Tungsten

That's partially not true actually. Not when it comes to certain engines. I know the VG requires a really detergent heavy oil to not build sludge. I think Mr.510 recommended the use of Valvoline Maxlife to avoid sludge buildup.

I'm with Precise1 on that, timing belts should be bought only from Nissan. I did however replace my last one with a Gates belt and it had the same amount of teeth as there was on the Nissan one. I counted all the teeth to make sure that the belt was the same.

That's good enough. As long as it has enough additives in it to keep the engine from sludging it's as good as any API rated oil.

Yeah where have the pics gone? I was interested in doing this mod but can't find the blue wire.

Makes me glad I oiled mine with chain oil. What's weird is that my passenger side one is failing but the drivers side is still in decent shape. I don't enter the vehicle from the passenger side.

You may have to take the timing belt cover off for this one and re-do the timing belt. I think you can get away with just removing the upper timing belt cover though. Take the distributor cap off and make sure the rotor points to the number 1 plug. Count the teeth between the marks on the cam sprockets. If all is well then there should be 40 teeth between the two cam sprocket punchmarks. If you remove the entire cover, there should be 43 between the crank and cam sprocket on the driver side. The pulley is separate from the balancer so there is 6 different ways to put it on. At TDC it should point to the first mark if properly installed.

That's lucky. There are valve reliefs in the pistons that may have saved the valves from being touched. You should do a compression test at some point to ensure that nothing went wrong.

Did you turn the engine over at least twice after you put the timing belt on and tightened the tensioner? Where did you set the tensioner? It should be set with the allen key hole at either the 5 or 11 o' clock position. Preferably the 5 o' clock because of where that spring is. The belt can jump because you are going from 0 to 1500 rpm in less than a second and that's a crazy amount of force on the belt. If the belt was not seated and/or tensioned properly it will jump once you go and start the engine. Good luck with the re-install.

At first I thought that it could have been a clogged radiator but from further reading it's unfortunately a head gasket failure. Very rare to see on a VG30E but it could happen. Good luck with the replacement and definitely do the timing belt while you're in there. The other alternative is to stick a VG33E in there but it's up to you and your wallet...

Better crumple zones.

10 years. It's now nearing 300,000. Really as long as you take care of the basics it will drive until it rusts in half.

My low fuel gauge never comes on with the bulb check but I was close to running out of gas once and it has come on. Not that I care for it anyway as I always try to re-fill at 1/4 tank mark for the reason mentioned above.

Yep people will be scared of taking sharp metal like that through their car. I think it's fine for what it is. Best of both worlds where it's stronger than the tin foil bumper special but light enough to carry around. Bracing it to the bumper mounts is actually a very good idea too. You should only buy an off-road bumper if you really need it. If you have dents in your factory bumper from wheeling, you probably do. Otherwise it's just a heavy boat anchor at the front.

Yep LEDs are very nice and the best part is you can get them in the standard 200mm size. They are superior to HIDs because they don't need igniters and they won't go out when you are wheeling. Remember HIDs are not a coil like a regular bulb, they are much like spark plugs where there is a beam of energy being discharged all the time. I am curious to see how those KCs perform off-road if they are true HIDs.

LEDs are the best head light technology available right now but crazy expensive. Honda has started to use LED light technology on their new Accords. HIDs are fine for cars but are not very good on harsher riding off-road vehicles. They can go out and take up to 10 seconds to re-ignite if you are doing heavy wheeling or run something over at night. They can also over expose the area of the road making it harder to see around you although if they are 55 watt halogen equivalent you don't really have that issue. The main problem with HIDs is they require special HID housings and ignition ballasts to drive them. The best advantage to HIDs is that they are very low watt with high energy efficiency. They don't need heavy gauge wiring to be bright. Halogens are fine. The problems with them are housing designs and power. Not all halogen housings are created equal. Also halogens are not as efficient but they are extremely reliable and cheap as a bag of chips to swap out. If you go to the hardbody style grille with H4 lights in 200mm housings you can actually replace the bulbs for as little as $5 a bulb and it will give you a 55 watt low beam and 60 watt high beam.

http://www.quadratec.com/products/97017_1600.htm These are 200mm and should fit with great results but you have to do the grille and bucket conversion.

Which housings do you run exactly?

PIAA XtremeWhite headlight bulbs work well for me. I did relay them directly to the battery though. The cream of the crop for improving headlights is to swap to a hardbody grille and use H4 bulbs with relays directly to the battery. You can also look at adding auxiliary off-road headlights and put them on the brush guard.

Fan on at 175 F Fan off at 165 F

Interesting... I could try it with a simulation. In other news I got a new alignment today along with some nicer tires. I'm going to hit the same spots that caused the steering wheel to jump and see how it works out.

That's a very good point but a locking cap could still prevent someone stealing the cap as a joke or something like that.

I like it but I would put some sort of a locking cap on it just to deter people from siphoning up your gas.

Theoretically it is possible as everything you ever posted here is stored in a MySQL database on a server. You can click My Content in your profile and access your posts that way. If you want to download them there is a special query you can run but you will need administrator privileges. I do this for a living so I know.

Low on power and high fuel consumption sounds like a plugged catalytic converter. The only other possibility is having a jumped or improperly set timing belt or some timing issue in general.