loop at higher speeds on the freeway. This will help fuel economy. The JWT ECU greatly improved the Pathfinders sorely lacking throttle response and gave a 4-5 hp boost as well. A disadvantage to the ECU is the engine now requires 91 octane gas. We will be working with JWT on an ECU that also works with a lower grade of gas since gas is now so expensive. It will give up some peak power but who really cares, this is a tow vehicle, not a race car.

 

 

With our new mods, fuel economy has improved to 18 mpg around town and about 22 on the highway. The engine feels peppier and happier to rev. Just the gains in fuel economy are worth the expense of these mods. We would still like more power. Stay tuned, in the months to come, we will be adding more parts to our motor and will end up with a fully built monster tow motor.

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Project Pathfinder Part 6, For Safety sake

Project Pathfinder was not cut out to be a heavy duty tow rig but in this edition we add some important parts to make the task of towing much safer even if our Pathfinder was not designed to tow a full size trailer to begin with.

 

Euro Lights

Driving to races often means driving late at night to dark remote areas. Our stock lights threw a weak yellow beam so dim we could hardly see the road at times. Our lights were barely adequate for city driving and were hazardous on the open road. To fix this we obtained Nissan Motorsports Euro headlight conversion kit. The Euro headlights are standard equipment on Euro Pathfinders and allow the use of an H4 bulb. There are many good aftermarket H4 bulbs available. The Euro lights also have a better beam pattern with a sharp cutoff on the right side to help prevent blinding oncoming drivers. Technically these lights are not DOT approved or legal but they do work much better, don’t blind people and provide much better illumination. You are not likely ever gonna be hassled for these lights. The Euro lights require adding your existing stock brackets to them but otherwise bolt right in. They also require that you splice in the H4 3 wire socket to your stock wiring, an easy solder, and shrinktube wiring job. I recommend that you don’t exceed 100 watt light bulbs or you may have problems with your stock wiring burning up. We used some 55/65 watt Piaa Hyperwhite bulbs which have the power equivalent to 80/100 halogen bulbs. They did seem brighter when driving to our first bulb which was a 80/100 watt Hella. We went with the Piaa’s as the stock wiring harness ran cool with them. With the Hella, the stock wires were slightly warm to the touch. This is a very good bang for the buck mod and we think it has significantly helped nighttime driving safety.

 

Technosha Trailer Brake Controller

Even with big 4 wheel disc brakes, when towing a dual axle trailer with an underrated short wheel base tow vehicle like the Pathfinder, trailer brakes become very important for safety. Because of this we made sure we didn’t skimp here. We installed a Technosha Prodigy inertia type brake controller. The Technosha is very sophisticated, enabling it to apply the trailer brakes in proportion to the demand. The demand is sensed by an onboard accelerometer. The gain to compensate for a loaded and unloaded trailer can be adjusted in a second via a “boost” button and fine tuned for the braking power onset slope with a roller knob. There is also a manual override slider switch for emergencies if you really need sudden maximum braking from the trailer, like if the trailer gets caught in an oscillation from wind or poor loading and starts wagging the rig. One of the best racers I know, who is also the raining Honda Challenge champ recently totally lost control of his tow rig and crashed because of a similar situation. Even his skill level could not control the trailer. With a proper trailer brake, control could have been regained easily at a touch of a button. The controllers’ electronics are smart, making it somewhat insensitive to mounting position and unlike other inertial controllers, it also works in reverse. The brake controller works flawlessly and seamlessly and greatly aids safety.

 

 

Air Lift Spring Boosters

When hitching up our fully loaded trailer to Project Pathfinder our rear end comically sagged, especially the time when we tried to tow a heavy 300ZXTT. Even with our new heavy duty suspension the rear end still sagged 3-4 inches under the load of a trailer. Worse, the nose high attitude caused wander, especially in high winds like the ones the sweep across the areas where racetracks are built. Our new suspension had improved on this situation 100% to where it was no longer a dangerous white-knuckle ride but one trip in a F250 SD truck proved to us that we still needed to do some suspension work.

