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Everyone who has a 1986.5 to 1995 4wd Truck or 1987-1995 4wd Pathfinder should be aware that the FS5R30A manual transmission up until 1995 does not provide adequate lubrication to the main and counter drive gears. If you are experiencing transmission whine in every gear except for 4th, you have a problem. You should park your truck now and have the transmission rebuilt, the alternative is that the transmission will eventually grenade, and a $500 rebuild quickly becomes a $3000 replacement. The tsb's show a diagram with the "fixed" transmission case, the only difference being that the fill hole was moved up 0.97 inches! That increased the oil capacity by 1.5 liters from 3.6l to 5.1l Here are the TSBs, I'll leave them up until someone sues me. TSB97-009 *Link Broken* TSB97-009A If you have one of the covered transmissions, but you don't have the symptoms, you should still add the extra 1.5 liters of gear oil to your tranny. I decided the simplest way was to go in through the top, through the gear shifter. (Some people have tried parking on a slope so the fill hole is higher, others have tried squeezing in the extra with a bottle then quickly getting the plug in before it drains out. ) How to add gear oil through the shifter hole Pull up the carpet from the passenger side to free the gear shift, and remove the shifter boot. Cut off the zip-tie holding the gearshift dustboot, and pull it up from the shifter assembly. You will then see a snap-ring underneath, remove it (you do have snap-ring pliers, right?) and then remove the gearshift lever. Pour 1.5 liters (1.6 US quarts) of new gear oil into the transmission. Replace shifter, snap-ring, dustboot, shifter boot and carpet. You are done! Note, shifter should be in neutral, and be careful when removing and inserting it as there is a plastic swivel thing on the end. (It only goes back in correctly one way, so if you are not sure it's right, make sure) You need a long replacement zip-tie for the dustboot, I think an 8" works. Final note, do not use any gear oil rated GL-5 in the Nissan manual transmission. It says in our manual to use GL-4, and there is a difference. GL-5 oils have additives that destroy the soft bronze synchros in our transmissions. I use Red Line MT90, and it works very well. madkiwi

I'm kind of tired of not seeing anything at night and I was planning on retrofitting some Morimoto projectors. While considering it, I was looking at Toyota's 70 Series LC anniversary edition and the relatively minor tweaks they did to the front end (blacking out headlights, grille, old school logo): I think it looks great without going overboard. I put my rusty Photoshop skills to good use and came up with this: The idea would be blacking out the headlight surrounds while retrofitting the projectors and getting a Patrol Y60 grille emblem (I think I oversized it above, should be smaller). There are some similar headlights already on eBay but they are both: A. Crap and B. They paint the turn signal reflector which is dumb. Yay? Nay? Not sure if I like it myself. Looks different alright but not sure if it fits the car.

+1 for taking it out in stock form and seeing what it needs before digging too far into it. That said... If you've got the automatic transmission, consider adding an external cooler to help it out. Look up the Missing Link. I don't have an R50 to try it on, but I've read it firms up the unibody a bit. If you've got the open rear diff, you can swap in a limited slip. Hawairish did a great writeup on repacking the LSD for higher breakaway torque, and a table of donors and specs for the stock units (scroll down a little). Looks like early Xterra is your best bet if you want to drop one in without taking it all to bits. Just make sure your donor has the same gear ratio. That's listed on the data plate in the engine bay, look for HG43 or HG46. Other than that, I would check the strut towers and fuel filler for rust (hopefully low miles means it hasn't seen too much east coast road salt), and make sure it's up on its maintenance. At 78k, it may still have its original timing belt.

lol yeah we have one.. look at the bottom of the page It's an included one from IPS and yes some text is hard, or very hard to see. I've long used it and guess that I've just got used to it, at some point I'll dig through the code and see if I can find a fix for it.

I would just start with tires. Until you take it out and use it for exactly what you want to do, it may be hard to know exactly what you want to change 1. Use the vehicle 2. Take not of issues or inconveniences 3. Modify as needed If you know you're gonna go camping, you'll probably want a nice set of All-Terrain (not all season) tires. You can make your way up almost any forest service road on highway tires, but in emergency weather or certain situations you'll want some better tread. Go for a snow rated all-terrain. If, from there, you notice deficiencies in the suspension, address them. But, as you add more modifications you will run into areas where you may have to compromise or do additional supporting mods/maintenance. The less you add, the easier the vehicle is to drive and maintain normally. You can start with the stock wheels and a tire that measures out between 29" (stock) and about 30.5" tall and you shouldn't have any issues with rubbing. I use tiresize.com to compare tire sizes. If you're towing and need help with that weight, you might get load helper/air helper bags or go with a stiffer rear spring from old man emu, ironman4x4, etc. If you go with new springs, or with the land rover springs , you may need to lift the front with a spring to get closer to level. Here's some front coil options Manual hubs are nice for people running lift or heavier tires, and can easily be installed yourself I do not recommend lift spacers on the front or the rear suspension. It's an inferior option. Skip the brush gaurds. They're a damage multiplier imo and they usually eat into your approach and departure angles. Steel wheels are not a bad option at all. If you want to go with really tall tires (taller than 31"), look for a wheel with 3.75 backspacing. This helps push the tire away from rubbing up against the lower strut/spring perch. Tall tires at that backspacing will require trimming in almost every case. Again, I would start with just the tires. You'd be very surprised how far you can get on just a stock vehicle and some forest service roads