ChaosSaint

cool ideas! I saw a roof chop in one of these sections and looked a little goofy. I would like to lop the back off and make it a 2 door and make a roll bar or something, but at that point I might as well figure out if I can swap in a pickup cab and plop it on the frame. Not sure how feasible that is... I would like it to be street legal so I can cruise it in the summer and still get around in heavy snow. SAS is kind of a "standard" route. I'm not opposed to it, just trying to think of something creative that hasn't been done before that I can do with this thing. Trying to think outside of the box on this one. Another thought - If you had a fully functional motor and drive train but no frame to drop it on, what you do with it? And yes, no matter how I shake it, I still have to do something about the frame. Maybe that's where I'll start - pull the motor and try to lift the body completely off and then roll the frame out to work on. Maybe sandblast the whole thing and start cutting and welding till it's back in decent shape. At that point a SAS would make sense. For some reason I have something dune buggyish pictured in my head. I really like the look of the truck on http://www.purenissan.com/hardbody.htm but if i was trying to go that route I should probably just start with a pickup I highly approve of the zombie hunting permit on the dashboard!

So my 95 pathy has been sitting for a while and I'm trying to decide what to do with it... I was thinking about cannibalizing it into some cool buggy-ish vehicle or something. The motor and drive-train are all still in decent condition, and I have a decent set of 30" mud terrains on toyota wheels, but the frame is pretty much shot. I've kind of given up hope on it being sturdy enough for rough trail use. Maybe tear it down and fab my own tube frame but keep a similar geometry to drop the drive-train back in place? I dunno, just thinking out loud. I'd like to turn it into some sort of project as I have garage space and 2 alternative vehicles to drive. If you had a pathy to do whatever you wanted with (on a reasonable budget of course) what would you do with it?

Thanks, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Hopefully it's a bit of encouragement to others that have bad frame rot. I replaced the passenger side tension/compression rod and bushings, inner and outer tie rods, and upper balljoints. I couldn't get the lower balljoints out though. They are stuck in there pretty good. I got an alignment not too long ago but it didn't seem to hold... I'm getting some really weird wear on my tires and still have a little shimmy-shake in the stearing, i think it was due to the big crack above where the compression rod bolts to the frame maybe?

It can be done! Went with 1/8" It looked and felt a bit thin but after it was all boxed in it was solid. Before After Before After Before. And yes, there is no side or bottom to that. Only a top and back side in the shape of an L After - Fresh steel!

Not sure about the first part but DoctorBill did an excellent write up for replacing the timing belt Link - http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=23280&view=&hl=timing%20belt&fromsearch=1

I think it smothes out the air flow going into the motor - creates laminar flow vs turbulent? I pulled mine out too, didn't notice a difference without it.

You are correct... I ment that the read out of my cluster was mechanical - some have a digital readout. I do know that it's an electric signal fed to the cluster, however, I do not know where the problem lies

agreed... just pop those suckers out while ur in there, another $100 and and what, an extra hour? I picked up inner and outer tre's, upper and lower bj's for passenger and drivers side for about $85 on ebay - not top of the line by any means but better than 15 year old parts

54's? Might have to add another gerbil to the wheel under the hood to get those suckers to turn!

cleaning out the throttle body really well put some pep in the step of my pathy, try that yet?

... really now? It was my understanding that they were not interchangeable, I guess this is not the case? I'll have to check with him cause I passed up on a digital one because I was under this impression

my tach does that too... it's a common pathfinder problem. There are replacement clusters posted on ebay for about $100 If you decide to replace it and your trip odometer is mechanical, a cluster with a digital trip odometer will not hook up. second vote for leaking manifolds clean out your throttle body and MAF sensor (posted in garage section i think)... does wonders for start ups and evening out ur idle

My trip and primary odo are both mechanical. What sort of little white thing was it? Visible from the backside? I assume you had to take it apart to get to it?

I pulled the cluster to check out the wires behind it and they looked fine... any idea where they feed from? tracing it through the harness would be a bear

so i scored these 30x9.5 15r ProComp Mud Terrains for 200 bones... prolly have 90% tread still on them and are in really good shape, i think i made out alright on them? any ways... A friend of mine offered his old set of yota rims for free to put them on but they are 6" by 15r, tested them and they mount on fine. I'm pretty sure that a 9.5" tire is rated to go on a 6.5" - 8" wide rim; so, should I take the free rims and put the muds on them anyway? - if i do this then I would keep my steel wheels with street tires which would be nice. or do u guys think I should put the muds on my stock rims? and i have a connection to get them mounted and balanced for free so im not worried about cost. input appreciated! also, anyone have these tires before? how do they preform? i've never had a set of muds before so im pretty stoked potential yota steel rims waiting to be mounted... mocked up just for giggles

The vinyl part is seperate from the headliner - 2 peieces, one on either side of the interior light- and is held in by little clips. Just pull down. You'll probably have to take the trim pieces above the doors off

