Tungsten

The tachometer is modular in the older clusters. You can definitely do some transplant work there too!

The whole K&N or paper debate really comes out to if you just want to service the filter or if you prefer doing the dealership method of taking it out and putting in a new one. Also, K&N filters do not filter as much as paper does, which is why they are high flow. The crap that they don't catch will not have a significant impact on engine wear though.

There is a screen and you clean that by blasting it out with an air compressor if you don't want to buy a new one.

Alright, write-up posted. It's in progress at the moment but should be finished soon.

Yeah cross-overs suck. The drawbacks of an SUV and the drawbacks of a car all in one. Why can't people just buy station wagons, or minivans, or even large sedans? At least the R50 is a very capable cross over and still has the Pathfinder roots.

The air leaking is intentional. It's called passive ventilation. You really don't need to go through all that trouble and if you do plan on stripping the interior then you may as well just take it a step further and forget Dynamat. Use spray on sound proofing instead.

Both of them. At the pulley mark on TDC, the rotor should be pointing to plug 1. You can even take off the upper timing belt cover and verify TDC because the punch marks on the sprockets will both be pointing directly to the belt instead of away from it. You can even turn the engine over until the timing marks on the cam sprockets line up with the belt. Then you are at TDC for sure.

Testing, results, and extras The controller and fan was completely wired and working now... So I went for a test run to see what trouble spots came up... At first I ended up losing the mounting bolt. Apparently the shroud is a little too heavy for a self tapper, I am going to have to reinforce the bolt with a nut. Fixed. The other thing that happened is the ACC circuit actually turns the fan on. I have to re-wire the ignition signal on the controller to be the ON instead of ACC. Since the gauge sender does not work in ACC mode, the controller goes into safe mode and just turns the high speed fan on. Fixed, see post #4: http://www.nissanpat...an/#entry634830 Finally, there is something weird going on when I turn off the A/C with the high speed fan. The engine seems to want to bog afterwards. Not sure why this happens but my theory is the ECU can adapt to the load but it can't adapt to the load being taken off. If anything, I can disable the high speed on the controller. Fixed. The ECU needed some regular driving to adapt to the new setup. That's it! Other than those small issues, the fan works like on any production vehicle that ever came with an electric fan. My temperatures have never been more consistent than they are now. The only drawback of this fan is that it will not cover the entire radiator but it's a non issue. My favorite part is the 30 second fan run delay (which is programmable) when the vehicle is shut off while the fan is running. The low speed keeps the motor plenty cool in traffic so the high speed may not even be necessary. I only wired it in as an option.

Installing the fan The next step is to install the fan. Before that happens the old one must be removed. Remove the bottom shroud piece (mine was never there). Unbolt and tilt the shroud over the fan then while the shroud is holding the fan unbolt the fan and remove the fan out of the gap. You can either remove the fan from the fan clutch first or remove the fan clutch with the fan on it. Some foam insulation can be added to the fan shroud to fill those gaps... The fan assembly should be able to stand nicely by itself on the bottom radiator tank. There is only one hole to mount the assembly to the radiator. The rest can be filled in with through-core mounts. Pro-tip: To mount the lower through core tie, you can remove the radiator mounts and slightly tilt the radiator out of the way. If it doesn't want to come up, just loosen the top driver's side bumper mount bolt.

Wiring the fan The fan controller uses ground loop control and relays. Basically when it needs to turn the fan on, it will close a circuit to the relay by activating the ground. The grounds are labelled as Fan High and Fan Low on the controller. Therefore, the fan controller will require two relays for operation and you will need space to install them. I found the best place to install the relays was on the inside fender next to the battery. On some models this space contains a DRL module but since mine did not have one, I had free space to install the relays. You can see how the battery here conceals the relays. Positive terminal connector: Negative terminal connector: As you can see I used an AGU fuse holder with a 50A fuse to fuse the fan from the battery. The large amp AGU fuses are cheaper to replace than large blade type fuses and AGU holders are water sealed by design. Time to splice the main connector on... Finally, the ground relay loops can be routed through the firewall using the drain hose hole.

