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So now that things are finally starting to come together on my build I figured I'd post it up. The first pic is the stock configuration of my 98 Chilkoot Edition, taken right before I started the sub-frame drop. This pathfinder was my first vehicle, and I've had her since 2011 or so. I've wanted to do this for a long time now, but seeing as I was in high school when I got her and then went right into post secondary I didn't have the funds. Honestly, if I wasn't so attached to this thing I would never have started this project, as it's been quite a bit of work even with a ton of help from my brother and my Dad.

 

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Seeing as what I've done is nothing new, I'll spare you the details of the subframe drop install. Suffice to say, seeing that this vehicle has lived its entire life in northern Canada, the winters have been long and hard on it. There is a significant amount of rust in both the body and pretty much everything underneath it. This did make it a bit of a challenge getting stuff apart. I am quite envious of many other members on here, seeing trucks that are so clean and pristine has kind of ruined me haha. But I still do love my pathy obviously. Anyways, here's how she was sitting after the sfd. I managed to order a krfabs kit back in the summer, which I also paired with slightly cut down 6.5" wj coils and a 2" front AC lift. I had to buy all new struts too as they were completely toast, and had been for a while.

 

Just before she rolled out of the garage for the first time, big difference in altitude B)

 

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Couple in the driveway on stock tires. The rear shocks hadn't shown up yet so that's why they are missing in the pic.

 

 

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She's on stock tires still because we needed the garage space, and I hadn't ordered new rims and tires yet. I wanted to wait and see it with a lift on before I tried to guess how big I'd be able to go. As it happened, the local tire place had a deal going on Duratracs...So I ordered some 315/75/R16s and 8" wide rims :)

 

After about a week and a half of impatient waiting, they finally showed up. I had switched gears to help my brother with his pathy project, so I hadn't really done anything else at this point.

 

So big!!!!

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All I could get up here were rims with 4.25" of backspacing, I was pretty sure they wouldn't clear the strut and I was right lol. Even with the camber messed up there was no way they'd fit up front, especially once they get aligned properly. So with 2" spacers on order I decided to start chipping away at body work. I started by pulling off all the plastic fender flares, and watching chunks of the body come off with them. I then roughly cut out most of the rust on all the fenders. Those with stomachs sensitive to vehicle gore (body rust) and grinder chopping should look away now.

 

It's bad

 

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The other side of her looks pretty much the same rust wise.

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Notice all the chinks that were held on purely by paint and the fender flare

 

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Marking it out roughly with masking tape and cutting

 

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After some cutting I figured I should maybe get to figuring out how to weld body panels before I got too gung ho. I spent a week's worth of evenings trying very unsuccessfully to weld sheet metal with a stick welder. I was so unsuccessful in fact that I went out and bought a mig welder lol. I'm not too bad with a stick welder but there is no way in hell I'd be able to do body work with one anytime in the near future haha.

 

As it turns out, I'd had to cut so much out of the driver's side front fender that I exposed a bunch of wiring and the stock air box. I had made up a sheet metal patch for it and was about to start welding it in, but seeing how I was hacking up that fender anyways, the stock airbox is kind of a big water liability, and I had all the room to work with while the fender was cut open...Screw it, let's switch gears and have a go at a snorkel!

Maxed out the picture count, part 2 to follow.

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I used 2.5" ID exhaust tubing that I picked up at Canadian Tire, biggest they had or I'd have gone bigger. 3" would have been preferable, but I couldn't find anyone who just had some sitting on a shelf in town. But that's how she goes sometimes when you live up here :shrug:

 

I built it bit by bit and spent a lot of time prepping all the wedges I had to cut to make the bends. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out though, and it doesn't seem to constrict the engine any.

 

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Close up of how I did all the bends

 

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Once it was all mocked up I started painting it, and in between coats I started welding in the first patch panel.

 

 

 

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I made a little plate to cover up the hole for the snorkel, just haven't painted it yet so it's not in the pic.

 

The spacers ended up showing up this week which was great and all, except that I had ripped out the rear diff to install the air locker so I still couldn't see it sitting on it's new rims and tires lol.

 

 

 

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To be continued tomorrrow!

 

 

 

Edited by Snowboarder12345
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So this past Saturday I was able to get the guts of the air locker all installed, and reinstalled the diff. As I was leaving for another long camp job Sunday afternoon I didn't make any attempt to run the wiring or plumbing, I dropped everything else to button up the rear end and to try and get all the tires on. And here is how she sits now :lmao:

 

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Stance is an understatement, 12.5" wide tires with 4.25" rim backspacing and 2" aluminum spacers means that the tires stick out around 5" lol.

