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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.

Yeah the first time I did it, the pinch weld crunched in and that sucks. No further damage, it just saddens me haha. Sounds awesome, I figured the weight would be evenly distributed it just seems very strange. Thanks a ton

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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.

Thanks! Usually I lift on the rear diff and then I put big ass logs with 2x6s under the lifting points circled in red, then I put a safety log under the rear bumper just in case. Please excuse the mess in the pictures.

 

 

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I knew you were up North, but Yukon! It's been 13 years or so since I was through there. Moving down from Alaska.

 

Some vehicles have reenforced areas on the body pinch welds for lifting. Fords unibody vehicles had them, but that is the only time I would lift by pinch welds.

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I knew you were up North, but Yukon! It's been 13 years or so since I was through there. Moving down from Alaska.

 

Some vehicles have reenforced areas on the body pinch welds for lifting. Fords unibody vehicles had them, but that is the only time I would lift by pinch welds.

It became habitual when I worked in a tire shop here in Colorado. We pretty much always jacked at the pinch.

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It became habitual when I worked in a tire shop here in Colorado. We pretty much always jacked at the pinch.

Yeah, it's a great spot for a two post lift.

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Sorry, most of mine stuck to the underside of the carpet. The rest was so hard it broke out in big chunks.

 

If yours is hard and still stuck to the floor pan, I would leave it, clean really well and bedline over it. If it is gummy, that's a different story.

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Sorry, most of mine stuck to the underside of the carpet. The rest was so hard it broke out in big chunks.

 

If yours is hard and still stuck to the floor pan, I would leave it, clean really well and bedline over it. If it is gummy, that's a different story.

 

Turns out it was held down by a small amount of adhesive and several juice/pop spills by a previous owner. It was all totally disgusting and was sticky and stank so I attacked it with a scraper and will wire wheel out the remains. But thanks, at first I assumed it was all glue holding it down.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Looking pretty empty these days, and I've decided that most of what I've stripped from the interior will not be going back in, except for the front seats and maybe the center console.

 

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The rocker panels are almost all patched over, I've just got a little more welding to do on the passenger side and need to drill drain holes. Sliders may be put on hold for a while due a time crunch from an upcoming mudbogs that I'd like to participate in, but they will happen eventually.

 

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I decided to make my own trailing arms and went beefy with the hardware and tubing. This means modifying all the trailing arm mounts for sure as well as some other areas for clearance

 

 

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Oh, and the winch showed up too!

 

Edited by Snowboarder12345
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  • 2 months later...

Well, I never was able to get her ready in time for the mud bogs, and pretty much zero got done in August/September unfortunately. I think the ball's rolling again, hopefully work plays nicely lol.

 

Rebuilt/strengthened panhard mount

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It looks alright in this picture but the lower section was all rotted out on the inside, so it had to go. I rebuilt it out of 1/8 thick plate, so the end result should be pretty beefy.

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I've got a plie of 1/4 plate all cut to size and ready to be cleaned up and fabbed into the new body side trailing arm mounts.

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I've started wire wheeling off under coat and rust starting at the back of the vehicle and working forwards with a fine tooth comb. The plan is once I hit the areas where the trailing arm mounts are located and get them all cleaned up I will start fabbing the mounts, and hopefully by then the correct sized jam nuts will have showed up and I can fab the new trailing arms up and start fitting everything. All assuming I get free time with this work schedule... Fingers crossed!

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Well I sure am glad I spent all that time painting the axle housing this summer...

 

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Lower T-arm mounts are tacked in place. Upper T-arm mounts are ready to be aligned and tacked together. Lower T-arms are ready to be tacked together. Everything axle side is ready to be tacked on, aside from a couple little braces and spacers. I had to widen all the mounts on both sides to fit the Johny joints because they are gigantic and seriously overkill. I may have to tweak the upper T-arm mounts still to make everything fit but we'll see. Upper T-arms will be cut to length based on how everything else fits together, because I've lengthened the lower T-arms by 1 inch to push the axle back a little.

 

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Hopefully I'll be welding stuff up for good by the end of the weekend.

 

I'm putting rock sliders and perhaps mounting the winch on hold because it's getting cold and this thing needs to get back on the road and out of the garage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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EhJsGYGh.jpg

 

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I think I'm one of two minor tweaks away from being able to paint and reassemble :lmao:

 

Upper T arm mounts are tight but all the bolts and nuts clear with wrench/ratchet access so life is good! Suspension seems to articulate about the same as stock which isn't really a surprise, but I was kinda hoping for a little more. Might need to do an adjustable panhard bar one of these days too but that can be done later.

 

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The absolute last thing I will do is weld up all the trailing arms, I'm waiting until the drive shaft spacer shows up to make sure my lengths will work out.

Edited by Snowboarder12345
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  • 1 month later...

Thanks to a ton of help from from my Dad and Brother, the transmission with the Centerforce clutch and the transfer case are back in and the underside is treated and sealed up from the rear of the engine all the way to the back bumper, including the chopped rocker panels. Everything rusty got wire wheeled or at least scraped depending on access, and then everything was washed, drowned in rust converter, primed and then got several coats of bedliner to finish up. It looks amazing underneath, I couldn't be happier. Hopefully it holds up well, and the rust doesn't regain it's footing. The interior is also completely bedlined too. We had to completely tarp the vehicle up and set up a space heater underneath to dry/cure all the paint and stuff seeing as temperatures have really dropped, so while I still want to do the fender arches and doors they will have to wait until it's above freezing again.

 

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I'm quite happy with how the UTA mounts turned out overall, but I may still bedline them. Same story with the trailing arms, while the acrylic looks nice I'm just not sure how durable it will be.

 

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Pro tip, your pathfinder can be used as a heated paint booth once the bedliner has cured.

 

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I had my driveshaft extended, so now I can recenter my rear axle and correct my pinion angle using the trailing arms. I still need to repaint or bedline the axle housing, but I can't make up my mind about which I want to do. So in the spirit of procrastination I've been working on mounting the winch to the front bumper and making the skid plate for the last couple of days. I've got pretty much everything cut out, I just need to weld it all together. To help keep everything low profile and small I will have to shave my grill and some of the trim but I hope I can keep the Nissan logo where it is. The plan right now is to cut off the top and rear face of the 4x4 bumper tube to drop the winch down and back as much as possible.

 

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There is still a bunch to do but the list is finally getting shorter instead of longer haha.

 

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Thanks guys :)

 

The bumper went to plan, I didn't even have to relocate the logo!

 

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All told with the winch it probably weighs around 120# which is not too bad I think. These were taken from the final fit check, since then I've finished all the grinding and clean up and squared up the bottom edge- the paint is drying as I type. I'm out of bedliner, so the axle and the bumper are done in the same paint as the mounts and trailing arms.

 

Merry Christmas!

 

 

 

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Now you see it...

 

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Now you don't...

 

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I went pretty hard over the holidays. Like I was dreaming at night about working on this thing even haha. But here we are, it fired up like a champ for the first time since March or so and drove out under it's own power tonight. There was definitely valve tick at first, but that is to be expected and cleared up after a minute or two. All I did was loop around the driveway quickly and then just let it idle for 20 min or so. There are still many little things left to do to make it roadworthy and just button it up in general but the big stuff is done according to my checklist. I'll try and get some real pics this weekend before I head back to camp. I am so excited to start driving this thing again.

 

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