 

 

 

 

Air Lift and the Nissan off road specialists Automotive Customizers in Florida came to our rescue with their air bag system especially for towing. The airlift system uses tough polyurethane bags that fit inside the rear coil springs. A small compressor is installed in a protected place inside the passenger side frame rail, which inflates the bags, instantly raising the ride height and increasing the spring rate. An inside the cab controller adjusts the spring rate via a pressure gauge and a remote on/off switch. A sensor keeps the air pressure from dropping below any preset pressure. Since the spring rate rises, the suspension needs more damping to optimize the function. This is no problem because we installed Ranchos remote shock adjusting system a few issues ago! We now have drivers seat adjustable spring and damping rates at a touch of a couple of buttons.

 

This system makes a world of difference when towing, we can now level out the chassis when it is loaded. For offroad, we can raise the truck up for more ground clearance. Even more interesting is that for on road extreme cornering, we can now increase the rear spring rate and dial in some oversteer if needed! Our Pathfinder was a handling marvel and it now got even better, albeit for advanced drivers only.

 

With our new mods our Pathfinder is reaching the towabilty of a ½ ton pickup in all aspects except for one, power. Stay Tuned, in following months we will start our build up of our VQ eating 250 hp torque monster tow motor.

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Project Pathfinder Part 7, External Shock Adjusters

In our previous installments of Project Pathfinder we corrected the sloppy handling and loose steering of our machine. Our project is handling superbly, more like a sports sedan than an SUV. Our next mod is one more for convenience than adding any additional performance.

 

Our Rancho RSX 9000 9-way adjustable shocks work quite well. The only issue is that since Project Pathfinder is used for a wide range of conditions, from normal driving, to mountain roads, to off road and finally towing, it is necessary to adjust the shocks frequently, even several times per drive depending on what you might want to do. When towing, you might want to stiffen the rear shocks for better control, for off road, both shocks, for handling driving you might want to stiffen the rear more than the front to reduce understeer, for comfort soften the shocks.

 

 

Adjusting the shocks was pretty easy but it did involve getting out of the truck and diving under it to turn the adjusting knobs, meaning that you had to get dirty and it was somewhat of a hassle (hey we are spoiled, you could adjust the stock shocks with a push of a button from in the cab). To make things a touch of a button easy like a stock Pathfinder, we installed Rancho’s in cab adjuster kit. The Rancho kit consists of a control panel where you can monitor the shocks stiffness level and adjust the shocks by varying the air pressure to them.

 

Rancho’s kit also contains a small electrical compressor, some air lines, and special fittings that replace the adjustment knobs on the shocks. Air pressure from the compressor works a small piston inside the shock, the more pressure on the piston, the firmer the shock’s damping gets. Air pressure gages in control panel monitor the damping level of the front and rear shocks respectively. Bleed valves in the control panel allow you to easily adjust the air pressure and thus the amount of damping force of the shocks. A button on the panel activates the compressor, pressurizing the system and the bleed valves allow for fine adjustment of the pressure.

 

 

We installed the compressor in the Pathfinders drivers side wheel well, high up in the fender, behind the fender liner where it would be invisible and well protected from water. The air lines were routed to the front and rear shocks inside the factory wire looms or following the factory brake line routing. This kept the installation invisible and well protected. Where the lines were exposed to possible impact damage, they were run inside plastic conduit to help protect them. Our careful installation should help ensure the systems reliability no matter how hard the use.

 

The system works like a charm, we can now adjust the shocks from the comfort of the drivers seat, even while in motion, making shock tuning a snap. At first we though that the kit was not a necessity or even a bit silly but now we find ourselves always tweaking the shocks trying to get the most out of our suspension.

 

Our mods have transformed Project Pathfinder. Before the Pathfinder was considered “the wife’s car” and we could care less about driving it. With the concerns about SUV rollover safety, we were trying to find a suitable replacement that combined good handling, cargo area and towing capacity. With our new suspension we find ourselves driving the Pathfinder more because its actually fun to hang corners in. More than once we have heard the comment, that’s crazy Volks on a SUV uttered.

 

Stay tuned, in the coming months we will talk about some simple bolt on power mods to make the Pathfinder less of an embarrassment to drive while we build our killer 3.4 liter super torquer tow motor.

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Project Pathfinder Part 8, Cams ECU Headers

In our last edition we added some mods to help our weak legged Pathfinder with a much needed shot of power. This month we do a few more things to help our car tow our SE-R Cup car without getting run over.

