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Tried taking my Pathfinder for a swim


ubertalldude
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Had a bit too much fun offroading last weekend and put my Pathfinder where it ought not to have been: nose deep in a pond where it took a bit of water in the intake, crankcase, cab, etc. Got a buddy with a winch to get me out of the pond and onto dry land, where we drained the oil, pulled a spark plug, gave up at 2am and decided to call it quits and go home, feeling defeated and like I had probably killed my truck.

Next morning I headed out to the field where it lay wounded armed with a new drain plug (lost in the sand when draining the wet oil), a jug of new oil, and all the extensions to reach the #6 spark plug. Pulled all plugs and cranked over the engine a few revolutions to expel any water in the cylinders, reinstalled plugs, drain plug, and oil, and very tepidly cranked it over and...

IT STARTED UP! Now, don't get me wrong, it was mad at me bigtime. Spat about 2 gallons of water out of the tailpipe and was stumbling, but not knocking or screaming. This little truck never ceases to impress me.


Anyhow, now knowing that it ran I decided to pick it up later when I could have a friend drive my car back home while I drove the truck. Luckily it was only about 2 miles from the field back to my house, because when I dropped the oil I had just put in it was chocolate milk. As was the case with the 2nd gallon of oil I refilled with. Oh well, par for the course. At least the water is coming out emulsified in the oil.


My issue comes now in the weeks after as I get it back to safe running shape. I'll keep changing the oil until it runs clear, no problem. But some bearing(s) on the front of the engine are screaming at me, I suspect the AC clutch free-running bearing(s) are shot, but I'll confirm this with a stethoscope. I also suspect my transfer case and gearbox took on water and will need fresh oil. Same goes for the differentials.

I'll continue to hilight whatever issues I confirm as I run the engine more once it has waterless oil in it, but my question for now is what else am I missing, or should I consider looking into knowing I dunked it and took a bit of water into the engine?


tl;dr: dunked the truck, took on water. no apparent hydrolock. current fix list:
-oil+filter changes until the oil drains clear
-check bearings on drive belt systems
-change gearbox, transfer case, differential oils
-clean engine & replace spark plugs
-anything else?

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  • 2 weeks later...

dropped the differential oils and the transmission gear oil. differentials looked pretty good, needed a fluid change bud neither appeared to have much water in them, but the transmission was mostly water. about 2 gallons drained out, and looked like a starbucks frappucino. I'll probably have to change the gear oil a couple of times to get the rest of the coffee out of there.

 

would it be acceptable to use the cheap Walmart GL-5 for the first change? I have a gallon of Sta-Lube GL-4 85w-90 ($38/gal at NAPA) that I will be using for the final fill up, but I'm hopeful that come cheap GL-5 wouldn't be too harmful if only run around the block to stir up and capture the remaining contaminated oil before draining it and refilling with GL-4. Is this a bad idea?

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Other options I am considering:

 

-fill with Mineral Spirits through the shifter hole (gotta figure out how to remove that, still), let it stand for a while and let the solvent work, then drain overnight with a fan blowing on it to let it all dry/drain out

-fill with the GL-4 I have and some HEET to help with moisture absorption, drain and re-fill after driving a few miles

-spray some WD-40 in to help displace water and blow dry with compressed air, then refill

 

any way I do it, I will be checking the fill plug and only filling the trans with the 3 qts for a few weeks, then probably do the full 5 qt fill with Sta-Lube GL-4.

 

-(least favorite option) fill & drain & fill & drain ad nauseum with gear oil until it's not milky

 

I've seen people discuss filling with diesel and motor oil, then running it under no load, but since our transmissions are picky with synchros and gear lube additives, I'm hesitant to do that. I know the fill, drain, repeat until clear method is best, but that took 4 oil changes in the motor, that's over $100 of gear lube that I don't wanna waste.

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I got myself all worked up trying to figure a good transmission flush so I could conserve gear oil, but in the end I just filled it to the fill plug hole with the GL-4 and will change it this weekend after driving the truck around to heat it up.

