Northernpathy
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Posts posted by Northernpathy
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well, at least it can fit some 33's w no furthur modification....
My thoughts exactly
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Yeah Adam is right. The dealer is bull@!*%ting you in the hope that you will leave him alone.
Doing warranty work can be a pain for some dealers due to paperwork that they have to submit to Nissan, as well as not being able to charge Nissan the same high rate they charge you for the work.
Go back to the dealer and demand to speak to a manager if someone else give you the same story. If they still do not want to do it, call up Nissan to complain or go to another dealer.
I don't have my book with me, but supposedly at the back of the owners manual it clearly states that seat belts are warrantied for life. If you don't have an owners manual, try to buy or borrow a copy to bring down to the dealer to show them.
I hope you are able to get yours fixed. I am going to see about getting my looked at as well as they do not coil up more than 25%, and I have to push it in by hand.
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I could have bought some after-market fenders without the holes for the fender flares, but I got for a good price. Was worth the extra work to get rid of the holes for the price I paid for the fenders
Looked online some more, and I still can't find a picture of a pathy with something that use those holes. But I have found a few places online that sell the fender with those holes as well. Oh well.
As long as it fits on the truck, I will be happy
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I dropped the truck off at the body guy today so that he can repair the damage on the rear panels. Should be finished in a couple of days.
He is just going to repair the rear panels and leave it at primer. I am going to take on the job of putting on the new front fenders and repainting the ENTIRE truck.
So I got to working on the new front two fenders.
Here is the passenger side panel on the work bench.
Since I am NOT going to re-install the fender flares, I needed to plug up the holes. I was told that some places sell some plastic inserts which block up the holes, but I decided to weld them up instead. It will look better and lessen the chance of any rusting in the holes that were meant to hold the fender flares in place.
But just as I started looking at the fenders to plan the attack, I realized that the fenders oddly have extra holes in them. Both fenders have them in the same place.
I have no idea what they are meant for. I thought that maybe some trucks had a plastic trim that ran down the side of the body, and that is what these holes were meant for, but I have looked online and can't find a picture of any 99-2003 R50 that has trim like that.
I double checked the info on the boxes that the fenders came in. They both say "Nissan Pathfinder 99-2002".
Really odd. I really don't have any idea why they are there. Oh well, luckily I am there to plug up some holes anyways. Two more holes to plug is nothing big.
Onto the work.
I started by cutting out small pieces of sheet metal to put behind the holes. Once I had cut out 9 little pieces, I was ready to weld. To hold them in place properly, I temporary put some tape on the pieces. I forgot to take pictures of this on the passengers side fender, but here is a picture of them on the other fender.
Then a little bit of sanding so that I can do the welding.
Next I gave each piece one tack weld to hold it in place.
Now that the pieces were being held in place, I could remove the tape. I didn't want to keep the tape on there any longer than I needed to, as the welding would just melt/burn the tape.
Then I finished welding the holes closed with the mig. Would have been better to do it with a tig welder, but I don't have one. But a mig will work fine, you just need to do some extra grinding.
After I finished filling in the holes, I grinded things down smooth.
After some extra sanding/grinding, it was ready for primer.
I also gave the inside of the fender with the patches two coats of primer as well so. Didn't bother to take a picture of that though.
I repeated the procedure on the drivers side fender as well. All is good. I hung them up in the parts room to dry.
I gave them two coats of primer. The repair job is just about perfect. But I will likely need to touch them up ever so slightly with some bondo to get rid of 2-3 slight scratches from the grinding. I wanted to prime them before I touched them up because the primer causes the imperfections to show up a lot easier. I doubt I will need to mix up more than a teaspoon of bondo to fix up the slight imperfections. Should look the holes were never there once I am finished.
Tomorrow I do the little bit of bondo work, then I am going to do something to make sure the fenders will not rust out again
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Wow, that is some pretty bad rot.
It can be done, but unless you are really strapped for cash or like a challenge, I would suggest to find another truck like the others have said. Problem is that your frame and body are very badly rusted. One or the other would be worth the time to fix, but both will take a lot of time and work to fix.