 

 

The stock VG cam shafts are very mild. At the advice of the guys at Nissan Motorsports we added a set of their #2 off road cams to Project Pathfinder. The cams have 264 degrees of duration and .430” lift with a 106 degree intake and 116 lobe center as opposed to the tiny stock 248 degrees duration and .374” lift with 114 lobe centers. This is quite a difference and the cams really woke Project Pathfinder up. In fact the cams made more of a difference than any mod we have done so far. We estimate that the cams were good for about 25 hp over stock. The power increase comes across the board with more power from idle to the fuel cut. The Nissan Motorsports cams work with the stock valvesprings. The only drawback is that they have a slightly lumpy idle due to the much tighter lobe centers which actually sounds sort of cool. In town fuel economy has remained the same but the improvement in highway and towing mileage has been incredible increasing by 4 mpg. This is because the added power helps the big Pathfinder travel down the road with less strain. I highly recommend these cams as the best Pathfinder engine mod possible. If you have a newer Xterra or Frontier with the bigger VG33E engine, these same cams will wake your motor up even more to the tune of 40 or more hp because the newer VG’s are saddled with even smaller stock cams. An older Z31 300ZX can also benefit greatly from these cams.

 

 

 

 

We added JWT’s ECU to help improve mileage and throttle response as well as to improve idle quality with the cams. JWT’s Clark Steppler did a custom tune to enable us to get the best power from weak 87 octane gas although we do switch to 89 for towing. The VG30E’s low 8.8:1 stock compression allows for ECU tuning even with poor gas. The JWT ecu made a noticeable increase in power, improved throttle response and improved fuel economy.

 

To help improve engine efficiency, we also added a set of Doug Thorley Headers. Old Pathfinders tend to crack their exhaust manifolds and ours was no exception. We replaced our leaking and cracked exhaust manifold with headers. Doug Thorley headers are CARB approved so smogging your car will be no hassle. They are a high quality part made with thick flanges and thick gauge tubing for long life. To reduce rust they are also chrome plated. The Doug Thorley headers are designed for good midrange torque, just right for an underpowered and heavy SUV. The headers made an impressive difference running a close second to the cams in improvement as the best mod. The difference in midrange power was quite noticeable.

 

 

Project Pathfinders fuel economy improved from a Pathetic 15 mpg in town, 19 highway and 10 towing to a much improved 19 in town, an amazing 24 mpg highway and 12-14 mpg towing. Power for towing has improved quite a bit. When towing our race car with a two axle trailer we can now go 65 mph up the dreaded grapevine pass while towing. Stock we struggled to maintain 50 mph here. In an impromptu race with a late model VQ35DE powered Pathfinder, Project Pathfinder surprised us by beating the newer 240 hp faster Pathfinder. In future editions we will get into the engines internals to make a real sick tow monster. Look out F150!

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Project Pathfinder Part 9, Headwork

 

 

As we have reached the limit in bolt on potential for Project Pathfinder we now delve into building the ultimate tow motor. The ultimate tow motor is probably the ultimate off road motor and perhaps the ultimate motor for a heavy clumsy SUV. Our motor will be built to emphasis low-end torque, better for pulling, good fuel economy and the ability to run on lower grades of gas. Since we're dirt cheap and as this is just our tow/daily transportation vehicle, we placed additional emphasis on staying away from exotic and expensive parts, instead rummaging in our spare bins of factory Nissan parts.

 

 

Or first element will be the cylinder heads. We started with the late VG30E heads. These castings were made from 1987 to the present. The late castings feature a smaller in cross section but better flowing intake ports. These ports produce substantially better low-end torque with no loss of top end power.

 

 

For our port work we turned to DPR Racing. Dan Paramore of DPR has many, many years of experience in the realm of modifying heads and engine development. Dan listened to our requirements and went to work. First Dan inspected the head valves and valve guides for wear and proper clearances. Since our head came out of a wrecked Xterra with only a few hundred miles on it, Dan pronounced that the conditon of the heads were fine. However, normally VG cylinder heads do not wear their valve guides and stems much and the need for replacement is rare. Dan also checked the head castings for basic soundness and cracks. Of course our heads passed with flying colors.