 

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I'd have taken some shots of her outside, except that when I went to put on the front passenger side tire I found out that one of the studs is about 0.25" shorter than all the others. This wasn't ever a problem with just rims, but being that the aluminum spacers are a little thicker than rims where they bolt up I wasn't happy with how many threads the lug nut was able to grab onto. So yeah, I can't say how well she turns the 35's or anything like that because she's parked until I get back at Christmas.

 

But when I do get back, I will be finishing the locker install, doing more body work, and coming up with some sort of fender flares/mud flaps. Because there is seriously no way I could drive this thing around on road right now, the first cop who saw me with tires this exposed would ticket my ass in a heartbeat lol. I'm excited to see how they do in deep snow though, being so wide and these vehicles being fairly light I'm hoping she'll tend to float. Need to actually get some snow first though lol. Bumpers with tire carrier and a winch are also on the list eventually, but probably not until spring or thereabouts... welding when it's really cold sucks and the heated garage has no ventilation :/

 

Stay tuned though!

 

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Why didnt you just leave the fenders cut that high? I left mine that way and it looks way better than having rust bubbles on it. dc8d09f1532ac675aebe3216d5e4141d.jpg

 

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I want to keep everything as covered and protected as possible. Like I said above, winter roads here kill vehicles even though we don't salt the roads. I want to be able to use all the original plastics (probably with modifications) as much as I can to cover up the insides of the wheel wells. I'll still be clearing out the fenders a bit to give the tires more room, but I figured I'd try and get the fenders all fixed to roughly stock clearances and work my way back until I find a look that is practical and I like the looks of. Also, my tires stick out so much now that I have to do something to cover them up. And you need good metal to stick flares and mud flaps onto. I've got an idea for some easily removable ones that would cover my ass legally on road that aren't totally ugly, but that I could still pop off and have fun slinging mud with.

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I want to keep everything as covered and protected as possible. Like I said above, winter roads here kill vehicles even though we don't salt the roads. I want to be able to use all the original plastics (probably with modifications) as much as I can to cover up the insides of the wheel wells. I'll still be clearing out the fenders a bit to give the tires more room, but I figured I'd try and get the fenders all fixed to roughly stock clearances and work my way back until I find a look that is practical and I like the looks of. Also, my tires stick out so much now that I have to do something to cover them up. And you need good metal to stick flares and mud flaps onto. I've got an idea for some easily removable ones that would cover my ass legally on road that aren't totally ugly, but that I could still pop off and have fun slinging mud with.

I feel you on the salted roads killing everything.. 797d1114a7bb3824a6e36c9203ddb647.jpg

Thats on my xj when i was cutting the fenders, my pathfinders was much much worse, especially behind the steering shaft in the engine bay. Was rotted and had to have additional metal welded in place. What i did was just bedline and use rust preventative on everything that is exposed or would be exposed to the elements. The only problem i have now is my mirrors being exposed, which i got to make a quick fix for because winter is fast approaching. Do you by chance have any pictures of your sfd install? I've had mine sitting in a box for over a year, havent had time to install it due to my pathfinder being my daily.

 

Sent from my SM-G530T using Tapatalk

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Yeah mine'll be getting slathered in rust preventer too, and I'll be doing something similar to yours with bedliner.

 

I don't have any pics unfortunately, I didn't really take any. Here's the thread I referred to though, it's good for explaining the front end:

 

http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/topic/31251-sub-frame-drop/

 

Also this one, but no pics:

 

http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/topic/28342-my-subframe-drop-install-thread/

 

It's fairly straight forwards though. If you get help from a couple buddies you should be able to get it done in a few days, it took me a week and a half of evenings and 3 or so weekend days. Maybe do it around Christmas if you get a bunch of time off?

Edited by Snowboarder12345
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Looks like a hell of a start! A friend of mine just bought a roll of lawn edging to cover the tire poke on his Blazer. He's got a lot less poke to deal with though!

Similar idea, but with crazy carpets cut to fit. I want protection under the fenders too!

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Have you got any plans for steel bumpers /winch combo?

 

 

 

Oh yeah haha. I just need to finish the bumper I'm making for my brother's 7.3 first. I'm planning on fabbing up a low profile front bumper with winch mount, and a rear bumper with swing out tire carrier. Picked up some heavy duty weld on D rings too.Got some rough sketches and ideas but haven't started yet like I said.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Update time! Got back from camp on the 23rd and have been slaving away since then. So, to start: I've cut out and patched all of the exposed fender rust, and have cleared the front tires enough for on road use. I haven't taken her out to do some flex tests yet for reason's I'll address further down. I will be body filling and cleaning all this up once I finalize the fender profiles and get something together for mud flaps.

