Issac

On my control arms I weighed it out and bought them from Nissan dealer and it was not a bad price. Burning or drilling bushing is a pain, always, and all you gotta do is make sure you start soaking your bolts and nuts ahead of time because they take some serious torque. Also make darn sure your truck is supported because you don't want to get killed. Its 4 Bolts only and a little tiny brake line bracket if I remeber right. Easy except the torque required to break them free. Buy the factory bolts and nuts. This is not one to hassle with. I have done poly bushings and have had so many hassles with them. They are hard often, are oversized often, and take tremendous forces to install sometimes. Some are better than others. This one is a no brainer for me and glad I went factory. Lower arms rear are what i am talking about. Also if you put hard poly in one place, your going to put loads somewhere else maybe. The new factory bushings can be twisted from side to side. I had zero sway after that.

When tire size/diameter is changed, your mileage reading has changed. A GPS will also show that the speedo is off on at least 2 pathfinders i tested. So really its relative to the same truck only. Also i have read overfilling is a bad idea, as in Topping off, because this can get sucked in the charcoal canister and those are expensive. The raw fuel fumes are burned from the tank into the engine with these canister devices. But...i can't say thats its true or not. Nor can I say that these expsensive canisters really do beans other than make people money (Green = $). If your getting horrible mileage aside from the regular simple stuff, check power valves if you have an auto. Tire pressure helps much. Try 35psi cold.

