mws

Forgive me for being annoying, but if my fear is correct, you could have a problem (and soon)... Is he absolutely positive he re-installed both of the thin sheetmetal disks on either side of the crankshaft pulley? And installed so they flare slightly outward? The outer one needs to be removed to see the timing mark. If you forget to reinstall it (it goes BETWEEN the pulley and timing belt cover), it will cause problems. It is there to keep the belt centered. Without it, the belt can walk forward and hit the cover. Shredding and failure will result. It is very easy to forget. We did once, but noticed it on the "gotta put back in" parts tray before starting, so we just had to dismantle everything and pull the cover off again.

Wasn't it Aaron who used two factory Explorer oil coolers from JY? With as many of those as there are in JY's, I'd suspect they would be dirt cheap.

First is quite low - which is what you want off road. Unless I come to a complete stop (which I rarely do, this being California and all!), I leave it in 2nd. And I am running 32" tires. Even from a stop, put in 1st and pretty much let clutch all the way out in one smooth motion to get going. Properly driven, clutches can last over 200K miles. We've had 2 last that long already - with one at 230K and going strong!

I have to confess I am not quite understanding what you're trying to say... I have never heard of anything like this. Is the belt is tightened correctly per these instructions? http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=12828 Are the thin sheetmetal disks on either side of the crankshaft pulley? If so, I am at a loss to offer any ideas.

HID's take a large voltage spike initially, and then they drop down and draw quite a bit less power than regular bulbs. Although companies sell HID elements "designed" to fit into standard sockets, don't go there without knowing what you're doing. You should NEVER put HID's into DOT assemblies originally designed for incandescents. The US DOT standard requires a certain percentage of light (3% if my memory serves me) to be aimed into the eyes of oncoming traffic.... If you put an HID in one of those reflectors, you WILL blind drivers. Why should you care? Blind drivers are more likely to drift into your lane and kill you. Dead sucks. For this very reason, California is beginning to crack down on illegal conversions. I am sure many other states have or will do the same. DOT reflectors designed for HID elements aim far less into oncoming traffic. European reflectors aim even less - most are close to 0% - even reflectors designed for incandescents. So if your vehicle came from factory with HID, keep it. They are freakin' awesome. If it did not, you MUST replace reflector with European style. And even then, you are technically illegal.

Heli coil, or drill and re-tap one size over. You need to remove the header any ways. If you put enough torque on to strip it, you have severely overcompressed the header gasket and it will never be able to seal properly. They should only be compressed a small to moderate amount to seal properly, hence the factory torque specs.

Yep. As long as you don't run the pump dry for a long time, it will be fine. Transmission is very different critter than the engine. When the truck is idling in park, all the gears and shafts are stationary. The only things moving are the pump and torque converter. And they are under minimal load so wear is unlikely if they are starved for oil for a couple/few seconds.

You'll need: - a friend - a 5 gallon bucket - a trans fill funnel - at least a case of ATF Process: - pull the pan (catching the 2-3 quarts that come out), replace filter, re-install pan. - re-fill pan through filler - remove trans cooling lines from radiator, hang in 5 gallon bucket - Have friend start engine, watch lots of fluid pump out of 1 line! - Try to keep adding fluid to funnel to keep up. If you can't and the fluid stops flowing out of line into bucket, just have friend shut off engine. You don't want to let it run dry for very long. - When oil coming out is bright red, you've pumped out at least 90% of old goop.

Welcome! My French is terrible, so I will not try. But I am sure you can get my message translated! Did you get the truck aligned after installing the lift kit? Lifting the front suspension will change the alignment. It must be re-aligned.

Correct. I have installed the Thorley's on both our '87 and '88 5 speeds with no clutch interference. The only interference is with the flex disk in the steering on the '87 with no lift. A little trimming fixed it. With even a small body lift, no problem.

From all you described here, I would start with replacing the thermostat. Not a pleasant job, I know. But it is the most likely suspect. They are cheap and a new one will resolve any stuck issues. Taking the time to remove the belts, cooling fan pulley, and outer timing belt cover is well worth it as it will save you time getting the new thermostat in. With everything in place it is a royal pain to get it done. The thermostat will not want to stay up in the hole due to that gravity thing. I put a couple LITTLE dabs of silicone on the flange and hold it in place with tape for about 1/2 hour (beer break) to more or less glue it in place. I've installed the thermostat cover with gasket and with just silicone (SMALL bead) and all have sealed up dandy. Do not overtorque the cover - it will warp and leak.

I've installed many, many Beck/Arnley parts and have always been perfectly satisfied. Most made in Japan. Many looking virtually identical to original Nissan - enough so that I suspect Beck/Arnley is selling the exact same parts made by the exact same manufactures as the Nissan badged parts. Changing the clutch is 8 bolts if I recall correctly. Plus 2 screws on the fan shroud. A bit of a pain in knuckles, but pretty easy. Try to avoid smashing all the radiator fins!

If cost is a priority, I usually recommend 1 of 2 approaches: 1) Do it yourself. 2) Install a used one yourself. Get one from a recycler that guarantees it for at least a year or two. If it goes in and works right, it will last many, many thousands more miles if you take care of it. Hang on to the old one. If the "new" JY one starts to get noisy in a few years, clean the old one up thoroughly and take it in for a rebuild. You will save quite a bit (and get better work) if they don't have to do the hard, grungy work.