Programming the controller When you fire up the controller for the first time, you will notice it read Er1. That means it is a gauge sender malfunction. The reason why that happens is the sender must receive a little voltage from the regulator in the dashboard to work properly and that only happens in the ON position. The other reason might be that the sender is not being recognized because the controller is set up by default to work with a dedicated sender. To program the controller, first turn off the ignition and take the key out. Then insert the key back in and hold SW2 as you turn the key to ON. Once you see SET displayed on the controller, you can let go of SW2. Now push SW1 to enter the setup menu. Hold SW1 for F (farenheit) or SW2 for C (celsius). After that you can cycle through all the fan operation temperatures. Press both SW1 and SW2 to confirm the selection and move on to the next prompt. Finally, for the gauge sender, select VDO. Apparently the factory cluster is compatible with VDO gauges. At least mine was! Thanks to that, calibration was not required. The settings for the temperatures should be as follows: Low Fan ON = 175 F Low Fan OFF = 165 F High Fan ON = 185 F High Fan OFF = 176 F If you do need to calibrate then follow the instructions in the booklet (or download them online). Basically you will need to turn the potentiometer marked custom adjustment. Doing so, you will manually manipulate the gauge and then confirm the temperature on the controller. Oops! Too far... Make sure the engine is cold if you wish to custom calibrate the unit. Don't forget to turn the potentiometer all the way back when you are done. If you still can't make it work or don't want to play guess-a-temp then you can always resort to a dedicated sender. Anyway, most likely you will get the thing running on VDO mode. Mine was pretty damn accurate there! The controller was reading 165 F while idling after a complete warm-up. Looks good to me (I have a stock 170 F thermostat)! The reading was taken while still running the fan clutch, which is to make sure that the controller is properly reading the sender before putting the electric fan in. Pro-tip: By default, the temperature will not display. You have to hold both SW1 and SW2 until it pops up.

Wiring the factory gauge and sender A sender is what you need to monitor the water/coolant temperature. The gauge is wired to the sender. Now you have an option to use a separate dedicated sender for the controller for reading the temperature but that requires extra wiring and ramming a probe through the radiator. Luckily, with this controller, you can use your factory sender found in the upper neck of the cooling system. Here is how you do that: Step 1: Start up the truck and wait until it fully warms up. Take temperature readings along the way and pictures of where the gauge is pointing. You will need this data to be able to tell if the temperature read out on the controller is accurate. I used a medical infrared thermometer set to surface temperature mode to take the temperatures from the upper cooling neck as the truck was warming up. Step 2: Remove the cluster and locate the sender port. Make sure it is the sender port and not the voltage regulator by tracing the circuit board. Then attach a ring terminal under the screw washer. Crimp/solder on a spade terminal on your new gauge sender wire. Plug the spade terminal into the ring terminal's female spade end terminal and run the wire down and into the controller. The reason for doing all this is so that you can remove the cluster without having to unscrew the sender wire from the temperature gauge. Note I used a gray wire for the sender but my pre-made ring terminal wire was black. I was just lazy and already had a terminal wire that was made and ready to go. Step 3: Run all of your new wires to the controller. You can wrap them in electrical tape or put them in a wire loom or both. I just wrapped mine up in tape.

Wiring the A/C trigger This step is optional but very useful and I recommend doing it. The A/C signal terminal in the controller expects a signal when the air conditioning system is running. The reason being that the algorithm for running the fan is different than under normal loads. Since the condenser can get very hot, the fan controller will try to keep the system colder by running the fan at longer intervals. Here is where it gets tricky. You will need to open the FSM and find the A/C signal wire. On systems with automatic air conditioning, the signal wire is Orange Black stripe located in the foot well area running to the automatic A/C amplifier. What I did here was literally just strip the wire and shove it in there. Then I secured it with a zip tie so it never falls out. Here is the reason why.

Wiring the power supply There are a few ways to do this the easiest way possible by wiring it to the old factory amplifier circuit which ironically just gets its +12v from a fuse that says ROOM LAMP. Since I had an aftermarket stereo put in, I had this living inside the stereo din. Ick! What a mess this was to clean up. Good to go! You can see the little wires tapped into the breakout terminal strip. The black wire is the ground and the blue-ish wire goes to the battery. You can use any 18 AWG wires but I had some spare badly rigged Nissan harnesses floating around and just pulled the wires out of there. Can't say no to free wires! My model did not have a ground pin in the amplifier or stereo plugs. I think the original stereo had a ground strap instead or was grounded via the body through the dashboard sub-frame. I had to run a new ground wire so I ran the ground wire inside the stereo din and hooked it to the relay bracket screw. Then I took one of these fuse tappers and added it as an ignition signal wire so that the controller will only operate with the ignition relays. Here is the link to what I used: http://www.amazon.co...ils_o00_s00_i00 The ignition signal is wired to the fuse that says TURN SIGNAL which is really piggy backed onto METER. I could have just plugged it directly into METER but there was no room. If the fuse ever burns out and the gauges stop working then the fan will just go on to maximum speed for protection.

