pathybuilder

Is that a hole in your shock body? I agree with Adam, replace what is worn or loose. It also looks to me like there's moisture trapped behind your rust proofing from the way it's peeling away. Rust proofing in this condition can sometimes hide things you might otherwise want to look at.

This is just my opinion and would love other peoples comments on this. It's food for thought if nothing else. One of the only advantages of wheeling with IFS is the increased ground clearance you gain from not having your front pumpkin drag through the rocks, snow, whatever it is you wheel in. Keeping your front sway bar on helps to push the rest of the vehicle up when traveling over trail obstacles. When you remove this sway bar you defeat the only real advantage an IFS system may have over a solid axle. The obstacle pushes just one wheel up, leaving the rest of you chassis at the same level, leaving you more vulnerable to being hung up. I feel that the only place removing your front sway bar is going to help is on an RTI ramp. The offroad ride will be smoother without it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's more capable.

You could check you mounting bolts. Probably unlikely but I had this case happen to me. The mounting bolts backed off, just enough for the starter to drop out of position and not make contact with the flywheel.

Finally finished my transfer case gears install. Been so busy over the last month. I kept seeing it sitting there while on my way out to somewhere else, hoping that I would remember how it all came apart. I hate leaving a job halfway through. Anyhow, glad it's done. It went pretty smooth other than removing the speedo sensor.

If I didn't already have a Calmini LSD sitting in a box in my garage, I'd be sold for sure. So much less labour to install than an ARB or a Limited Slip carrier.

I'm going to assume you did a better job than I did on my install. I effed mine up as it wasn't aligned properly (or so I think). It chattered in all gears and neutral with clutch pedal out. Got worse over time around 350 km on it it started squealing. Took it to a shop where they figured it as a bad pilot bushing (even though I replaced it), there was still no sign of damage on the clutch and ran fine once put back together. Not 200km later it started to chatter again, this time to the point where the clutch wouldn't fully release. I took it back to the same shop. This time there was visable damage. The hub on the friction plate had separated. If you're 100% confident it's aligned properly and that it was a quality install, I would just keep an eye on it. But if you have any doubt, I would pull it apart, before you do any more damge. Trust me I have a $700 clutch in my basement with a detroyed friction plate and a pressure plate that still looks brand new.

Good Point, thanks.

It was a while back, but I remember removing the steering arm by loosening the pinch bolt and sliding it back off the steering box, then re-installing it once the lift was in, when re-installing it, you just have to stretch it out a little. As far a bolts go, I used whatever came in the kit from Automotive Customizers. You will have the use the same as whatever you remove as they thread into the factory body mounts.

Picked up my wheels/tires and coil spacers. Lined the coil spacers up in the coil buckets to see if they'll work. Looks like we've got a match more to do this weekend....

Don't worry about it. A 31 x 10.5 will fit on the 6" factory chromies no problem. That's what I've ran for the past 3 years.

The only thing I had to modify were the slots in the body where my ARB bumper brackets attaches to the factory mounts. You likely won't have this problem. I did separate all the lines from the passenger side firewall before the lift, some fit back to their original positions some needed modified routing. I also removed the loop style bracket that goes around the drive shaft, just behind the transfer case. That's all I can think off, I didn't have to modify the 4x4 shifter linkage as those with the 3" BL do.

You're probably right, I've only ever installed head units in a few different vehicle so I don't know what a "bass blocker" capacitor is. The bottom line is that It's better to use the correct wiring harness from Best Buy / Future Shop or any other stereo distributer. I only bypassed my amp because said distributers, gave me the wrong harness three different times, so I gave up hard-wired it in.

Using the correct harness is the best bet, however if you decide to bypass, just cut all wires coming in and out of the amp, I think at that point you can match colours with what you see at the head unit, the rest go to speakers. Buttsplice or solder and heatshrink the connections you make from the head unit to the wires that go to the speakers effectively bypassing the amp. You can use a 9V battery to determine which wires go to which speakers. Someone on here might know the exact wire colours, but I found the 9V battery trick to be helpful, you just touch the 9V to two wires, if they both go to the same speaker you'll hear a pop. You can match which speaker "pops" with the new head unit wiring diagram to determine FR, RR etc. I found by doing this I don't have tweeters any more, just 4 speakers as the head unit only has 4 channels. Hope this helps, I would still recommend the wiring harness however.