 

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Only 2 fenders shown but you get the idea. I now understand why professional body work is so expensive haha, it's way more time consuming than I figured it would be, and I've just been patching sheet metal so far. I think the next area I will repair will be whatever is covered up by the bumpers, and then I will move on to the rocker panels which are in the worst shape by far. I'm doing them last because I'm thinking I'll skip repairing the sheet metal and just cut them straight out and integrate some rock sliders to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, but I need to sit down and do some planning for that. The sides of the floor in some areas will probably need some love too but I'll get there eventually.

 

Moving on to more exciting things, I finished my air locker install today! I have mounted the air compressor inside the vehicle instead of the engine bay to keep the compressor cleaner and to hopefully keep it less abused long term. It's bolted to a mount made for me while I was in camp by my brother and my dad, and it sits inside the rear storage compartment on the passenger side of the vehicle. To do this the mount had to be welded to the body and the compressor and solenoid wiring harness supplied with the compressor had to be extended roughly 8 feet or so, seeing as ARB intend for you to mount the compressor somewhere in the engine bay. All of the wiring is hidden away, I just need to notch the plastic trim for the compartment to allow it to fit around the compressor. The downside to mounting the compressor like this is that it's a little noisy in the cab when it's running, but it's not the end of the world. When I get the compartment trim back in and the hatch closed over it the noise should be suppressed a little hopefully.

 

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The more observant amongst you will have already seen the daylight (and the bumper!) peeking through the rust holes underneath the rear bumper. That's why I'll be pulling the bumper and doing all the bodywork underneath it next, I want to keep crap from the road away from the compressor. I also cased the air line in rubber fuel tubing to protect in from chaffing and other wear/tear, and ran it down through a rubber grommet I found to the underside. I just used heavy duty zip ties to keep it tight up to the underside and away from the rear muffler. It then heads over to the driver side and meets up with the rear brake line where it turns down to the diff. I measured it against the brake line so it should have plenty of line length when the rear end articulates.

 

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The switches supplied by ARB are slightly larger than the factor switch popouts so I just used a Dremel to cut out a couple of holes in the dash.

 

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Took her for a spin to make sure the locker was engaging properly, and everything seems to be good! Except for the front end...

 

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So yeah, I figured out what was "rubbing" :/. Back in the summer a certain member of my family tried to do me a solid while I was away at work and install my manual hubs. One of the studs broke off or something so they grabbed a new hub casing off of a parts WD21 we have behind the garage because they look the same and therefore must be the same and slapped it all back together on my pathfinder, without checking that everything actually fit properly and worked. When they were asked what the hell was causing the screeching and grinding noise up front they replied that it was probably just a slight tolerance issue which should clear itself up in a couple of km. Trusting that this certain person knew what they were talking about and that it was actually no big deal I ended up putting about 30 km or so on my pathy, and then went off to work again with the rubbing still there, and not getting better. Then it sat around pretty much untouched for a few months, and then I started this build for real, and actually forgot all about this. That is until I went to do a tire clearance/initial locker test driver the other day, before I had the compressor and wiring in permanently and prettied up. So yeah I'm not super stoked about the work said person did at the moment, but I'm going to hit up a scrap yard tomorrow to hopefully pick up another rotor, hub casing and brake caliper because they are all pretty f*cked. :redfinder: I'm just glad I didn't put more km on, and it's only limped around the driveway in and out of the garage a couple times since then. I'm hoping to be doing some wheeling by tomorrow afternoon, but we'll see. When that happens I'll take some better pictures. I'm also just itching to take this thing out and have some fun with it finally, I can't wait.

 

Thoughts, comments, and questions are always welcome!

 

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Thanks! That's all I needed to know, I'm glad it's not a vehicle specific incompatibility, these bluetooth scanners are cool!

Do your scanners shut off automatically with the vehicle?

Yes!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Not too much to show at this point, just been doing tons of body work for the most part. Got my hands on some of the mudflaps the government puts on all their gravel/highway trucks, so those will be going on once I trim them down a little. Got the basic reat bumper fabbed up, and have a beefy hinge for a tire carrier on the way. I chopped the mounts off of the stock trailer hitch and used those to mount the bumper so it's good and solid and should be more than up to the task of holding a spare tire and carrier. The spare tire is large enough though that no matter where it ends up it will cover up the license plate so I removed the lights and all the plate hardware to give myself some more space for the carrier.

 

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I've also been experimenting with some under fender protectors. All my fenders now have a thick strip of metal welded in as a lip that I can use to bolt guards onto. I've made a prototype of sorts out of aluminum sheetmetal which seems to work pretty well. I just need a few more mounts to keep it from flapping around.