 

Good things to report, though, the front and rear diffs had no water contamination, and neither did the transfer case. Thought the diffs would only need 3 qts between them, but I'll need to go grab another quart bottle. While I'm at it I'm going to toss a 4oz tube of LS additive in the rear diff, because I've seen mixed reviews on the oils with LS additive already included.

 

Differentials - DONE

Transfer case - DONE

Motor - needs one more cheap oil & filter change before filling with good stuff

Transmission - at least one more oil change before I "overfill" with 5qts per the TSB

Clutch & Brake Fluid - still need to flush & bleed both

Interior - full of DampRid and will get an Ozium treatment soon

 

might as well do the power steering fluid while I'm at the fluid change madness I reckon...

and the AC compressor bearing seems to be screaming, or the idler pulley. I'll replace both (I want AC in this old beast! FL summer has been VERY MEAN)

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So long as you didn't have your truck sitting in a pond you shouldn't have the same problems as me! hahaha

I think water ingress in the transmission happened through the shifter hole. It was pretty well sunk...

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  • 3 weeks later...

Flushed the trans with mineral spirits, flushed out the mineral spirits with some cheap motor oil I had lying around, let it freely drain for a day and refilled with the CRC Stalube GL-4 and it seems to be alright!

 

Drove the Pathy around a few miles yesterday until the gauge read hot, took it in some sand to test the 4x4, got it into all 5 gears smoothly, reverse works fine as well. Only major casualty of the whole trip was a bunch of money wasted on fluid changes (motor oil x4, transmission oil x2+flushes, diff fluids and transfer case were fine but I changed them anyhow) and the AC compressor clutch bearing bit the dust from getting wet, I presume. AC didn't work anyhow, so the belt is now removed the vehicle sounds, runs, drives, shifts, just fine. Just a little stinky from the watery carpets

 

 

JUST IN TIME FOR SOME WEEKEND CAMPING!

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ECU was relocated before I sank it, thankfully. I'm going to deodorize it and see how well it lasts, but otherwise I will likely get rid of the carpet sometime in the future.

 

Main directive right now is to get the engine to stop sputtering so badly, so this weekend I'll install my junkyard distributor (pulled from a vehicle with 150k miles, mine has 240k, so it should be in better shape). Blessing in disguise that the forest is still closed from the hurricanes... Gives us time to work more on our rigs before going out into the woods.

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  • 4 weeks later...

New(er) distributor didn't help, ohm test on the injectors didn't yield good results. 3 are good, 2 are failing, one is open circuit (not firing at all)

 

Time to rip it all apart and take the injectors to be cleaned.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Don't be surprised when cab electrical gremlins start showing up. Hot summers plus wet carpet means high humidity up under the dash where corrosion can be hard to spot and harder to fix.

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yeah, I'm keeping an eye out for electrical gremlins for sure, but I worked hard to dehumidify the carpet and deodorize it and so far it has fared well enough for me not to worry about it.

 

I got the injectors out without any gas spraying me. I just let the pathfinder sit for a few days before I got to working on it which let it depressurize just fine. Injector cleaning outfit near me tested 5/6 of them because I broke one trying to wiggle it out from the top, no more electrical connection at all. One of the injectors was showing 1200kohms resistance, and that one wound up failing after they managed to get it running for a bit. It was stuck, but ultimately the coil burned out from what they told me. Broke one, one was dying, the other 4 are ok, and I'll be getting replacements on RockAuto for the 2 and reinstalling everything once I get the new parts in. (not looking forward to it, that intake plenum is SO COMPLICATED!)

 

Also worth noting that the electrical connection on all 6 were corroded as all get out, and needed extensive cleaning to even get reliable resistance measurements. I'll definitely be using dielectric grease on all connectors when reinstalling. I'll be posting an imgur album later this week showing some pics I took during the process.

