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Yep, I am the one that posted the starter mod. Did that back when AC was Nissan only and had an active discussion forum. Still have the diagram I drew up stashed away in a dusty corner of my hard drive. I much less savvy these days and a hard time figuring out how to do pictures, but can email. Basically what I did with my Pathfinder was seperate the connector I mentioned before. I then used a standard Bosch style 30 amp relay. The harness side black/violet wire went to terminal 85 on the relay. Ran a wire from terminal 86 to ground(the coil is non polarized so can be reversed, works the same). Ran a 12 gauge wire from the positive terminal of the battery to terminal 30 on the relay. Finally, the black/violet wire going to the starter was attached to terminal 87. The relay will reliably operate down to 6 volts, so it covered the problem that was in my ignition switch. When the relay triggered, it fed full battery power through the very short circuit between the battery and starter. I still have a relay in there to run the starter but these days it is fired by the keyless ignition I installed.

From what I have gone through and seen, I am going to recommend a NEW ignition switch. It is cheap and easy to replace. If you have an auto trans, next to the battery, you will find a grey oval connector with 2 wires. One wire will be yellow with a blue stripe and quite thin. The other wire will be heavy and black with a violet stripe. If you seperate that connector and use a volt meter with the positive probe on the black wire on the harness plug and the negative probe on the negative battery post, have somebody turn the ignition to start. You should have battery voltage. You will probably have 9v or less. That circuit is quite long and goes through a few switches and relays, but still shouldn't be more than 1v drop. If you have a manual transmission, you will find a large(double sized) relay next to the transmission. Same thing there though. Unplug the relay and check the voltage on the thick black/violet wire. It is very common for older Nissans to have the starter contact in the ignition switch to fail after 10-20 years. Had that happen with all my old Datsuns from the late 70s and 80s. I made the discovery that the switch was failing in my 93 last year when I pulled it for my keyless ignition system installation.

What he said! Do NOT remove the damn starter just to bench test it, it's 3 hours the first time to remove it and you won't be much further ahead. Other ting to do is to start with 1 full new can of brake parts cleaner and empty it on the starter, solenoid and wires, hit it with a degreaser as well and then there should be little to no chance that it is being caused by oil running down from the filter area ( cost me 1 original starter after 26 years of dutiful service ).

I’d love to help but I don’t think I could recommend this roof basket for standing on your roof. It’s not very strong. Your best bet will be making your own out of steel or aluminum tubing Maybe ask this guy for a guide? He custom built one and it looks super strong

A longer coil in the oem strut is fine, but yes the length of the strut can reduce travel some. The OME struts are about an inch longer and will allow some additional travel. But they are the only longer strut option. Everyone else uses oem length struts in the front

That is really great to know! I will look into it more if I am to experience anymore trouble. You guys have been a great help. I swapped the oil soaked starter and it started great for a time. Then the intermittent issue returned. I took the 6 screws out to get the ignition switch and sure enough the 4 out of the (I think 5) clip in points for the ignition switch were broken. Resulting in the improper seating of the ignition switch, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that's where the issue lied. $30 bucks later, a new switch, and no further problems thus far.

The starting issues are among the most common on these older vehicles and are rarely the starter. The problem seems to be with older wiring and not being able to carry enough current to complete the circuit. There is a mod that bypasses some of the long circuit and allows power to be delivered to the starter directly by tripping a relay that requires only minimal voltage input. It used to be posted in the How to's section I believe about 10 years ago. Yeah, some of us have been around that long :{ I think it mightve been posted up by 88pathoffroad since he did the headlight mod. ( same issue with old wiring making headlights dimmer over time) By using relays can transferr power to lights directly from alty or battery giving brighter lights) An easy test for your starter is to jump it directly from the battery. If it cranks it aint the starter and likelly you will benefit from the relay mod. Search on here for it. If you cant find it let me know and I will take pictures of how it looks in my truck. I couldn't find it when I just searched ( there are 250+ pages of starter issues) Perhaps one of the long time members or mods has it archived and can resurrect it and pin it to the How Tos where it rightly belongs. Mr. Reverse has it right as far as testing. The relay mod involves dividing those wires and installing the relay which will trip with much less voltage. Actually, now that i think about it, I think the mod was posted by Mr. Reverse !

Forgot what day this was, Butt shot with the swapped over 02 Pathfinder LE cross bars ( Removed chrome roof rack cross bar in backround) and taillight guards.

