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New Vehicle = QX4 Love Rekindled


onespiritbrain
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I havent been on here in a while and I thought i'd make a life/vehicle situation update. My best friend's Grandpa died in 2010 and his Granny has been driving the old mans truck (2003 Ford F-150 King Ranch 4x2 with the SOHC 2valve 5.4L Triton V8) ever since, basically as a grocery getter and doctor office transport. Well she is at the point where she has to have a chauffeur and so the truck has been sitting. They tried to drive it one day and the battery had died so she decided to sell it. 

 

I bought the truck @ 138,000 miles for $5,000. She told me that it was meticulously taken care of with dealership oil changes every 2500 miles since birth. I got a flipping deal... Looked inside the oil cap and theres not even a hint of varnish anywhere in sight. It drives incredibly well too, just the epitome of a blessing really. The cowhide leather is in good condition, no tears or anything! Literally one of those vehicles that an old couple took very good care of.

f150.jpg

 

In addition to the truck I also bought a house, no more renting! No more white walls!! And if that wasnt enough I also landed a new job getting paid correctly for what I do and with a real, funded, and staffed maintenance department. None of these things, I mean not one of them; the vehicle, the house, or the job could I have attained without supernatural help. The way everything came to be was legitimately miraculous.. or incredibly lucky... and someone came out of the blue and helped me on the down payment for the house...... which was a large sum of money...... I assure you, I have not been good enough to anyone ever (and really have mostly been the opposite of good to those closest to me) to deserve what has been done and it can only be explained by love from a higher place than this earth. Things fell into place that had to be set in motion long before I even asked or knew to ask for them. The Lord really is there, and He really does love us. 

 

So, the QX4 will now be my toy!!! Yay! I get to love my Nissan again lol! The engine needs to be replaced. The heads are absolutely trashed and the rods/mains are worn pretty severely (slight knocking at certain RPM has begun). I plan to replace the engine at some point and possibly stick a manual transmission in it. Then it will be driven every time I go fishing, which I hope starts to be more frequent than recently as I haven't been but one time this year and didnt catch anything. I will put 15w40 in it next to see how the knocking reacts. 

 

Anyway I miss getting on here and I hope to at some point contribute more content in the form of another engine replacement and also a auto/manual trans swap.

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Wow, this is a great story, sounds like things really went great for ya lately! Looking forward to what you do with your R50, and very envious of your truck! Always liked those 10th gens.

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  • 2 years later...

Hello everyone. I am driving the QX4 again after crashing my truck so I thought I'd come here to provide a life update and QX4 update.

 

So I have a major issue with road rage.. or hopefully HAD a major issue. When driving the QX4 I can't really do anything but get bullied by vehicles with more power and driving authority on the road. That changed with that truck and I found myself in pissing matches almost daily during my commute to and from work. If someone slighted me on the road I would get them back with a brake check or cutting them off.. etc. The greater offense toward me, the greater my response.

 

Well.. someone cut across the interstate and I literally had to swerve to avoid the collision and directly afterward I fishtailed and crashed into the median which damaged something in my steering/suspension because my steering wheel was sideways while driving straight. The wonderful person didn't stop so I chased them down. When I found them I cut in front of them and stopped. They immediately threw it in reverse and backed into the car that had pulled up behind them. Then that guy, who was gigantic and extremely pissed, ran straight up to my car with his fists balled and started screaming at the top of his lungs for me to get out of the car. I immediately went from "badass" to scared @!*%less and told him to back away or he is going to die. He listened, backed away, and stopped screaming. This gave me clarity to get my vehicle into reverse and get away from the situation so I could call the cops but a passenger from the original vehicle that pulled out in front of me lunged at my door causing me to floor it and ultimately crash my truck into the curb, breaking my rear axel and trapping me in a position which gave the appearance that I was trying to flee. 

 

Luckily everyone there told the truth so I did not receive any charges related to trying to flee but, per the arresting officers statement, "because you brought a firearm into the situation, you are getting an aggressive driving charge". In Georgia aggressive driving is a mandatory trip to jail. I sat in jail for 8 hours which wouldn't have been too terrible but there was an extremely insane child predator that was there for a "failure to register as a sex offender" charge and he constantly said incredibly inappropriate and foul crap the entire time. This was of course in between bouts of screaming from another person laying on the floor kicking the door as hard as he could, for 8 freaking hours. I am traumatized from the experience. 