Sadly there are a lot of trucks that run great but the body/frame are gone. I sold my 94 Cherokee which ran excellent, but the body was starting to really rust out bad. The truck wasn't worth the time or the sheet metal to fix it. So I sold it off and bought the Pathy. The Pathy has some quarter panels needing replacing but the rest is mint. When you roll under the truck, it looks almost brand new underneath.
Sell it for cheap and use the money as a down on another one with a good frame and body. There are hundreds of them out there to choose from.
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Welcome to the fold.
Truck looks good.
I enjoyed the pictures as well. I will send you some snow out west if you need some. From the pictures, it looks like you didn't get enough this year
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Glad to have you.
Which part of Canada do you hail from?
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Here are some pictures of the local Pathy meet in Ottawa.
Lots of fun was had shooting the sh.it, telling stories (exaggerating our feats where we could, lol) and checking out each others vehicles.
Nothing more sexy than a neat line of Pathys
If the zombie apocalypse hit that night, we would have been ready for it
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At first I wanted to mount a winch in/on a bumper, but the more I thought about it, the more having a portable winch would be better. You are less likely to have the winch stolen or have it damaged if it is not mounted on the truck when you don't need it. Plus I really like the idea of being able to attach it to the rear of the truck if I end up in a situation where I need to back out. Hell you can even lend it to a friend if they need it. It will be more trouble to haul it out of the truck and attach it to the front or rear when you need it, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives. It is not perfect, but nothing is.
The carrier is also pretty cheap as well, costing under $100 (not including the winch naturally).
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If you managed to get a 2" receiver welded up onto the front of the truck, you could always use a winch in a carrier:
Plus it will let you easily move it to the back if you need to winch from the rear.
Most brush guards will not support a winch as they are not load barring. You will likely end up ripping the brush guard off the front of the truck.
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Puttign your truck in a museum the day it rolls off the factory line?
I was thinking more in the range of covering it in plastic-wrap...
At least you would still be able to drive it around
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The $1000 also includes taxes (which are 14.5% up here).
Don't forget that most everything is more expensive up here then it is in the US (for no good reason, but that is nothing new).
I will still think about it. Might go see another body shop to get another quote just to be sure.
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Sounds interesting. I would like to see a picture as well if you are able to dig one up.
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Had a friend who works in a body shop stop over today to look at the rust.
He said it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before, but that it also wasn't going to be easy to fix.
When I told him I thought about fixing it myself he laughed. His response was "Your pretty good at doing body work. But your not that good!"
Thanks
He said it will take a lot of work to get it looking right again, as well as not having it rust back out within a year. The biggest job will be rebuilding the inner lip so that the inside of the fender doesn't rust out again. He will cut out ALL the rust and have to completely rebuild it from scratch to make sure that doesn't happen.
He said that he would charge me $1000 to fix/paint both rear fenders, the bit of rust on the rockers and well as to repaint the two new front fenders if I were to buy the fenders myself (cheaper for me to buy them).
I think that is a pretty decent price for the work involved. He said it should take him about 3 days to do.
At that price I don't think it would really be worth doing the work myself. The worse part will be painting everything and getting it to match the paint color of the rest of the vehicle if I were to do it myself.
I will think about it I guess. It is still a good amount of money that I would rather not spend. But if I were to do it myself and it ended up rusting out again in a year, I will be back at square one again.
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Taking the flares off is not too bad. There are 4-5 screws that hold it down on the inside. Then as tek stated, there are snaps that hold it into place. They do break off pretty easily as they are not made to be pulled off very easily. Mine have likely never come off since they were installed in the factory almost a decade ago. I broken a couple taking it off, but you can go pick up a pack of 6-8 of new ones at NAPA for around $5 if needed.
Gluing them in place is a good idea, yet I would hate to do that in case you have body damage to fix from an accident and need to remove them to fix it. You will likely cause a good amount of damage trying to pull them off with the adhesive.