Glad to hear that it worked out for you

Thanks, I like them a lot, They have a good spring rate for wheeling with gear (seems that's what OME products are designed around) just wish they had more lift, thats why I'm sticking with them and trying to make the Dodge coil spacer work.

I found a written off 2002 Xterra hear in Edmonton. I'm buying the front seats for $50 each, He wants $100 for the rear seat, which I'll take if I can make it work. I'm waiting for a reply on the roof rack. I'd like to try the centre console as well. The Xterra had waterproof seats did it not? I seem to remember commercials when they first came out (depicting how awesome they were for an outdoor enthusiast) where a muddy mountain biker could fit an upright mountain bike into the back, then climb into the drivers seat showing no concern for the upholstery at all.

As the frame needs to be bone dry before applying POR-15, I spent part of the day tearing apart my transfer case to install T-case gears. I'll put a write-up in the garage section, not so much for instruction as those that come with the AC gear sets are pretty good. More/less just to give people an idea what they're getting into before they order lower gears. The instructions say to remove the speedo gear before disassembly, but the factory service manual doesn't recommend it for an overhaul. I should've left mine in, I royally Screwed it up trying to take it out. Even after reading posts here on how to do it, garbage aluminum housing, I broke the screw tab off, then went to destructive methods as I knew it needed to be replaced anyway. The case came apart with the gear in place, so now I'll have to push it out from the inside of the case, and try to get one from pull a part without destroying it too. Once the control arm are painted I'll start assembling everything with new bushings. New wheels and tires will be here any day now with coil spacers, so should my rear locker, sliders, and front and rear gears. All my other parts are here. I just have to order the wear items like ball joints / TRE. It's time to start getting everything off the floor of my garage.

So I've been pretty busy the last couple weekends. I took the grinder with wire wheel to the frame and knocked off any loose scale. I then used an air compressor / shop vac to blow any loose stuff out of the inside of the frame rails. I then prepped the entire frame with Marine Clean, which is essentialy a water based degreaser prep for POR-15, followed by a water rinse. I then prepped with Metal Ready which is an etcher that leaves a coating / turns surface rust into zinc phosphate to give the POR-15 a good surface to bond to. After that was another water rinse. And left to sit for a while. Here's some photos. Products After wire wheel / Before Marine Clean After the Marine Clean / Before Metal Ready After the Metal Ready (don't know that the photo shows it well, but you can really see a change in the surface of the metal. I prepped some other parts as well, torsion bar x-member, LCAs, rear control arms.

Episode 1 http://www.powerbloc...p_num=XT2008-06 Episode 2 http://www.powerbloc...p_num=XT2008-15 Episode 3 http://www.powerbloc...p_num=XT2011-02

Scrubbed the frame down with POR-15 Marine Clean and Metal Ready, while waiting on it to dry off ITore my transfer case apart and started a low gear install.

Feel bad for you, definitely lucky if it still runs. It sounds like you have a ton of work ahead of you, replace all your oils, diffs, tranny etc. Let it dry out. I doubt I'm the only one here that wants to see some pics.

That's the one. It measures 41mm on my 95 (just measured it). I never knew there was a difference in Nut size until I read it on another thread here. I was told to count the splines, but if the size of the nut tells all, that's a lot easier than pulling the pitman arm.

It's all in Kingman's link. You likely have H33B rear and R200A front. The T-case quantity is listed there but not in the main section. It's 2.2 litres according my Haynes Manual. Make sure you get some additive for your rear diff if it's LSD.

You could either use the drill with an appropriate size bit to drill out the bolt, then continue with removing the bushing, or because you need you replace the bushing anyway, get a hole saw just smaller than the sleeve in the control arm and drill the whole bushing out bolt and all. This will save you the trouble of getting the bushing out after as it'll likely be tough.

Yeah, it's not cheap by any means. You would likely want to use all the prep products too. Marine Clean and Metal Ready. The Metal Ready basically turn the rust into Zinc Phosphate and gives a good surface for the POR-15 to bond too. You would also need a top coat as POR-15 itself is sensitive to UV light. With this your costs are likely even more than you thought they would be. I think that if you could sandblast it, then hit it with Rustoelum and an Enamel top coat as 620 Datsun said, it would likely be fine and last.