 

 

After inspection Dan ported the intake and exhaust ports. Dan concentrated with straightening and cleaning up the ports while removing a minimal amount of material. The idea was to keep the port volume down to keep the velocity up so as to enhance low-end torque. The gains in flow will also help peak power. The short side radius of the ports was cleaned up and some minor kinks were straightened. After porting Dan polished the ports with 220 grit cartridge rolls, the engine being port injected doesn’t really need much roughness in the intake port.

 

 

Dan then removed some material from the combustion chambers to unshroud the intake and exhaust valves to help improve low valve lift flow. After this he polished the chambers to reduce carbon build up and to get rid of any sharp edges where hot spots and detonation could propagate.

 

The valve seats were treated to a 3-angle cut. 3 angle valve jobs reduce shrouding of the valves and greatly help low valve lift flow. 30 degrees on the chamber side, 45 degrees on the valve seat and a 70-degree port side cut was used. The port and combustion chamber cuts were hand blended into the port wall and the combustion chamber bowl to make a smooth radius. The valves were given a 30-degree backcut on top of the 45-degree seating surface to help low lift flow as well.

 

 

 

 

The valve on the right has a 30 degree back cut on top of the 45 degree seat . As you can see this helps smooth the flow greatly. This is especialy effective in helping low lift flow

 

 

This is a rather basic and inexpensive port job that we feel will be beneficial for both power production and fuel economy. Almost any engine build up can benefit from mild porting like this as there are really no negative tradeoffs in powerband, fuel economy nor engine life.

 

 

Stay tuned, next month we dive into our engines bottom end. Our goal of producing the tow power of your typical half-ton small V8 truck is becoming a reality.

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Project Pathfinder Part 10, How to Build the Nissan VG30E

We are getting quite excited as Project Pathfinders motor is now up and running. We are out to show that a solid and reliable naturally aspirated VG30E can be just as strong or stronger in the power department as the VG33R supercharged motor in the Frontiers with vastly superior fuel economy. We also want to show that we can get the pulling power of a small V8 out of the VG. Last month we covered some tricks that Dan Paramore of DPR used to make our heads flow. This month we will dive into the shortblock of our super Pathfinder.

 

Perhaps the hottest combo for older vehicles like ours equipped with the VG30 is using the block from the bigger bored VG33. This is especially good for a post 87 engines with the better cylinder heads although the VG33 heads feature 10 mm exhaust manifold studs, which is good as the older engines 8mm studs, are very prone towards breakage. The donor motor for Project Pathfinder was pulled from some poor bastards rolled and very totaled Xterra with only 1800 miles on the odometer.

 

When the heads were sent to DPR, we stripped down the shortblock and deburred it internally to remove casting sand and stress riser causing flash from the interior of the block. After this prep we obtained a set of pistons from a first generation Infiniti Q45 (1990-1994) VH45DE engine. These pistons give 3.4 liters of displacement and the flat top dome gives a compression ratio to 9.6:1, up from the stock 9:1 of the dished standard piston. The piston feature low friction coating on the skirts to boot and are cheap.

 

 

This close up shows the additional notches cut in the top of the Q45 piston to clear the VG’s valves. Any automotive machine shop can do this easily and cheaply.

 

The black stuff on the skirt of the Q45 piston is a Teflon like anti friction coating, very similar to Swain coating and other similar products. Nissan applies this at the factory.

 

 

 

 

The Q pistons are 1mm bigger to give a new displacement of 3.4 liters.

 

Nissan rings need a smooth surface. This is a 600-grit plateau finished bore; it is as smooth as glass. Don’t let an old school machine shop talk you into getting a rough bore. Nissans have chrome rings that require a smooth bore.

 

 

The Q piston domes must be slightly modified with notches for valve clearance. We had a local machine shop duplicate the VG’s valve notches on the Q pistons. The piston pin diameter for these pistons is 0.866” up from the VG33E’s 0.822”. This happens to be the same size as the 300ZX’s VG30DE rods so these rods can be used or the stock rods can be easily and cheaply rebushed for the larger pin. The VG30DE rods are stronger so it is advantageous to use them although the stock E rods are definitely not weak.

