pathybuilder

Glad to hear that it worked out for you

Edmonton, Alberta

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.

That's definitely a US speedometer so that was changed. I don't know whether or not the odometer would be changed over as well or not. Or can you just change units of measurement with a digital ODO? I would think that it is changed over as well. My first post is still my best guess. I'm really not much help after that as I don't know what rollback means. It could mean that it was adjusted with the addition of the new speedometer, but I have no idea. I don't know enough about importing vehicles into different countries.

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.

This might seem to simple, but it's a possibility that 152,728 is in KM as it was a Canadian vehicle, I'm not gonna find the exact conversion, but thats around 100Kmi. Whoever bought it at the auction maybe changed the cluster over to a US version. Does your speedometer read in Miles or KM? Just a thought.

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.

It has the factory tie downs, but IMO the factory tie downs are for..well...tying it down to a trailer or something, Before I put the hitch on, I had one bend over being pulled out of a ravine. I just don't trust them that much, never mind the fact that you can't fit a 3/4" shackle through them. These will likely be different than your R50 though. Right now I use a standard receiver with a 7/8" shackle through the ball mount, but for about $50 you can buy a receiver with shackle designed for recovery. Up front I have a bumper with 2 x 3/4" Shackle mounts, but before that just used a factory frame mounted tow hook, which worked great. Again, this may not exist on your R50

You are absolutely righty. I suppose I had been mis-informed at some point as well, hate to do the same to someone else. I have Class 3 on my truck, but use it for recovery only, Just looked at it 5000lb, 2", my bad. Deleted my top post.

X2. If you notice it more when the engine is cold, it could be a broken exhaust stud or leaking manifold gaskets, once the engine heats up (at least in my case) the leak kind of seals itself unless it's really bad.

Wire Brushed my entire frame. and used compressed air/shop vac to get any loose rust out of the inside. Prepped for POR-15

Yeah they seem to think that their products are superior to everyone else's and you should just spend the money on them because. I like your thinking and appreciate your enthusiasm, but I'm just not sold on the Calmini set-up anymore. Even if they could offer it for $500 I think I would pass on it. Just a preference based off of what I've read on various forums. All the power to you though if you can organize this, maybe there's some other people on here that are interested. If you don't mind me asking, Why do you need a new Pitman Arm anyway?

I would also follow Tungsten's advice and look at the nut on the steering box, just incase someone has swapped the steering box with a junkyard unit in the last 21 years. I was going to order a steering set-up from Calmini and they suggested I pull the pitman and count the splines, even with my truck being a 95. I believe there's a difference in spline count also, Post 92 is 48 spline, Pre-92 is less.

Mine smoked a bit, when I put the wrap on, even when I first ran them without the wrap, they smoked a bit, I think it was just the coating on the headers getting warm for the first time.

Looks real good, I guess maybe I'm not as good at explaining things as I think I am... The Y-pipe isn't long enough to fit onto both headers? I seem to recall that same problem. Somebody on here might give me $%^T for saying or trying this, but I loosened the manifold nuts off, so that the headers have some slack in them, put the Y-pipe on, then the last thing I did was tighten up all hardware. The manifold nuts sucked the header in fine and it hasn't leaked. You might want to try the same, could save you the cost of the shop doing it. I wouldn't go crazy on the manifold nuts, they do have a torque spec (don't recall it offhand)

While I do like the look of this system, and feel that it should hold up better than the stock setup, I do agree with Simon 100% on the stabilizer issue. If anything a steering stabilizer will cause more force to be applied directly to the TRE that takes the hit. Think of it this way. Without a steering stabilizer, you're passenger side wheel takes a large hit. The force of that hit is transferred through the TRE, through the center link, through the gearbox, and up the steering shaft to the steering wheel, where the driver, manually dampens that force. In this case the force is applied to all steering components that it comes into contact with, including the driver. The driver side wheel simply moves as it's part of the linkage, however the only force applied to it's TRE is what's holding it back from turning (say if it's wedge against another rock there would be lots of force on it's TRE, flat ground, next to none). Now introduce a steering stabilizer. Same wheel takes a hit, the force travels through the TRE, to the centerlink, but the centerlink is dampened from moving freely, therefore minimizing the force seen by the gearbox and the driver. You can't make force go away, it's always going to exist, if you try to dampen it, you simply move it to the other side of the dampener, in this case, your centerlink, inner TRE, TRE adjuster, and outer TRE. I too am excited to see somebody wheel this setup, been following it for a while, just waiting to see how it works. I'm debating between this and the grassroots link. Definitely see the advantages to both, the only difference is that one has been tested by many.

No comments for most of your issues, but the engine whine could be the bearing in your idler pulley on your AC belt. I've had that go. Know a few others that have as well. Follow adamzan's instruction removing one belt at a time if it clears when you remove the AC belt, it's likely the idler pulley.