 

I am currently working through the court requirements which were anger management and defensive driving. I will say that I am very thankful for the way it all played out. No one was hurt. Only 3 weeks later and about 1 mile down the road from my incident, another 22yr old shot at a person he was road raging with and struck an old lady instead who was in critical condition at the hospital for a long time afterward. Everyone involved in that incident had their lives turned upside down.. and for what? Some minor inconveniences on the road??

 

Anyway, until I am finished taking care of the ramifications of my mistake and prove to myself that I can handle driving a vehicle with a little power, I will be driving the QX4 daily. Unluckily a week ago while driving home a truck bowed up and stopped in an intersection (there was a firetruck which I could not see because it was blocked by a tractor-trailer in the turning lane) and the person behind them of course did the same leaving me with less room than required to stop my QX4 so I changed lanes. Well the car behind that truck that stopped couldn't see the firetruck either and decided to pop out right in front of me so I stomped on my brakes and if they had continued to accelerate then it might have been ok, but again, they too couldn't see the firetruck until they got out into the intersection a bit and when they saw it they slammed on their brakes and stopped.. this was of course the death blow to my ability to avoid collision so I swerved as hard as I could to the left and barely clipped their driver side bumper and quarter panel. It still did some damage to both our vehicles and the cop gave me a ticket for it and apologized saying that he understands the situation but he has to give me the ticket because I was in the rear. 

 

My insurance company hates me I am sure.. At any rate I am glad to revisit this place and hopefully I can make some posts detailing the repair. Its going to be a headlight, passenger fender and flare, maybe a bumper (which I already needed), and all the underlying bracketing. 

Edited by johnjohndoe
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  • 3 months later...

I have replaced my F150's rear axle with a donor from the junkyard. Everything is smooth, even the oil in the diff was fresh, buuuut there is a rhythmic bumping noise the appears between 0-40mph and only while decelerating. I believe it may be a broken brake pad or some other loose brake related item. However the sound's frequency is scarily close to 3:1, three bumps for every one turn of my wheels. My fear is that maybe the person who pulled the rear end dropped it on the input and imprinted the input bearing. I will hopefully know more when I pull everything apart this weekend.

 

My QX4 has been sitting since I got the truck back on the road and I hope to take her out this weekend at some point to take a drive thru the mountains to see where the fall leaves are at. We have been in a significant drought and there is supposed to be a windy condition today so many leaves may be blown down before they change. I still have not been able to replace my headlight or fender from the aforementioned crash because the junk yards have not had any matching QX4's.

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I took a close look at everything on Saturday and found that the axles have significant in/out play...like almost .250". I took the wheels off and put the rotors and brakes back on and then tried to recreate the conditions and viola! With light brake applied in 2nd gear and 20mph on the dash the rotors began moving in and out rhythmically just like what I hear when going down the road.

 

I looked at some F150 forums and people are saying "oh yeah thats normal...good for it...its a ford whatd ya expect" but my old rear end didnt do this. I think at this point im going to open my old rear end and see what it will entail to either swap the internals from my old one into the junk piece of crap one, or if I could just remove the one side, the axle housing and axle, from the pumpkin on the garbage turd one and put it onto my old one.  

Edited by onespiritbrain
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C clip rear end? Some play is normal, don't know about 1/4" though. Never heard of one oscillating like that. My best guess is a warped or bent brake rotor, or debris/rust making the rotor sit wonky on the axle. Or the axle itself is bent, that would do it.

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I have replaced the rotors (with the ones that came off my old rear end- I checked them on a flat surface for a warped condition) thinking that same thing and everything runs true until the brake piston pushes against the back side of the rotor which moves the whole axle and rotor out a 1/4" and in just the right condition they begin oscillating. I noticed that the front side of the rotors (like the side visible when you're in front of the rotor looking at it) has almost no wear but the back side has normal looking wear. So whatever stops the axle from coming out completely is working with the back side of the rotor for braking. This cannot be good and now I'm afraid the whole thing might just break loose one day when whatever holds the axles in there, I guess the c-clips, finally wears out.

 

I dont think anyone at any time has ever had to worry about such nonsense in their nissans... Im about to sell the damn truck and find a 2004 stick shift pathfinder. In fact I'd make that trade deal this instant.

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Sounds like the slide pins are seized. The caliper's supposed to float from side to side so it wears the pads evenly. Once that's sorted, I'd look up the spec for endfloat on that axle to hopefully rule out the clips being damaged from the last guy driving it like that for who knows how long before scrapping the truck.

 

The nice thing about (most) domestic rigs is parts availability. I remember someone on here having a hell of a time trying to find a flywheel for a VQ/manual R50.

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