 

VG30DE or DETT rods are easy to find as many Twin Turbo Z owners have upgraded to racing rods. The advantages of the DE and DETT rods are stronger bolts, which are torqued to 43-48 ft/lbs vs 28-33 for the E rods and a bigger piston pin and more beef in the big end of the rod. We happened to have the rods and crank from a VG30DETT lying around so we used them. The stronger crank and rods from the twin turbo Z are not really necessary since the stock parts are beefy as well but since we had them, we might as well use them.

 

After this cleanup, we bored the VG33 block to 93 mm using a torque plate to assure that the bores would stay round when a cylinder head was bolted on. We fine honed the cylinder walls to a 600-grit finish and plateau hone the surface to make it even smoother. The Plateau honing speeds break in, reduces friction, gives the parts a longer life and reduces oil consumption.

 

If you are thinking of building a similar motor to ours, since there are many variations of oil pump, crank snout, balancer and drive pulley on these motors, you are probably best off installing the crank, balancer, oil pump, oil pan and water pump from your vehicle into the VG33 engine. Fortunately all of the bolt bosses for the accessory drives and motor mounts are exactly the same Between the VG30 and the VG33. This saves time and money for the big bore conversion.

 

If you are putting early VG heads on the VG33 block there are a few things you have to consider. In 1987 the coolant flow through the heads was modified to improve cooling. If you have the earlier heads, it’s easy to incorporate these changes by simply laying a 1987 and later head gasket on the head deck to locate where holes should be drilled for the additional coolant flow.

 

If you put a VG33 block on VG30 heads the water passages between the head and block have a slight misalignment. Simply lay the VG33 head gasket on the VG30 heads and scribe where the passages are misaligned. You can then grind away the scribed areas with a die grinder or dremel tool to fix the water flow. The misalignment is slight and you will only literally have to grind away about 1/8” of material to get the passages to match.

 

 

Next we polished the stress risers off of the cranks parting line and the rod beams and had the parts shotpeened. This is not entirely necessary as the stock parts are really strong, but since we were in there, shotpeening and polishing are cheap insurance items. After this work, the crank, rods and pistons were sent out to be balanced. After balancing, we micropolished the cranks journals.

 

We thoroughly cleaned our block with Motul Moto Wash, a great clean due to its anti rust properties, If you have ever prepped an engine before, you know how it’s a struggle to keep the barely new machined iron surfaces of the bore from rusting and Moto Wash works like no other here. We used a Summit Racing engine cleaning brush set to clean all the passages in the block. It’s amazing how much crap ends up in there! After blow-drying off the engine with compressed air, we used Motul Contact Cleaner to clean the bores perfectly. It’s amazing how much grit and slurry from machining gets caught in the bores as well.

 

We assembled our engine using genuine Nissan bearings to the tighter end of the stock clearances. We also used the oil pump from a VG30ET motor for its 25% larger capacity. Our Dan Paramore heads were bolted in place with our Nissan Motorsports cams and we were ready to rock.

 

We have been taking it easy while breaking in our motor but its apparent that we have plenty of power for once. Now there is enough acceleration to push you back in the seat and the increase in low-end torque is really noticeable. It’s possible to even break our big off road tires loose sometimes, even with our limited slip diff. We think that this motor is probably great for everything from off-roading to towing.

 

The motor even had enough power to edge out a ricey GS Integra after it was obnoxiously tailgating us. The Integra driver looked amazed when he could not pass a SUV with raised suspension and big tires. When the SUV edged away he looked even more surprised.

 

We have noticed a few things that we have to do; our motor now slightly detonates on cheap 87-octane gas that we used to feed it due to the higher compression. We will probably do a multimap ECU so we can take advantage of 91-octane fuel and still run around on crappy 87 when we have to. Our tranny now shifts sluggishly and slips from all the new found power as well. We have to do some research on what to do about that as well. If any readers have suggestions for what to do with the tranny, please contact us with your suggestions.

 

We are really happy with our motor setup. It might make our old warhorse actually pleasant to tow with. Stay tuned, in the next editions of Project Pathfinder, we tackle the steering issues, which are coming up again fixing them once and for all and make vast improvements on the brakes.

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Project Pathfinder Part 12, Fixing the Wobbly Steering for Good

We had just gone through the front suspension of Project Pathfinder a year ago in the hope that our mods at the time would tighten up its pathetically loose and wandering steering. Although our mods made a huge difference, after about 12,000 miles, a couple of off road excursions and a bunch of towing it became apparent that our front suspension would again need attention.