Yeah, a couple other ideas - 1) You do have the belts on and adjusted, right? 2) If the thermostat was inserted backwards, it will not open. It needs to be installed so the big brass blob is towards the engine side - upwards and to the right on the VG. You would not be the first to install backwards. Chevy guys think all go in with blob down. Not on VG. Blob goes toward engine side. 3) And if you did not change the thermostat, it could very possibly be stuck closed after sitting so long. 4) If you change thermostat and used silicone to seal the housing, and used quite a bit to be sure it sealed, the excess would have squeezed inside the housing and effectively glued the thermostat closed. If you use sealant, use only a thin film. 5) It is possible for a new water pump to not work. But highly unlikely. You can remove the alternator belt and should be able to spin the water pump pully by hand. There should be some resistance as the impeller tries to move water. And as far as engine coolant flow, it is pretty simple: One big hose coming off the bottom passenger side of pump (thermostat housing) into the steel pipe and down, then into bottom of radiator. One big hose going from top of engine to top of radiator. The smaller right angle bypass line. That's it for engine coolant flow. There are a few other hoses related to heater and maybe TB, but even if those are misrouted, the engine would not overheat.

No diagram handy, but a couple questions to verify - - Did you crack open the bleed screw? - Did you let it warm up fully? Until the engine gets to temp, the thermostat will remain closed and you will see very little to no circulation in the radiator. Once the temp gauge gets to middle of scale, then the thermostat should open and you will see movement in radiator.

Sounds like classic symptoms of a worn synchro.

If you are really concerned about fuel economy, a pathy really shouldn't be on your list at all... The killers to fuel economy are weight, aerodynamics, and engine efficiency. The weight and aerodynamics don't change much between models. These are heavy with the aerodynamics of a chipped brick. So they will all suck. The best possible would be a 2WD with I4 and 5 speed driven conservatively. The worst would be pre-90 TBI'd V6 4WD with auto trans driven hard. Big tires, extra weight, lifts, etc all degrade even more.

Remembering!

I'd check the switch and the wires under the truck first. Not uncommon to get snagged and broken when off roading.

Dohhhh! Guilty as charged. Mechanical Engineer, Physics minor. 18 years in industry playing in design, reliability, quality, sales... Please don't hold it against me...

In a rather perverse way, what he's saying is true.... A round tooth belt is not going to spontaneously expire at 106,000 miles. All belts degrade at a linear rate. In other words, every time they go flex, they get a tiny, tiny bit weaker. And so they get a tiny, tiny bit more likely to fail. So at 106K, it is only a little bit more likely to fail than at 105K. The recommendation to change is based on some kind of "acceptable failure rate". I don't know what it is. But for sake of discussion, let me MAKE UP some numbers. I am pulling these completely out of my arse - I have no idea what numbers Nissan's engineers were given to work with. Let's "GUESS" 1%. If Nissan's warranty claims/marketing department says they only want to see 1% of vehicles ever fail in the field, the engineers figure out at what mileage the belt has a 1% chance of failure - and set that as the recommended mileage. At 150K, it may be 10% chance. At 200K, maybe 40%. At 250K, maybe 75% chance. Again, these numbers are ALL MADE UP!!!! But I believe the % risk of failure will go up at a exponential rate with miles. So... if you're a gambler, you can definitely leave the belt alone. Using my made up numbers, you've got a 25% chance of it working fine at 250K miles! Back to my original statement that in a way, the belt "will last the life of the truck". If you are one of those people that believe vehicles can't/won't/shouldn't be kept for over 150K miles, there is an extremely high chance it will last that long with the original belt. So why bother to replace it? Another scenario where that statement appears to make sense: If it did break at 145K, and the cost to rebuild the engine is $4500 and you feel the vehicle is only worth $4,000, then gosh, I guess it has reached the end of its life! (Yes, that is flawed logic, but people behave that way every day!) But if you're one of us whackjobs that drive vehicles for well over 200K, then it gets very important to change.

The photos look like the same unit sold by B&M - probably the exact same manufacturer (B&M does not make their own, they just label somebody elses). So yeah, they're the good plate ones.

Still doing my own camber and toe in alignments. It is so rare for caster to change over time that I don't much worry about it - I'll either eventually get the turntable plates or take the vehicles in every 10 years or so to verify still OK. Camber: Still using the SPC 91000 gage. Works extremely well. Very repeatable. Toe in: Using the string method to get pretty darned accurate, and then fine tune by analyzing how the vehicle feels while hitting small bumps or when initiating turn. It takes a little thinking, but it results in very finely tuned alignment. If the vehicle tends to want to dart a bit left when the right front wheel hits a little rise and/or turns in a bit abruptly when I turn left (either of which puts more load on right front) that means I am a bit too toed in. If it tends to want to dart a bit right when the front right hits a rise and/or kinda hesitates to turn in when turning left, then too toed out. I found I can feel the effect of even 1/4 turn on one adjuster using this method. Results: Tires are wearing perfectly, handling is better than ever - and definitely better than "professional" jobs. It just takes patience and some thinking.

Yes. I still haven't taken any vehicles to "professionals". I still haven't taken pictures (dohhh) I will go back and update with my current techniques.

The really cheap among us weld up our own...