1 week update: So I finally got around to getting the alignment fixed. I gave the shop guy 4 camber bolts to work with and he only needed 2. The tires a little quieter now they aren't riding on the outside corner of the tread. Something I've noticed is that at highway speeds, I can hear a noise from what I think is the transfer case when the hubs are unlocked. The noise is similar to a worn out bearing or something. It's very faint and can't be heard unless passengers are quiet and the music is low/off. I can't hear it below 55 mph though. No 4x4 warning lights yet. So I took it wheeling on some moderate stuff nearby in Missouri. With the bigger tires and more ground clearance it took some of the excitement out of the easy stuff as it wasn't much different than driving a car down a dirt road. Struts didn't top out much and never dragged anything over rocks. I got a bit ambitious and tried to go up a steep, off camber hill with sloppy mud, peppered with embedded rocks and tight trees on either side. I almost made it to the top but ultimately got the tires hung on rocks and it crab walked about 6 inches sideways into a tree. I used a hi-lift jack as a winch to pull the rest of the way up. So the silver lining of that trip was, that I found the limits of the tires on mud... That's burned into my memory. I also found no issues with the suspension components and the cv axles held up on rocks just fine. Also, I carried an adult passenger, two kids and a bit of weight consisting of tools, spare cv axle, chains, coolers and drinks. The NRC9449s didn't even show they were doing double duty. I can now compare this ride to a stock xterra with the same exact tires and say this r50 is now superior as it sits higher therefore giving me about the same approach, departure and breakover angles. The r50 articulates better but the slightly longer wheelbase makes turns between tight trees a bit trickier when inches matter. The offset of the new wheels makes more vehicle to squeeze between trees but several times, the wide tires made an effective bumper which kept the tree an inch away from my fender flares as the tires stick out now. In a few days, I'm going to take it to an offroad park to get a better feel for it as there is more diverse difficulty and the density of the terrain is much better.

That thing is great shape!

How did you “quickly” fix those??? That looks amazing

Careful after all that brake clean, go to crank and whoosh . Fire

Alas the post I've been striving to get to: Finished product below. So yesterday, I drove it around a bit and by the end of the night I noticed a slight pop/clunk in the rear end that is repeatable by 1) coasting 2)getting back on the throttle instantly. I crawled underneath to triple check my trailing arm bushing bolts and found nothing. Driveshaft felt just as secure as my 01 parked next to it. I noticed I had a worn out rear sway link so I replaced it to find that it didn't fix the noise. Perhaps the noise was always there but not noticed by myself as the old rubber bushing clunk was much louder and more noticeable. I guess I'll have to keep an ear out for it to see if it gets any worse. Also, driving yesterday, the Service Engine Soon light came on. Its a code for the evap system. I had disconnected a hose (reconnected when finished) above the drive strut and zip tied an extended diff breather hose to the fuel filler hose as well. I also blasted the undercarriage and wheel wells really well at a car wash too. So I supposed I either messed up a hose or got water on something that should stay dry. So about the Warn hubs, there was no need to replace the factory studs despite Warn providing replacement studs. Installation was very easy and straightforward. I also noticed on my other Warn hubs from the junkyard, that the gold color on the lockout knob is some sort of transparent amber coating. Soaking the cap in acetone for a night turns that coating to jelly that wipes off with your finger exposing a brushed steel look. I've seen some discussions around the internet about how many people dislike the gold color so I though I'd mention that. So some visual geometry notes I've made about this configuration: The back driver's side wheel protrudes a bit further than the passenger likely due to the panhard bar setup. Not a big deal but you can see it if you go looking for it. Also, the AC coils give some noticeable positive camber. Due to having 26 hours of dad duty this weekend and a limited number of shops that want to mess with non factory suspension, I'll have to wait until some weekday after work to get it aligned with the camber adjustment bolts. I left my running boards on initially because they serve as a decent reference point for height mesaurements but after seeing my 5'2" wife and four year old comically struggle to get in the new height I've decided to keep them on as "disposable rock sliders." If something happens to them on the trail... oh well. Below are some old vs new measurements: As far as ride quality goes, it is now starting to fell a little truck like. It's very startling when the struts slam. I think they top out really easy with the AC coils. I just know my wife is going to accuse me of messing up the front. The transfer case light hasn't come on yet and I've done about 20 miles of interstate driving so far so hopefully the automatic transfer case doesn't mind unlocked hubs. I can't wait to actually get it on the trail later this month. Lastly, you can't have an excessively long post without a special thanks. So special thanks to PathyDude17 for answering weeks of questions

Wow just came across this old pic. Came a long way from 2015!