 

The stress of our big wheels and tires with a much more positive offset, was causing parts of our 130,000-mile old suspension to wear faster. Clunking noises came from the front end and the steering was getting loose. One drive of a newer ‘07 Pathfinder revealed that Nissan has come a long way in suspension design as well. Compared to the newer Nissan, Project Pathfinder felt nervous at highway speeds especially over bumps and cracks often found in the carpool lane on Southern California’s freeways. Bump steer was causing the truck to wander under these conditions - not fun when going 80 mph right next to the wall.

 

Upon inspection we found that our ball joints and tie rods were worn out, also our wheel bearings were wearing as well. Much to our surprise we also discovered that our brand new genuine Nissan center link and idler arm that we had reinforced with special bushings and braces in a prior installment of Project Pathfinder were worn out as well!

 

After researching more, it was apparent that even a mild suspension lift such as we had done and moderately larger tires such as our Project Pathfinder sported, greatly increased the strain on the stock steering linkage. Even a slight lift also greatly increases bump steer as well. Nissan off road forums are full of stories on how fragile the stock center link and idler arm are. There were many stories of failure of these parts even under mild off road conditions. Sometimes after only a few hundred yards of off road! We had underestimated what sort of steering issues we were going to have.

 

First we had to take care of the stuff that was simply worn. We replaced our wheel bearings with new genuine Nissan bearings and seals. That was simple enough. Our research also showed that the best ball joint and tie rod ends were not the usual genuine Nissan but NAPA Chassis parts. NAPA Chassis is NAPA’s top of the line suspension components line with a lifetime guarantee. It sounded good enough for us. On a Pathfinder the lower ball joints are a pain in the neck, requiring that the front diff be unbolted and lowered out of the way. So we took care of the ball joints, tie rod ends and bearings all at once.

 

To handle our steering woes, Calmini came to our rescue with their unique heavy-duty steering system. Now there are other brands of heavy duty steering systems for Nissan trucks but we felt Calmini’s system was the best for our needs because they address bump steer the best. Bump steer is caused when the suspension links and tie rod ends go through different arcs as the suspension compresses. The different travel paths cause the wheels to turn independent of the steering wheel, causing wander and instability.

 

 

The Calmini kit is a strong, well engineered piece.

 

 

Calmini relocates the tie rod pivot points to be closer in line with lines drawn vertically through the ball joints. The tie rod is also much closer to bisecting the angle between the upper and lower control arms of the suspension. What this means in layman’s terms is that the Calmini system geometrically eliminates over 50% of the bump steer by improving the suspension’s pick up points. None of the other steering systems do this; they are simply just stronger upgraded versions of the stock steering system.

 

Another really bad design feature of Nissans steering is the center link itself. It rocks on two tie rod ends attaching it to the Idler arm and the Pitman arm from the steering box. The other ends of the center link attach to the tie rods like a big dog bone. The center link can thus rock back and forth on the tie rod ends that connect it to the tie rods and Pitman and Idler arms. As the center link rocks like it will when traveling on bumpy roads, the toe will change over ¼ in. per side! Raising the suspension exaggerates the angularity of the center link and makes it worse. This is an amazingly bad design and it’s no wonder the Pathfinder wanders like a drunk when combined with the toe changes caused by bump steer.

 

 

The idler arm is huge including the bushings. It has over 3x the bearing area as stock.

 

 

The Pitman arm is many times stronger than stock.

 

 

The tie rods attach directly to the Pitman and Idler arm and the center link is now just a crossbar translating steering motion across the car. There is no dog bone to rock and upset the toe anymore at all. As a welcomed side effect, the steering is quickened by the Calmini system as well. Thus Calmini resolves both the bump steer and the center link rock issues with their excellent design, the only steering linkage manufacture to address this.

 

 

Nissan steering components are known to be fragile, not Calmini! The Pitman and Idler arms are huge and beefy, cut from billet steel and over twice the size as the stock parts. The tie rod ends used are huge parts from a full size one-ton domestic application. The tie rod adjusters are stout solid steel parts, many times more beefy than stock. The center link is large in diameter and thick walled. The most impressive part is the problematic idler arm. It is a huge beefy part with huge bronze bushings three times bigger than the stock Nissan part. It is held in bulletproof double shear to the chassis by a beefy bracket. This part looks like it belongs on a F250SD more than a Pathfinder. If someone does manage to break the Calmini parts I have no doubt that the rest of the truck will be history as well.