The fan and controller My fan of choice for this project was one found in the Ford Taurus. It's not a regular Taurus fan but one found in high end 3.8 models. On many auto forums, the Ford fan is known to be a top performer and can be acquired for very cheap at a local junkyard and that was exactly the reason I went with one. The fan features an S-blade design and has its own shroud. The fan can also operate on two different speeds. In this project, I will be taking advantage of both of the speed modes. Here it is on top of the factory shroud for size comparison: Now for the fan controller... From what I found the best place to mount this thing was directly to the cooling box behind the glove box. Use one of the smaller Nissan self tapping screws and be careful to not ram through the condenser or you are going to have a bad time. Also, make sure the screw head clears the controller box. Overall, it is a very nice unit. My only complaint is those punch down connectors that they tend to use. Be very careful with them. I found them to be pretty reliable though and I was jamming test leads (don't do this) into them. You have to strip the wire about 1/4 inch then push down on the little button with a small electrician style flat head screwdriver and then insert the wire while releasing the little button.

The basics Converting a mechanical fan to an electrical one has many benefits. Some of these benefits are being able to free up a little bit of horsepower and have a faster warm up time, which adds to overall fuel efficiency. The drawback of doing this is you will need to get some extra things like a controller and a higher amperage alternator to avoid running down the battery. The other drawback is that electrical fans actually take more horsepower to run when running at the same speed as a mechanical fan but you still get efficiency because the fan does not have to run all the time and in traffic the power doesn't really matter that much. I'm not sure if you will need a higher amperage alternator for most other fans but I definitely recommend one for the Taurus 3.8 fan. The factory alternator, which is 70A may be enough for 3000 rpm operation but at idle probably not and that's pretty much when you need to be using the fan. This is why you want one that has more output at idle like the 90A Maxima alternator. Even this might not be enough! Depending on how much total electrical load you will have, an alternator from a Quest might be more ideal or even a Mean Green unit. Here is a comparison of alternators: My pulleys swapped over. (more on this in the maxima alternator threads around here) That's pretty much all you need to do power-wise. If you have a dying battery, now is the time to upgrade it too. One last thing... Do not remove the fan clutch until you have set up the controller. You will need to make sure the controller is properly reading the temperature or you are at risk of overheating. Other things that you will need are your basic electrician tools and supplies. You will need wiring, electrical tape, wire loom, wire cutters, wire strippers, soldering gun, etc. Since the fan draws a good amount of power, you need some 8 or 10 gauge wiring available. If you don't want to buy a spool, you can get away with an audio amplifier harness kit.

DD PAC-2700 and Taurus 3.8 Electric Fan How To Guide The basics The fan and controller Wiring the power supply Wiring the A/C trigger Wiring the factory gauge and sender Programming the controller Wiring the fan Installing the fan Testing, results, and extras

The WD22 (Xterra) no longer has these things. Instead they use a different LCA design that works just as well. Back in the day they just went from forward mount tension rods to rear mount compression rods to save the tension rods from bending all the time when off-road. Just replace the bushings every 5 years or so and everything will be fine. They are pretty cheap anyway and you won't have to deal with cups or get new rods if you don't put it off.

If anything you can install an aftermarket tachometer with a shift light and utilize the factory tachometer slot for something else. From my experience, the wiring should be there as long as the years match up.

Screw that. I mean Nissan has gone from building amazing cars to mundane beige boxes because of that guy. Maybe one of these days they will make nice cars again. The GT-R was a good start. If Daimler ever takes over though it's pretty much over for their reputation.

Take the regular clear plastic seal off in the doors and apply Dynamat there instead. The other great place to put it is on the roof as that literally has nothing above the headliner. The floor might not be necessary to Dynamat as that already has plenty of padding and carpeting to trap sound. Then pull out the trim in the rear cargo area and place Dynamat there too. Pro-tip: When applying Dynamat, make sure to get the application roller.

Summit is pretty much the place to buy it then. You can get it either there or on Amazon. It is well worth the $119.

The actual controller retails for about $90. The extra is for the included 70A relay. Price-wise it is very competitive with the best controllers on the market with both its price and its features. Be aware that if you are going to go this route, make sure you are comfortable with wiring and programming. I will show how to do that really soon in this thread.

First of all let me start by saying that I am not comparing fan controllers here. After I acquired all of the parts to do a Taurus 3.8 electric fan swap, I needed a proper dual speed controller. Dakota Digital, being my favorite car electronics company, had just what I needed. A PAC-2700 dual speed fan controller. Some of its features include: - Ability to use the factory gauge sender (even though this is not recommended by them) - Running the fan after the engine has been shut off to prevent heat soak - Battery overload protection - Temperature specific fan on and fan off modes - Air conditioner algorithm It's a really nice controller and here is a preview showing off that it works before I do a full write-up: This is taking a reading from the factory sender. The controller fully interacts with the factory gauge and sender and shows the corresponding temperature. Here is the write-up as promised: http://www.nissanpat...-taurus-38-fan/

Good point on letting the filter dry after oiling. Still there is only a certain amount that cotton will absorb. That's what the instruction booklet is for.