*kicks hornets' nest and steps back... I was curious so I whipped this up in about 10 mins and this is my evaluation of your original system. I think it would work well and I think it would be safe and these are my reasons why... Your 1/8" steel plate would have held up fine if used within the limits of the winch - 3,000 lb load with a factor of safety of 2.22 (FOS generated by simulation program) which means you could double your load safely without material yielding (assuming that the plate was in pure tension - along the axis of the tensile force). Not to mention that yielding doesn't imply failure by any means - it is when the metal plastically deforms i.e. doesn't bounce back to the original form. Also, this doesn't take into consideration the frictional holding forces from the tops of the bolts and the surfaces of the nuts. According to my model, the plate would have displaced 0.00034208" under that load. I used a plain carbon steel as a general material not knowing what material you have. It has a yield strength of 32000 psi, elastic modulus of 3.0463e+007, and Poisson's ratio of .028 This is a model of how the plate will react under a load of 3000lbs in tension (the tears are scaled - 3801.94 for all generated models). I distributed the forces equally over the surface areas of each hole. .5' holes and 5/16" holes per the manufacturer. Below is displacement based on the applied force. I also estimated some of the dimensions, but it's pretty close to what you have (and don't criticize me on GD&T practices lol). and this is an "as is" of your plate loaded at 3000lbs... Red and yellow indicate deformation and stress concentrations, blue is under yield (aka safe) limit. The bolts wouldn't have sheared. Period. 1/2" grade 8 bolts are good till 17,867.8 lbs and a grade 8 5/16" are good till 6979.6 lbs. Not to mention that the shear load is distributed over two 1/2" bolts top side and bottom side on one end and on the other end it's distributed over four 5/16"bolts top side and bottom side of the bolt. The hitch is designed with a ridiculous factor of safety... imagine being the engineer that signed off on a hitch system that failed catastrophically and allowed someones 24' boat to freely roll along on the interstate. The only issue I could see with the hitch is if you were pulling at an extreme angle. If you really want to know you systems capabilities, mail all the pieces to me and I'll load the whole set up till failure in a tensile tester. I have access to a 120 kip tensile testing machine which should do the trick, or at least come close. If you need to replace your cable after 8 or 10 heavy loadings, then you're either misusing or not maintaining your hardware - are steel cables on an elevator replaced after 10 uses? or suspension bridge cables? The problem is wear and oxidation... exposed steel will rust (obviously) and compromise its strength; the other issue is getting grit and dirt wedged in the rope, strap, or steel braid. When the cable is slack there is room for grit to get in between the twines of steel or nylon. When you apply a large tensile load the surrounding twines squeeze the crap out of the grit. Consequently, the grit severs the small twines causing fraying - in nylon, or considerable wear when cyclically loaded in steel braided cable. Think about how much wear that causes - 30' or 100' of rope/ braided steel leaves a lot of room for crap to get in there. ... using Solidworks 2008 COSMOS Express - Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets

I'd probably be interested in something like that... however, like Nige said, every one has different frame rust issues... If / when I repair mine it would be an almost complete replacement of the whole rear frame - probably 3 out of 4 sides of my frame are beat or need significant attention. A "general" cutout might not work for me... can the WaterJet machine read in a SolidWorks or Unigraphics file, and then cut the steel based off of that? or is it more of a manual process? After 80 or 100 + shipping cost it will probably be cheaper for me to rig something up in my garage. Where are you located?

I have a pretty bad shimmy in the front so im planning on replacing tie rod ends, upper and lower ball joints and getting an alignment done in an attempt to get some stability back. Parts are significantly cheaper on Ebay, so I'm leaning in that direction. I searched around a bit but no one had much to say about brands or quality... Does anyone else have the Ebay generic installed? Any experiance/ input would be much appreciated - I don't want to fork over lots of cash if I don't have to, but I also don't want to replace them in a few months. Examples/ what I'm considering: Ebay TRE's http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/4-Tie-Rod-E...sQ5fAccessories or... http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/4-Tie-Rod-E...sQ5fAccessories Ebay Ball Joints http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/NISSAN-PATH...sQ5fAccessories http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/4-FRONT-UPP...sQ5fAccessories http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/4-BALL-JOIN...sQ5fAccessories What do you think?

Siemens Healthcare DX Manufacturing Engineer - BS in Mechanical Engineering @ Univ of Delaware (minor in physics and math, soon to be working on MBA) Started as an intern and moved on up.

So my beloved Pathy has 90,334 miles on the odo... how can I remember the mileage so well? Easy! It hasn't changed in the 2 months that I've owned it (and yes, I've been driving it daily). The odometer, along with the tach, are not functioning - the tach does flail around wildly which is amusing I suppose, so I guess it sort of works, just not how it's supposed to. Anyway... is the actual mileage stored somewhere in the computer by chance? maybe retrievable by the dealer or something?

how about a door that has manual crank windows? is there a c clip or something holding the crank arm on?

I replaced the one on my drivers side about 2 monts ago and I called around to a pepboys, auto zone, and Napa and none of them knew what I was asking for or carried it. Had to go to the dealer to get it. Bushings - $21.53 x 2 Nut - $5.28 Collar - $7.95 Tension Rod - $48.15 Washers - $7.59 x 2 Total: $119.62 I ended up getting just the tension rod and the 2 bushings - they had a 15% off sale when I got mine so it wasn't too bad. I found washers(flat), the collar, and the nut (Nylok) at Sears Hardware for about $7 total, or so... I wouldn't drive it unless you abs have to with that broken, you'll be dealing with the "death wobble" at higher speeds, and u'll probanly trash your control arm bushings too. Chances are a used one is worn and rusted a pretty fair amount, I would just do it right the first time and not worry about it later. edit - you'll also need a 24mm open end wrench to get in there and tighten it. There wasn't enough room to get a socket on mine. fyi... 24mm = 0.94488 inches so u might be able to get away with a 1" wrench.

I pulled all of my carpet out to shampoo and hit the interior with bed liner/ rustoleum and this is what I found under the drivers side carpet. There is an exhaust pipe very close to the floor board. I'm going out on a limb and guessing that this is where the heat is radiating from hahaha... Going to cut out the rusted section, weld new in, and paint the crap out of it with rustoleum (hopefully it's rated for high temps!). There really should be a heat shield or something there.