Mr.510

I have VG33 Six Bolt Crank Pulley Adapters in stock. They're $90 +shipping. I also offer modification of alternator ($35) and power steering ($10) tensioner brackets and cutting WD21 4x4 water pumps ($25) to clear the VG33 oil pump. With these four parts plus a fan belt (Napa 25-9380) the WD21 crank pulleys, accessories, and their brackets all work on the VG33. It's quickest to PM me on facebook but I'll try to check my messages here more often.

I'm sorry, I've been down with migraines and haven't been online much the last couple weeks. I'll PM you.

Thanks, I appreciate the vote of confidence. I *think* they are going to work great and last a long time. Exactly, sort of. I'm actually more concerned about selling what turns out to be junk than hurting my reputation. As far as I'm aware nobody has done this to a wheeler before so this is new territory. I know it works and lives on high powered 4wd street and rally cars, based on the Perrin parts that have been in production for... six or eight years? But we're dealing with a whole lot more unsprung and vehicle weight. Also we tend to generate low-speed, high-load impacts where they are mostly dealing with high-speed, lower-load (pothole) impacts. You could go back to stock but it would not be a whole lot of fun. After cutting the bearing housing off you'd have to cut a disc out of 1/4" plate with a hole in the middle that fits in the enlarged hole and weld it in from both sides. Then weld on bearing cups or whatever. It would work fine, and would be virtually as strong as it was originally, but what a PITA that would be! This is why I'm testing before making more....

I also got tired of pouring oil on my starter every time I changed the filter... so I built a VG34! Now my oil filter is just forward of, and a couple inches above, my steering stabilizer: It's easy to reach from the top with a Taurus E-fan, I'm not sure how much fun it'd be with a stock fan should. I pull the front skid plate and put my drain pan under the filter rather than end up with a bunch of oily paper towels to fish out from under the filter.

Damn, you must have hit that HARD! That's more than twice as bad as my driver's side was before I took the sledge hammer to it prior to welding the bearing housing on. I don't think there's any way the stock LCA/compression rod could bend that bracket unless the vehicle was in a major accident. I've seen lots of trucks in wrecking yards that were in head-on collisions where the frame is bent, the body is buckled, and the suspension is totally destroyed... but that mount is usually still intact and straight, at least to the naked eye. Right now the only set of parts that exist are the prototypes that I'm testing on my Pathy. I need to run them for a while and abuse the truck more than usual to make sure the parts are going to live. Once I feel confident in the longevity of the bearing I will put these into production and offer them for sale. I'm going to say worst-case that would be around the end of the year. It's just a matter of me getting enough off-road miles on the truck. That takes a whole lot of money and time... but sacrifices must be made!

I don't know of any scientific testing that proves it but I've read many places that due to the shape of the passages in plate type coolers their efficiency goes way down when the fluid is cold. That means they don't tend to over-cool as much in cold weather and supposedly the fluid will come up to temp more quickly vs. a tube type cooler. I run a 24k rated Hayden plate type cooler and Amsoil synthetic ATF in my Pathy. I highly recommend this combo for anyone that wheels their Pathy hard. The torque converter generates most of the heat in an automatic and it's working HARD crawling over rocks and stumps!

It's possible your TCU is in limp mode. Silverton's Pathy has done this several times wheeling due to "excessive wheelspin". When it goes into limp mode I think it actually stays in 3rd gear? The truck is seriously gutless when this happens, even in low range. The truck is a total dog going forward but normal in reverse when it happens. I'm sure there are other scenarios (other than wheelspin) that can put the TCU into limp mode. Any word on it's condition?

