ticker

I took advantage of some freakishly warm weather on Saturday to remove my fender flares. The plan was to take them off to take care of some rust i could see forming behind one of them. The flares do a lot of damage to the fender where they rub up on it. Over the next few weeks I'm going to sand prime and paint the areas that the flares covered. I really like the way the truck looks without the flares. I have small stock tires on there and it looks pretty good with the sizable space between the tire and the wheel well. I always thought that with the smaller tires that the flares made the truck look a little goofy too. Does anyone one know what Nissan put around the wheel well on pathy's that come stock without flares. The mounting points for the flares look kind of funny and on the front wheels the plastic shroud inside the wheel well seems like it would fall out if i hadn't put the bolts back in. This shroud seems to be somewhat ineffective considering the mud pack that i found behind it. If anyone had pics of a stock none flare wheel well i would love to see them so I can get an idea of what I can fabricate. I'll keep my eyes peeled for one around here but they aren't very common. thanks ticker

OK so I've made my decision. I decided to go for it and get the L&P stage one set up. How difficult is this to swap out? It seems pretty straightforward. I have changed TREs before with out a problem and I'm pretty pumped for this upgrade. Here are the questions 1) How hard is it to drill out the idler and pitman arms to 5/8? 2) How long should this all take. 3) L&P requires a alignment afterwards, I've heard of people having problems getting their trucks aligned, any tips to get them to do it right the firs time. thanks ticker -bounce-

It looks fine to me. (now that I know what it is )It must be the angle of the camera. I think if it were bent like that I would have noticed and would be suffering much bigger problems. Thanks for the replies though, I have about 120,000 and the CL just went bad. Any thoughts on an idler arm brace? It seems like from what you guys are saying that perhaps the stock CL would be fine. I'm kinda torn to tell the truth. I guess I'll sleep on it.

I'm not going to hazard a guess at the problem but it sound pretty bizzare to me that you are getting stuck in such a small amount of snow. I would think that no matter the set up of your rig that such minor amounts of snow and ice shouldn't be a problem. I mean while i understand that not all 4x4s are not created equal this seems silly that a properly functioning 4wd system would get stuck like this. Right?

Hey, thanks for the pics, I got my tax refund over the weekend so I'm ready to buy the centerlink. I like the idea of the L&P centerlink but I don't do a whole lot of serious wheelin' so I'm putting this question out there. Aside from being a stonger set up, will adding the L&P centerlink/idler brace do anything for me if I only occasionally go off road? What about a regular centerlink and an idler brace? I'm trying to be cost effective here. I'm not the type to sink a whole lot of money into my ride willy-nilly, I'd much rather put money into things that are fucntional first, and any money saved here will enable me to do something else sooner. Any advice would be appreciated. :bow:

good question lloydk. anybody know of a how to for this procedure?

Cool-thanks for the advice. :cool2:

I started to post this in the transmission cooler reviews but thought that it was probably off topic. From what I read It seems like any transmission cooler will work. I've seen a few on ebay. I'm looking at one right now off a 99 ford Ranger with a 4.0L engine. ??? Besides the cooler do you just need hoses and clamps to connect it up? thanks in advance ticker

HAH-i just snarfed coffee

I'm thinking I want two black ones. sweet!

yea I 've got mine on there with a hose clamp too. It works and its cheap, kinda like me! The only problem. if you could call it that is I can feel the vibrations of the exhaust through the frame. beer=good, sleeping it off under pathy=not so good

Thanks for the quick response. It a relief to know I'm not in any immediate danger. Unfortunately, I have no plans to go wheelin' anytime soon. I hear you about it being scary sometimes, I nearly pooped myself the other day coming around a bend a little quickly and kind of felt the steering shift a bit. It was one of those poorly designed ones that as the road bends right it banks down(opposite of a race track) kinda throwing you towards the wall. The collection of broken trim parts and rubber/paint along the wall is indicative of how bad it is. The saddest part is they just built about a year ago. wohoo go tax dollars! Anyway I'll just have to deal with it for now, it's at the top of the fix it list so hopefully I won't do too much damage to the rest of the steering components in the mean time. thanks again ticker :cool2:

ummm yea-I had a thought this weekend. How dangereous is the worn centerlink? Money is tight right now and I was going to wait a bit and save up for the calamini. I was driving this past weekend and had this image of the pathy suddenly veering into oncoming traffic. (note to self-stop reading the newspaper) anyway aside from a little shake in the steering wheel i haven't noticed it causing any other problems

When I was in europe a while back I saw VW golfs that were 4x4 and lifted w/ a spare on the back-they were totally bad ass- my 87 gl was fwd and it hauled ass off road-in snow-through fields-until i blew it up sssh ticker

I never even thought of the stealer. Simple solutions for simple problems right? thanks