 

We had to shorten our sway bar end links a little to clear the relocated tie rods to prevent contact when bottoming out the suspension. This was really no big deal. We also welded the bracket of our Rancho steering stabilizer to the center link because it was so fat the original clamps would not fit anymore. We tig welded this part and it was quite simple. Be sure and grease the idler arm and tie rod ends with an extreme pressure molly grease before driving. After the installation we took Project Pathfinder to Westend Alignment to have them work their magic on the suspension.

 

In driving Project Pathfinder, we were amazed at the difference. The steering is tight like a late model rack and pinion. There is a much more positive road feel and best of all, 90% of the wander is gone. The truck is secure and stable over bumps now. Cracks and bumps at high speed do not start the truck tramlining or wandering as before. Off road, nearly all of the steering kickback is eliminated as well.

 

The Calmini steering system has really impressed us; it is one of the coolest and feelable mods to date. In our estimation it is one of the most worthwhile mods we have done to date.

 

New Pathfinder? Nah....don’t think so.

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Please note that not everone here likes the same thing. Its ok to not like a certian product or way of doing things. This was posted to help everyone here. I highly recommend following the link and looking at some of the pictures. If I ge the chance and time, I will try to bring the pictures over as well. Hope someone likes this!

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Please note that not everone here likes the same thing. Its ok to not like a certian product or way of doing things. This was posted to help everyone here. I highly recommend following the link and looking at some of the pictures. If I ge the chance and time, I will try to bring the pictures over as well. Hope someone likes this!

A city slicker 21?Blaspamy I say! The wheel/tire combo looks very nice in my own humble opion.The tires look like 245/70s or 255/70s on ether 16s or 17s,most likly 245-70/16s.

 

And there term Billet steel?Am I wrong in saying this or is this just not finished steel,like a bare rim.

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And there term Billet steel?Am I wrong in saying this or is this just not finished steel,like a bare rim.

 

 

Billet means it was cut or machined from a solid block and It usually retains its original grain structure that it had from the forge.

Most parts are cast into a general shape and then machined down from there.(saves money, on production time and les wasted metal) Casing (in general) usually contains no specific grain structre unless it has been tempered and even then it is still usually softer and has a chance for air pockets, impurities and other imperfections.

Edited by MY1PATH
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Thanks for this pointing to this article. It helps the newbies to figure out thing work.

 

Has anyone one seen things like this for the R50? I am starting to realize that there are some nuance of difference between the models and I want to find more stuff about the R50 SE.

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Billet means it was cut or machined from a solid block and It usually retains its original grain structure that it had from the forge.

Most parts are cast into a general shape and then machined down from there.(saves money, on production time and les wasted metal) Casing (in general) usually contains no specific grain structre unless it has been tempered and even then it is still usually softer and has a chance for air pockets, impurities and other imperfections.

Thank you for clearing it up,I knew the genral idea of what it is(steel billets,big chunks of stuff)

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  • 3 years later...

For the record, they eventually sold this rig.

 

My dad (boothill2008) bought this rig today.

 

Top notch.

 

I received a PM from that same member the other day lol.

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Mike Kojima built that! He builds import race cars for a living. He's on my Facebook. Super cool guy. I believe that was his personal vehicle.

 

It may have been. We bought it from somebody else at Motoiq. Essentially unchanged.

Idles like a muscle car, drives like an ordinary pathy till you step on it. It's not super fast, but significantly faster than stock. From what I was told (and experience driving it) the engine was built to be torquie for towing. It certainly climbs hills better than stock and the Nismo swaybars along with the Rancho shocks make turns real easy.

 

Pics tomorrow.

 

It has some options I haven't encountered very often on a '93 WD21 SE such as:

Maplights at the rear view mirror

Auto A/C (last one had it too)

Lighting at the feet

Factory three CD changer (and a factory cassette deck)

Four wheel disk with ABS

 

Then the usual

Tire rack

Power windows, doors, steering, brakes

Tilt column

Cruise

etc.

Edited by 92Path_68CJ
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