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Injectors are installed, all of them are clicking, gone through 3-4 cold->hot drive cycles, and was getting a Code 13 and Code 21 (the coolant tamp sensor and the ignition circuit, respectively) and am getting a consistent sputter still with a LOT of lurching at partial throttle for some reason.

 

I'll probably rent a compression tester and replace the sprak plugs & gap them. Anything else I should be looking out for?

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Hmm. That sounds a little more like electrical gremlins than a plug issue to me. I'd open up every plug I could find in the engine bay and inspect for corrosion/blow out the water if you haven't yet.

 

Hopefully the compression test doesn't show an issue.

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Having the plenum out for the injector service, I went ahead and did so for a lot of the connections. After pulling the battery to clear the codes the codes did go away and haven't returned yet, hopefully those were just issues from me cranking the engine over with the plenum and dizzy cap off so I could check the injector and fuel rail for leaks before entombing it beneath the intake plenum again.

 

Also note that this sputtering was an issue before I sank it. It has <3000 miles on the plugs, cap, rotor, distributor, I cleaned the intake, checked the routing of the vacuum hoses, all seems to be very well. Plug gap is 0.036" on all plugs, the front 2 plugs (Cyl 1 & 4, I believe) are black like they're rich. All the rest are white like they're lean. All injectors audibly click away just fine when I probe them with a stethoscope. I'll check the FSM and see what the gap should be, but I've read 0.032" or 0.042". Using NGK V-Power (copper) plugs.

 

The engine generally feels like it has a misfire at idle and partial throttle, the vehicle is lurching at partial throttle in all gears and consistently spits a big gulp of ari out of the tailpipe. It may misfire while accelerating and coasting, but I cannot feel it, and it pulls pretty strong and even goes well above 3k rpm, so no limp mode. I thought the injectors were the culprit, but after driving it all weekend it hasn't really improved much, so I'm still scratching my head a bit.

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Hmm. Two cylinders rich and the rest lean sounds like either two injector leaks (and it shouldn't be that if you just had them checked) or vacuum leaks on the other four. Maybe bad injector O-rings, or could be the plenum gasket--the first time I had mine off I put it back with some BS stamped steel Victor Reinz crap Rockauto said would fit and it didn't sit flat (the other side was held up by the EGR), didn't seal, and ran like crap. I redid it with Felpro and it's been fine since.

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I'm thinking the computer may still have the duty cycle of individual injectors acting weird to compensate for the previously failing and stick injectors, but a compression tester and a can of starting fluid to check for intake leaks is in order. Thanks for the pointer, I hadn't even considered vacuum leaks.

 

I did use a new FelPro plenum gasket and did not disturb the intake manifold gaskets. All injectors got new o-rings and we checked for leaks before I installed the plenum by cranking the engine to build fuel pressure, no apparent issues there.

 

One thing that worries me are the o-rings between the fuel rail and the intake manifold, I only removed and cleaned those, didn't replace. Hopefully that's not the culprit, I would hate to tear the damn plenum off again...

 

I'll report back after I actually do some diagnostics. I got frustrated by it this weekend so it's been sitting in the driveway with the spark plugs out for a few days until I stop being mad at it, lol.

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Hmm. Might try resetting the computer (just unplug the battery for a while) to see if it just needs to forget what it thinks it knows about the injectors. Hopefully that's all it is--having torn my plenum off a couple of times, I totally understand not wanting to do it again.

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No apparent intake leaks, regapped the plugs properly to 0.032" and now it runs roughly intermittently but pulls strong all the way to redline. I'm just gonna chalk it up to being and old tired motor for now and drive this bad boy seeing as it's my offroad toy (as if that wasn't evident by the impetus for starting this thread)

 

I'm an eternal tinkerer so if I find some magic bullet that fixes it later on I'll be sure to let you know but for now, it's a puttery old 3.0 that'll haul itself into and out of the woods, and that's all I can ask for.

 

Thanks as always for the help and for a sweet community, the knowledge here is awesome

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