Good Morning all, A while back the muffler hanger broke resulting in the exhaust resting on the frame and making a pretty annoying noise/vibration. I took the pieces of the bracket off-it is the one with a piece of rubber sandwiched in between the two pieces of metal, to see if it could be repaired. The rubber seperated from one of the pieces of metal on one side so I tried some trusty J.B. weld, which worked for a few weeks. So now I have been using a hose clamp to keep the exhaust from bouncing off the frame. This seems to work OK except there is no dampening so I am still getting a little vibration from the exhaust when i hit bumps, rev hard etc.. I have a few questions the first is: Is this bad for the exhaust? ie. does it need the dampening effect of the hanger? Next: Is there a source for one of these hangers? I've tried to find one at various part sources with no luck. The hangar itself bolts to the frame and to a bracket on the muffler. Is there some other name for this part? thanks ticker :type:

Hey there SS-If I remember correctly with the overdrive on your transmission functions as normal, ie. full range of gears. When overdrive is off the transmission will not shift past 3rd gear. This is for when you are driving in the mountains or on back roads and do not want to lose power by having the tranny shift into a higher gear. This is probably why you are feeling better acceleration with it off-not shifting past 3rd-more power. As for being sluggish with it off I'm not sure if its anything more than just your normal pathy sluggishness. I have also had a mechanic tell me to use O/D off in in town to help the tranny not shift so much and therefore extend its life(not with pathy, it was an '83 Volvo). not sure if he was right but i could never remember to do it and the car had 220,000 miles when i sold it. Hope this helps ticker

I'm not sure. For me the noise is always there. It is louder at start up/when engine is cold. It quiets down a bit once the engine is warmed up but it never goes away. It is tied to engine speed, although when the revs are high I'm not sure if it stops or is just covered up by the regular engine noise. When I decscribe it as being inconsistant i mean that it is not like: bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap. but it has longer and shorter spaces between each noise like bapbap bap bap bap bap bapbap bapbap bap bap bap bap bapbap- if that makes any sense. it seems to be cylical with slight variations in the noise at idle. It seems to be coming from the lower rear of the engine when you stand in front. I've tried the hose to the ear thing without luck. I have a short video that i shot in which you can hear the noise but I'm not really sure how to put it up here. anyone? ticker

I couldn't wait till the weekend to check it out-OMFG there was a good three inches of leaves down there. thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou mws! How sketchy is this-total fire hazard. I would highly recommend everyone do this especially on the the older rigs out out there. I don't necessarily park under trees a whole lot but the PO might have. It was super easy to do, although the screws that hold the metal plate on were torqued really well. Once its open i just put the vacuum in there and sucked it out. DO NOT TURN ON THE FAN UNLESS YOU HAVE ALREADY CLEANED IT OUT-otherwise you will end up with leaves everywhere. I waited and I still got a small flurry because of hold outs. Sorry no pics because I did it in the parking lot at lunch today. Just follow the directions above, they were spot-on. Once again you all have saved my a$%. big props to mws for the step by step have a good weekend yall ticker -bounce- :bow: :o :cool2: PS-after I did all this I drove home and still noticed the smell-I took everything apart and realized I forgot to vaccum the little box that the resistors are housed in-I think there were some leaf particles stuck in there so just FYI don't forget this step. Now everything is great-no smell no fear and most importantly no fire! thanks again

Oh Well-thanks for the advice ticker

OK-One more question. Because of a strange noise coming from my engine I don't want to put alot of money into the pathy until I can get it diagnosed. I've posted about it here,http://npora.ipbhost.com//index.php?showto...t=0entry76948 and taken it to several shops but have never recieved a satisfactory answer. That being said, can i just replace the centerlink bushings as a temporary solution? I would love to upgrade especally if it is work I can do myself but Ill have to wait until I'm sure the pathy is going to be around for a while. If so where can you buy the bushings? I checed out AC last night and didn't see any. Rock On ticker

:X doh-recieves slap to back of head. I apologize for being so thick about the pitman/idler thing. In a schematic I had seen of another car the idler and the pitman seemed to be attached having a set on each side. I just ran up the stairs hoping to get to this post to attempt to edit away my stupidity, anyway after consulting my haynes manual I see the error of my ways. I know I should have done that earlier so my bad it won't happen again. thanks again for the info ticker

OK- I went back and looked today and it is definitely the centerlink that is worn out. So thanks for the tip I'll have to look into fixing that, Ive changed out the tie rods on my bimmer before so i'm sure i can do this. But when i looked again it still seems like there are two different idler arms on my truck. It is my understanding that the idler arm is bolted to the frame, no? And then the pitman arm is generally attached below that. I'm only seeing what I think is the idler arm attached directly to the center link. I put the pics side by side so maybe it is easier to understand what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to be argumentative I just want to understand my pathy better, Ive' never messed with the steering components before. thanks ticker

WHOLLY CRAP is right. It sounds like even with a fire extinguisher that would be a tough spot to get to. Not that I want to ever have to use it. Looks like I know what I'm doing this weekend. Thanks for such a great description of how to go about remedying the situation. It happened again this morning. I was starting to think I was going nuts because I couldn't find any visible leaf or wood debris in the engine bay or underneath. I'll keep you posted as to how it goes. Hopefully it will stay warm for a couple days, went from below freezing and snow yesterday to sunny and 50's today. I doubt I'll have a chance to look at it until Sunday. Thanks to all. ticker

heres a pic of the other side-thanks in advance ticker :bow: der- this is the one with the worn out bushing thanks again