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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.

Right in front of my eyes! No wonder I couldn't find it.

The front of an R50 won't sustain much more than 2" of suspension lift, regardless of the method used. Springs are a better option for off-roading (and in general) to avoid the CV's encountering poor angles at full droop of the front suspension. Besides CV issues, it's hard to get an alignment at lifts greater than 2". Also, you're running out of downtravel and won't have much ride quality to speak of even if you could find a spring that would lift greater than 2 inches. I've seen spacers stacked on top of 2" lift springs. It kind of works, but it's not a surfire or worry-free way to lift an R50. I wouldn't get caught up on a number, whether its a 1.5" lift or 2" lift, you're still using the same basic IFS setup and all the limitations that are attached to that. Anything higher than those spring options (OME, AC, Ironman4x4, Dobinsons) will only properly be achieved with a SFD. I would keep it simple (stock) or minimal (just a spring lift) in the front to avoid headaches. Add manual hubs too.

+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.

My bought new '92 Pathfinder was 30 earlier this year and reached 100,000 miles last week. It has been very satisfactory. A check last weekend showed no measurable wear on either original front disc and about 3/8" remaining on all original four pads.

I'm not normally a fan of painting headlights, but IMO that look suits it. Breaks up some of that chromed plastic where it's not doing anything. Not sure about the grille. I replaced the emblem on mine with a rubber rat's head, though, so maybe I'm not the guy to talk to about tasteful grille mods.

Body lift doesn't effect shock length. Shocks bolt to the frame then axle and lower control arm. Suspension lift doesn't change the shock length on the front so you can still use oem spec length shocks on the front.

And bolted in place: The VG33ER may have had a bracket that would just work but that was missing when we got the engine. My brother told me the VG33 altys have the tensioner boss offset closer to the block so the tensioneer bracket can be shorter than mine. I don't know if you could run the VG33 alty on the VG30 upper bracket with the VG33 tensioner? Oh man, really? It had not registered in my head yet that the oil pump boss on the RH side was .300 thicker as well. The lower radiator hose steel tube bolts onto the oil pump. With the VG33 oil pump the steel tube interferes with the power steering belt big time. There may be a VG33 part that solves this problem, but I didn't have one so I did this: Baked on enamel finish at the weld, and bolted in place: I also had to squish the tube a little bit to gain clearance where the belt could rub at the top. This was largely due to my thermo housing hose being really thick so it might not be necessary with a factory hose. That was a five minute project, from the time the light bulb came on until I finished bolting it to the motor. I hope when people find bolt-on solutions to any of these problems they will post them in this thread! It's no big deal for me to make or modify stuff but whenever possible I try to find bolt-on solutions for all the people that don't own fab shops. Trans cooler: When I did my '01 Xterra HD transmission swap I replaced the radiator so it had a good heat exchanger for the transmission. Massively overheating the old engine the last time out turned my ATF a little darker than I'd like and I can't use that heat exchanger anymore. My brother got me the wholesale hookup on a Hayden 24k pound rated transmission cooler. It's the plate type that apparently does a pretty good job of not over cooling the fluid in Winter: While the engine was out I also drained the transmission, pulled and drained the torque converter, filled it with Amsoil synthetic ATF, and indexed it back in. Well, that's actually about it. Everything you didn't see just bolted together the way it was designed too. When I first fired it the thing ran like crap. It was trying to run at about 300rpm but I was happy to see that even at at that low rpm it only took about five seconds for the oil pressure light to go out. I couldn't get it over 1500 rpm and figured I'd screwed up the TBI somehow. It turns out I had the distributor a tooth off! Derp. After that quick fix it fired right to life and purred like a kitten. I timed it to the stock setting. I had been running the VG30 advanced seven degrees and that made a definite increase in power. I don't need to push this new motor to the ragged edge as it should have plenty of power... for now. :cool: In the video it sounds like either the alty is screaming for mercy or the T-belt is too tight. Neither is the case. It's just the way the mic on my D2 really picks up higher pitched sound. The engine sounds completely normal in person. I can't get the video link to work right so you'll have to click the link: http://s284.photobucket.com/albums/ll35/Mister510/Pathfinder/VG34/?action=view¤t=2011-10-09_03-53-31_904.mp4 I've now put about 40 miles on the engine driving it around Seattle. The steering box I swapped in while the motor was out has a tight spot in the middle so I have not taken it on the freeway yet. All I can say so far is it hauls balls! It's the quickest Pathy I've ever been in, that's for sure. It has some serious snap, pulls hard to redline and has a huge increase in bottom end torque. I cannot stall my torque converter on dry pavement anymore as the truck starts crabbing sideways with wheel spin before it reaches 2k rpm. Stall speed is 2200. My butt dyno says if the VG30 made 150hp this one is well over 200. I look forward to surprising some ricer Honduhs with it! I will get some 0-60 and quarter mile times with the dyno app on my Droid 2 as soon as I get the steering fixed.