I am still thinking of buying some rubber heavy truck flares to replace them with.
Something like this:
Can't find a picture of the exact ones I am thinking about, but they are pretty similar.
And attach them with some rivnuts so that they can be quickly and easily removed if needed:
There is also this type of fender flare. They are pretty easy to remove. But I personally hate the look of the exposed bolts:
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Welcome.
Hopefully you are just towing the trailer with nothing on it. The trailer itself is near the Pathy's towing limit. Having a car on the car hauler would be way over-loading the truck. That could cause all sorts of damage to the power-train and transmission.
Good luck finding your answer!
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A little late to the party but welcome!
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Found an AD in the local classifieds with two brand new fenders still in the original boxes from Nissan. They want $300 for the pair. I will see about making a trip to go have a look-see and maybe getting a little better deal.
If/when I get the new fenders, I intend on covering the rear of the panel with bed-liner spray to help make it doesn't rust again
Replacing the front panels, as shift220 stated is pretty easy and straight forward. Unbolt old panel from the truck, then pop the new panel on and bolt into place. You might have to do a lot of fine adjusting once it is on to make sure all the seams are straight and line up, but that is pretty easy, it just takes some time.
The rear repair will not be easy as I will have to fix the exterior metal work, as well as the inner lip. If I do not fix the lip then water/mud/salt will get back in there and rust it back out.
I don't intend on putting the original flares back on. Not sure what I will do, but I was thinking of looking at the large rubber ones made for big trucks. They would allow me to easily keep them clean, as well as protecting the truck while on the trail. I will take a look at it only once I have fixed the damage to the vehicle.
I think I will ask a friend who works at a body shop to come by and take a look at it. Maybe he can give me some suggestions on how to attack it in such a way that it will not only look good, but also work properly (ie. fixing it so that it doesn't hold onto the water/mud).
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Right Rear (Passengers Rear)
Forgot to take a picture of it with the flare on, but you didn't really see anything coming out.
Right Front (Passengers Front)
Looks great again, no?
Trouble again.
Truck outside in the sun so that you can see it better.
Now just because your truck looks fine it doesn't mean there is no rust. Rip those flares off and take a look. Even if you don't find anything, at least you will know everything is okay.
Ah...the fun continues
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Anyone actually look under the fender flares on their truck? Even though things might look good, it doesn't mean that all is well.
Pictures of the truck with the flares on. The pictures were taken just before the snow hit:
All looks fine right? Slight bit sticking out in the rear, but the rest looks great.
Removed the flares today. There was a little bit of rust coming out from under the flare on the rear left side and I decided to take a look. As expected I found a few little things.
Left Rear (Drivers Rear)
Left Front (Drivers Front)
Looks great doesn't it? All must be fine underneath.
Well not really.
More pictures below.
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I just had both front O2 sensors changed last week. I had pretty horrible mileage, but now that the new ones are in, mileage has increased significantly. I had mine changed at the dealership. It cost me more (due to labor) but that way I got the 12month warranty on them in case they decide to crap out a few months from now (which they are well known for doing).
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I did lots of research on my 01 and have never heard of the first two points either.
Like anything you buy, even a brand new vehicle, there are going to be problems. Its more a question of how serious they are and how much money/work is involved in fixing them.
Windows are slow in below freezing temperatures. I generally don't open the windows all that often in winter unless I am going through a drive-through.
CD player can be a pain, but I never use it and I think most people don't use them much anymore either. I have sat radio as well as my ipod for music. Like the others have said, if it does die, just buy an aftermarket unit. You can always pull out both the radio and CD changer and install a double DIN unit.
They may not be the best truck out there, but they are still pretty darn good. Just look at Pezzy's and you can see how a little work can make it even better
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Yeah I will have to jump on the ebay band wagon too. Cheap and many different styles. Better selection than anything you can get locally.
Finally After Market Lower Links!
in 96-2004 R50 Pathfinders
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Awesome. Nice to see someone out there who realizes that there is a market for R50 parts.