At Pick N Pull's prices for everything you'd need it would probably be less expensive to convert to a 5 speed, assuming PnP doesn't have a good HD trans (I've never seen one there). We recently converted silverton's S12 to 5 speed and all the parts required from PnP were less than $250 I think. Pedal & pivot, hard line, trans crossmember & mount, transmission, flywheel, shifter boot plate, front section of driveshaft etc. Then we spent about $300 (wholesale) from Nissan on a new Z31T clutch and master and slave cylinders. A braided stainless line to go from the hard line to the slave while eliminating the clutch damper was another $30 or something. You would need different parts, obviously, but PnP's prices will be the same. So ~$600 for PnP parts and new Nissan bits for the clutch. There are awesome deals out there on Craigslist from time to time. If you can save up some money so you can jump when a deal comes up that's what it usually takes. That's the thing with CL, when an awesome deal comes along you have to be able to jump *right now* or somebody else will get it. Examples: 1) A couple months ago I got a VG33E & auto trans (non-HD) with 130k miles that I saw run and drive from a '97 caR50 for $400 pulled and loaded into my truck. The VG33 is going in silverton's Pathy and the trans is going in my '94. 2) About a year and a half ago I bought a complete 40k mile? VG33ER and SHD automatic from an '04 X for $800. The trans is now in silverton's Pathy, the motor became the VG34 in my Pathy, and I sold the supercharger and related hardware for $1k on eBay! On the flip side of this, when I blew up the original trans in my Pathy I needed it fixed "now". My friend runs an all Nissan wrecking yard and gave me a pretty good deal (at the time) on a HD auto from an '01 X with 80k miles for $1k. My back was too messed up for me to do the swap myself so I traded an NOS 510 hood worth $500 for the installation. So that endeavor cost $1500 but I had my truck back on the road in less than a week. ^ This. If you've got time/money/space to part out a truck, or at least take off the easy stuff and sell it on NPORA / eBay / CL you can probably do it almost for 'free' whether you want an HD auto or a stock 5 speed swap. Again it's a matter of being able to jump when needed to get a deal that comes along.

As far as overall layout and mechanical function it's the same basic part-time four wheel drive system used all the way back to the '20s and before. It does have automatic locking hubs, they are the only "modern" feature in the transmission of power. This is correct. Once the hubs are locked you can shift from 4H to 2H at any speed. You can also shift from 2H to 4H at any speed if the hubs are locked. Note that you should only shift from 2H to 4H when the front and rear tires are going the same speed. In other words, don't wait until the rear tires are spinning like mad and then yank the lever back to engage the front end. The shock loads when you do something like this are extremely high and can break almost anything in the drivetrain. For clarity, take 4L out of the equation since you can't actually shift directly from 4L to 2H, you have to go through 4H to get to 2H. When the hubs are locked the front CV shafts, differential, and driveshaft all turn regardless of what position the transfer case shifter is in. I would not worry much about wear to these components when running in 2H with the hubs locked, they are all seriously beefy components, similar to or stronger than the components in an R50 which has all that stuff turning all the time stock. (R50s came with drive plates rather than locking hubs.) You will lose a noticeable amount of gas mileage with all the front end stuff turning. The place you will most commonly want to switch the T-case to 2H and back to 4H at speed is when there is spotty snow and/or ice on a paved highway. You do not want to run on dry pavement in 4wd, especially at speed as it puts HUGE loads on all the drivetrain components after the transmission. When you come to snow you stop (more below on this), lock the hubs by putting the truck in 4H, and proceed. If you're bombing along at 60mph on compact snow and come to a stretch of dry pavement you should shift to 2H just before the snow ends. Then when you encounter more snow drop it back into 4H just as you hit the snow. While the manual says you can do this and the auto hubs will lock I do not recommend it. Often times one hub won't lock and will grind the living crap out of itself as you roll to a stop so it can actually engage. Auto hubs are not known for their durability and asking them to lock at speed is one of the roughest things you can do to them. When I ran auto hubs I always came to a full stop before the initial shift to 4H.

It is possible that your relay has worn contacts and there's too much resistance for enough amperage to get to the starter solenoid. It's also possible there's too much resistance somewhere in the wiring of that circuit. It's also possible the starter solenoid is toast and requires WAY more amperage to fully cycle than any 'normal' circuit can carry.

The cowl does have two relatively large drains into the fenders. If you blocked the inlet grilles air would still be available through these but you'd likely have to run the fan at a faster speed to get the same airflow you do now. The air would also be a lot less clean if you drive the kind of places that I do. The cowl in front of the windshield has the highest air pressure when the vehicle is in motion. This is why air for the interior almost always comes from there, it's already pressurized and flows freely into the cockpit.

Sorry to say this but your transmission is almost certainly toast. Spitting out a bunch of fluid is really strange though if it didn't blow off a line. Figuring out where the fluid that leaked actually came from would be a good idea. You can't normally overheat an automatic to the point that it pukes out fluid. It's not like the pressurized cooling system, the transmission sump is vented to atmosphere and the boiling point of the fluid is somewhere in the 500-600F range. At 300F an automatic transmission will give off so much stench that most people pull over because they think the truck is on fire. If I've got this right 80 miles ago you installed a spin-on transmission fluid filter and 18k cooler and you're not running the stock heat exchanger in the radiator. Unless the transmission was acting up prior to these parts being installed one of them is probably the cause of your failure. "80 miles later" seems like it'd be a really crazy coincidence. I would be taking a very close look at how the cooler lines are routed to be sure there isn't a restriction somewhere from a pinched line. I would also take a serious look at the filter element and it's mount to be sure there isn't a flow restriction there and/or it wasn't plumbed backwards. If the filter element is similar to an oil filter element it's designed to have the pressurized fluid enter the outer can, then pass through the filter media and go to the main oil gallery in the engine through the center port. When remote filter mounts are plumbed backwards with the fluid flowing from the inside out the element comes apart and is often pumped into the engine to clog the oil galleries and rapidly kill the bearings. Perhaps something similar happened here?