 

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Oh, and the airlocker is in for good and prettied up.

 

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I'm very pleased with the airlocker. Went out quickly before I left and banged some snowy ditches for @!*%s and giggles. I didn't get stuck at all in about 2' of crusted ditch snow but I'm thinking more power would be nice... the gears are definitely turning on that.

Edited by Snowboarder12345
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  • 5 weeks later...

Pretty much just waiting on a couple seals and a cap for the hinge. Other than that it's just little stuff left for the rear bumper. What's left to do:

 

-Find a spot for the plate

-Trim the mudflaps

-Finish prettying it up with the grinder

-weld on the spring loaded pin that will keep the gate open

 

I'll also paint it all at some point, temperature permitting.

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The front end is also stripped down now, and I've made the mounts for a winch bumper. Nothing worth taking pics of yet though.

 

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Hey man, mudflap, tint and lightbar laws are what let people like me sleep soundly at night :jk:

 

Thanks Mjo! Yeah I'll almost certainly repaint the whole vehicle. I'm thinking either camo or black at this point. Right now I've got "close enough red" on anywhere that had exposed sheet metal until It's warm enough to start using body filler.

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  • 1 month later...

So, time for an update I guess. I figured out that my driveline vibration was actually the gears in my rear diff shredding themselves. I must have done something wrong when I installed the air locker, or perhaps it was just ****** luck that it went when it did. I'd daily'd it a few times in and out of town and the noise/vibration was definitely getting worse, so I chucked her up on blocks and with some help from my dad finally isolated the noise to the rear diff. I dropped the oil, and what came out was less like oil and more like pearlized grey paint. There were no large chunks whatsoever, it was all just superfine particles. The particles were so fine that they didn't separate after sitting for a week undisturbed.

 

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Looking at the gears one can see very obvious wear.

 

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Now, I wasn't sure if this was enough wear to write off the gears. But after checking the wear pattern with marking compound the patterns indicated that the pinion was too close to the ring gear, on both the drive and coast sides. The wear pattern was kind of all over the place though, and not consistent at all in placement on the tooth faces which I figured meant that the gears hadn't at least been worn evenly. So with that being said, I went ahead and ordered a new gear set. I'd rather be safe than sorry, I don't want this to happen again and I'd rather start with a fresh gear set. The local scrap yard wanted $500 for a used carrier so that was a no go.

 

Now the good news in all this is that the carrier bearings and the locker itself are fine, fortunately. So yeah, once the parts come in I will be having a go at rebuilding the diff. I also have a centerforce 2 clutch coming with the gears, which will both hopefully come in this coming week, allowing me to get to work when I get out of camp again. Aside from that, I've not really done much recently except for a handful of little things. I'm now rocking some sheet metal fender flares with inner fender liners (no pics of currently) and I got started on a front winch bumper. It's just the main tube right now though, nothing exciting to look at. I chopped and then welded the upper and lower factory bumper mounts together into one larger mount so they should now be plenty strong to pull on with a winch, even mounted higher up like mine will be. And that's all that's worth mentioning for now I guess .

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Progress is slow but steady. Pretty much the whole underside is gutted for repairs, paint and waterproofing. The panhard pillar is fairly rotted out so I will be cutting part of it out and fabbing up a new one. Both the upper trailing arms were so rusted that I would deem them no longer safe, and all the bushings on all the trailing arms are on their way out so I will be making beefier trailing arms from scratch. The pathy should look like new underneath though by the time I am done. I just finished wire wheeling and priming the axle housing tonight, seeing how nice it looks now is really making me excited. 10k# Warn winch is also ordered. Oh, and there is now a parts-finder.

 

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Epic build :O

I wish I could afford air lockers like that!

 

 

I know it's a crazy question, but where did you typically jack up the rear of the vehicle? The body kind of ends toward the rear wheels so last time I worked on dropping my rear axle, it was really sketchy work using jack stands on the pinch weld of the vehicle nearest to the rear...

 

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The red circles.

Is it technically safe to hold up the entire rear end by the "Rear jack safety points?" It just seems like a weird place to balance the vehicle... even if the front two tires are on the ground it feels weird that it might roll back or something. I don't know, it sat like that for hours and nothing happened but still haha.

Edited by CortlandCH
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Cortland. Any more. I never use punch welds to lift, they always seem to crumble or bend when i try. I use the rear safety stands ( B ) all the time. They are very sturdy and in my experience may lift a lot from the side but are only lifting the rear. There is a lot of weight in front of those points that stays planted. I will use those spots for Jack stands depending on what I'm doing.

 

And if you are worried about rolling... Chock the fronts and you are good to go.

Edited by Remus92
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