HI I am working on it now so am kinda right up to date on the whole thing. My truck is 115k miles and well serviced etc. I am a Pathfinder lover and currently am kinda mad at Nissan but will get over it. The whole power valve (butterfly really) issue is pretty scary as far as engines go. The screws are not soft as stated elsewhere, and to be honest it seems like a little bit of a crap shoot if you get damage or not. My truck was getting bad mileage and it use to get very good compared to others. There was also a vibration at 3400 rpm that I never tracked down. After doing all the standard stuff of shields and plugs and ujoints etc., now I think I found that. It was likely these 2 butterflys sitting on each other flat in the back location of the manifold. There is no way for these Butterfly power valves to travel past the Swirl Valves, but... mine had vibrated long enough to lose the finish to a silver color from gold on one side where they rubbed eachother, and 5 screws are MIA. So it all happened and one day things were find and all I knew was not so good mileage and the truck doesn't burn oil or anything unusual. Then a couple days ago..."clack clack clack" just like Lifters but louder. I shut it down immed. Stuck lifters? Cam bearings? Didn't know. What the heck was that? But I knew my engine was real clean so that made lifters a little unusual of a problem. Still I needed to check the cams/lifters and who knows what else, and they were all fine. Then it hit me....Power Valve. I knew it instantly. That was the thing I had heard about when I first started reading up. Kinda forgotten infact. See, I was quite sure it has been done already (paperwork from the last repair). In fact it was done by the dealer. But regardless this was previous owner, and my mistake was having someone else do work and I took this as being ok. It was not! After taking this stuff apart i figured out that a while back the Butterflys had come loose and fell in, and what I heard was the 5th screw landing in my piston top a couple days ago. Meaning, the 3rd failed powervalve is/was hanging by one screw. So the wonderful help Bowtied put on the original post was a great place to start, But I had mine already fail and needed to go further. The repair is not real bad as far as requiring skill, but if you think its a couple hours your mistaken. Simply cleaning the plenum and intake and gasket surfaces properly and letting loctite dry and aligning butterflys (a simple tooth pick tip works fine when you compare that to screws falling in and blockage down stream) takes longer than that and there are many things you can do on the way. Bad news is Nissan doesn't sell the Power Valves as far as I could find, and they want $350 for the plenum portion- um for your mistake? I did some other things while I was there and like BowTied said, the plugs. Also if you lost screws, likely your plugs are hammered-literally, so its NGK plat time, and more $. So this engine had a screw in it when I shut it down. Then I put a huge shopvac directly on the Intake Manifold (below plenum) with the spark plug out and sucked the heck out of it...and then on the plug hole.... and all the while I did this, I gently turned the crank (engine over) with a socket (buddy needed). Junk came out but it likely was around the general area and I can't be sure either way sadly. It was kinda shade tree but I don't care. So then I connected battery, and cranked the starter with no compression and the sucker turns real fast that way. During this process I had the shop vac again. Of course the engine can't start so thats no big deal. the engine was silent. I tested more...and more....zero screw sound. So I wonder now if the screw was there and had passed, Or it was the butterflys smacking on eachother, or the screw passed...either way, this is good news. Now I am using NEW gaskets, and they were only $36 at Autozone. i wouldn't want to have leaks here. So its clean all threads of bolts and retorque... Hate to say it but as far as I can tell there is nothing you can do about this other than doing it .Do it yourself and save and learn a bit like I did. I don't recommend or claim to be an expert in anything I did, just my story. By the way, I put in Allen high grade black screws with 1mm more of thread. While this might be a no no, I then had a little extra thread to disfigure to keep the screw if worst case it doesn't hold. Whoever said Red loctite I totally agree. Why removable? Shoot I almost thought of JB weld also. Remeber, Locktite is only as good as you prep threads and have them oil free. Also new screws are going to be tighter fit than old vibrated screws. Good news is you can clean your plenum and get all the junk out. I went thru 2 cans of carb and lots of nasty fumes to get it clean. Going into this my process was longer than most because I didn't expect this could happen. But either way, I am no mechanic, but I can do most average repairs no problem. So don't be scared, take pictures as you go, and clean clean. This is a job a owner can do. In the end I had only ONE butterfly that the bolts were snug and correct- out of 6. None were close to snap tight. I used allen /hex (2mm) pan head bolts. If you have an auto of this problem generation I would do it. Your looking at a day if the screws have not fallen. If you have a trust mechanic who doesn't have a lot of Nissan experience, they can do this. It seems to me to be straight forward repair, just explain the issue. Keep stuff organized and your work area clean. Its mostly 10mm socket and 12mm and piers and grease rags. I found a shop vac handy because you don;t want stuff falling in. Stuffing something to plug intakes as you clean and work is good also. If you want to do your valve cover gaskets this is not a bad time also. If you put plugs in some antiseize and dialectic grease on the coil packs works wonders for removal. Clean the valve cover top for a good seal before you plug these back in. Make sure everything is numbered so you can put it back in its place. I was glad to have BowTieds early work on this and can't thank you enough. In the end most repair shops could really rip you off or half ass the prep work on install and removal. Get some wire and plastic brushes too. If the screw was still in there, it gets very serious because this becomes a major task at that point. Ounce of Prevention thing. Get a day and go for it. Second time a person does it is easy! Hopefully none of us. The whole vacuume techinque I came up with might sound desperate, but hey you wanna pull heads and try to make room in there to do so? Not me. Well there was clatter when I shut it off, then when i crank it now, nada. I never did find the bolt and who knows? Sorry for the long post, the reason is I would have liked more info if I had done it, so I added what I could.

I joined this site to add to the list of people screwed over by the power valve screws. The butterflys cannot make it in to the engine btw, so its screws only. The are not brass also-They are magnetic. I don't believe Nissan when they say this problem is rare. If everyone with high oil consumption looked at the screws, they might find the answer. Fuel consumption and valve damage are hints for sure. My butterflys ended up in the #6 location, sandwiched on each other and yet they came from 3 and 4 locations. So what this means is they don't go down directly when they fall out. If your missing your butterflys, look in all the locations. So the valves might not be where you think. My valves looked much like the picture earlier in this topic, and it was the person who lost 3 I believe. My truck was well taken care of, but this has done who knows how much damage. The screws are Not soft, so don't think they pass gently....more like a kidney stone. 2 full days work hunting and removing. The Swirl valves look suspect too. To get to all this your going to pull a lot of mounts and little bolts. No special tools required, but a couple were a little tricky. I would not be intimidated by this as a Pro mechanic only type thing, but its not easy. Plan more time than you hear people saying to do it right. If you have all your valves thank your lucky stars. Don't just loctite, flare the ends or otherwise. Thanks to Bow Tied and others for the help.