On replacing the rod and main bearings without pulling the engine: I don't think attempting that on a VG series engine is a good idea. As far as physically doing it the crank cannot come out without taking everything off the front to remove the oil pump. You'd also have to drop the transmission to get the rear main seal housing off. Not to mention how much fun it is to get the oil pan out without pulling the motor. As for precision and cleanliness during assembly, VGs have tighter bearing clearances and closer tolerances than any other production engine I'm aware of. This is why they last so long, but it also means everything in a VG bottom end needs to be *exactly right*. These aren't like small block Chevs where you can just throw a set of bearings in a worn out motor, end up with .007" bearing to journal clearance, and run it another 50k miles. The upper limit of bearing clearance on a VG is .002". Many shops have failed when attempting to simply rebuild VGs, likely because they don't have the equipment required to hold the necessary tolerances. A very well known and respected Nissan/Datsun racing engine builder in California made four attempts at building a hotrod VG34 for a customer before finally giving up. The longest they ever got one to run was a 40 minute track day session. I don't know what they were doing wrong but each time the oil filter was full of bearing material.

There are two switches on the passenger's side of the T-case, one of them turns on that light. Mine stopped working a while back and I figured it was the just the bulb. I was under the truck adjusting my RH T-bar that had sagged a little and noticed the wires are ripped out of both switches. A rock or chunk of wood probably got up between the T-case and the frame and re-arranged things at some point. Can't imagine how that could have happened as I only drive my Pathy to church on Sundays....

I think because of how the LCA pivot works that one will have to be Delrin bushings, but I'm not sure yet. I haven't had that portion of a Pathy apart in a couple of years and I wasn't thinking in terms of eliminating all the rubber crap when I was in there. I'm getting ready to scrap my parts Pathy but I'm going to keep the front frame clip as it'll be handy for test-fitting and mocking up LCAs, my planned spindle mods, and stuff like that. Stuff like this was rubber mounted stock primarily to reduce NVH. (Noise, Vibration, and Harshness for anyone reading this that doesn't know.) Also, the stock rubber was likely much more durable than any bearing will ever be. My truck had 375k miles on it's original rubber bushings before they even looked bad. I will guess the maximum these spherical bearings could last is 100k miles. With the previously noted improvements I think $50 and a couple hours to replace the bearings every however often isn't going to be that big of a deal. This being a spherical bearing will definitely help front articulation and compliance of the front suspension. It moves more freely and that is always a good thing. Whether it will be enough to feel or measure I don't know. Virtually all of Nissan's independent front suspensions used "tension compression rods" (aka strut rods) and separate lower control arms. The two parts form a triangle to locate the lower ball joint and triangles are not easily bent or flexed. This is a very simple, cheap and easy to produce lower control arm setup that is quite strong and light weight. (Remember that unsprung weight *severely* effects vehicle ride and is the number one downside to a solid front axle.) The vast majority of T/C rods go from approximately the lower ball joint forward to the chassis as this makes the most sense, having the skinny rod loaded primarily so impact forces generated at the tire are trying to stretch it rather than push on it. The first IFS 4x4s Nissan sold here where the 720 trucks. They had long T/C rods going forward the way all the passenger cars (except early Zs) do. 720s also had torsion bars that plug into the LCA pivots so having the T/C rods go forward made all the sense in the world... until you ventured off road where they were very easily bent. Also, their mounting point on the bottom of the frame severely reduced approach angle. I wheeled an '81 720 on 32s for a few years and carried two spare sets of T/C rods and both bent and broke them on a regular basis. This was never from the tires hitting stuff, it was from running the rods themselves into stuff. My guess is that when they designed the WD21 chassis the engineers had "tension compression rod on the brain" and didn't think outside that box. it was a proven design that worked well in everything else so it made a whole lot of sense to use it. If these trucks had all been thrown away at 150k miles very few people would have any complaints at all about the compression rod pivot bushings. Just like with the stock automatic transmissions: Nissan didn't make crappy parts, they built a truck that lasts too damned long!