Mr.510

It can be argued that bolted on is actually stronger than welded. If you weld the sliders on only the outer wall of the frame rail is carrying the load. If they are bolted through the frame both walls share the load, though the outer wall does see more than the inner one unless you weld sleeves into the frame for the bolts to pass through. A lot of people buy "bolt-on" sliders, bolt them on, and then weld the base plates to the frame as well. Bolting them on and then welding only the bottom edge since it sees most of the load would still allow you to cut them off if you ever needed to without making a huge mess of the frame. That would be a nice option to have if adding or subtracting a body lift later.

The factory step rails are no where near strong enough to use as a jacking point. We refer to them as "damage amplifiers" because if you come down on something with one it usually causes much more damage than if it wasn't there. If you wheel your truck get rid of those things!

You shouldn't need any sealant when doing a clutch. If you need sealant for a gasket surface I suggest using Toyota's FIPG silicone as it's the best available in a tube. I used Nissan's excellent silicone until they discontinued it in squeeze tubes and switched to selling it in caulk tubes. The Toyota and Nissan silicone appear to be the exact same product... and probably are. So you don't have sticker shock when you walk into the Toyota dealership, FIPG is about $25 a tube.

I pulled my air cleaner off and adjusted the TPS on my VG34i. Now the funky little surge when coasting down a long hill is gone once again.

You actually need to weld the piece to the support that sticks down on the carrier, the plastic rub block is on the bracket that mounts to the body. As soon as I can get my Pathy into my driveway where the welder reaches I'll modify mine and post up some pics.

So you're saying I can't accurately quote a custom built long travel front suspension system? Projects like this are what I do for a living! I have 20 years professional experience designing race car parts. The (likely) world's first triangulated four link coilover rear suspended 2nd gen. Frontier is being built in my shop right now. There are lots of people on forums that talk out their a$$ about stuff they know nothing about. I am not one of them.

This is most likely a bad ignition switch. There is no relay in the starter circuit, the ignition switch carries the full load required by the starter solenoid. If the contacts are fried it may carry enough voltage to appear 'good' with a volt meter when the wire is unplugged from the starter but it may not carry enough amperage to actuate the solenoid. Check the negative battery cable as well, and be sure you have a beefy ground cable between the engine and chassis. Yes, you can add a starter button the way you described if you don't want to buy a new ignition switch... but if you're going to do that you should tap power from the harness side of the fusible link otherwise there will be no fuse in your new circuit and you risk an electrical fire if something goes wrong. The fusible link is the only fuse protecting the starter circuit, standard fuses cannot carry enough amperage.

That's a bad voltage regulator in the alternator. It's spiking the voltage and can fry all sorts of things from light bulbs and your stereo to the ECU, TCU, and just about everything else electronic in the truck. I would fix this ASAP before it damages something really expensive.

A good trick here when you're putting the new engine in is to bolt the engine to the transmission with the RH motor mount and the P/S pump NOT attached to the engine. This gives you enough room to use a long extension and a torque wrench in front of the motor. You can also keep the crank from turning with a socket and breaker bar in one hand while torquing the TC bolts with the other.

Scat seats are popular with the air cooled VW crowd. You might find a Baja Bug forum and ask there, some of those guys beat and jump their junk with no mercy so they ought to know how well they hold up to abuse. I'm putting Recaro LXs in my Pathy if my buddy ever finishes re-upholstering them in grey velour.

I run a 33x10.5 and a 60" Hi-Lift on my stock tire carrier and wheel the hell out of my truck. I also use it as a ladder to get onto the roof and I'm about 200 pounds. I would not run off road with a heavy tire while the carrier is open. I also don't climb on it while it's open. When it's closed the little skid block bracket holds up a good percentage of the weight so there's less stress on the quarter panel mounting. Since you wheel your truck I suggest bending the lead edge of the bracket that lands on the plastic skid block up slightly so when the truck is flexed out and the body shell has a bit of tweak the bracket doesn't slam into the plastic straight-on and break it when you close the carrier. Another option would be to weld a short piece of 1/2" round stock across the lead edge of that support deal so it raises the carrier up more smoothly when things aren't quite lined up. I've broken a couple of the plastic skid blocks but haven't gotten around to modifying my carrier so it doesn't happen again.

Rear main seal, Nissan part number 12279-AD205. It's $28.48 from http://www.courtesyparts.com as a reference. I would not run an aftermarket seal here, saving $12 on one of the most expensive-to-get-to parts on the truck is not a good value IMHO. I've seen many VGs with the original RMS at 250k miles with no sign of even slight seepage.

I'd say no. Not compared to even a decent bolt-on long travel IFS setup like they run in Frontiers and Titans. Notice how much time the front tires spend off the ground? That truck's speed is severely limited over the whoops by the tremendous amount of unsprung weight up front. There's also nothing in that video of the truck going over a diagonal water bar or offset whoops where one tire hits the bump before the other. That kind of stuff puts solid front axle trucks on their head. It is entirely possible to build a stock-width, long-travel IFS Pathy with no seriously expensive or exotic hardware. Use an R200 housing from a 240SX with Pathy gears swapped in mounted centered in the chassis. That makes the oil pan a serious bugger, but it's do-able. You're going to need a baffled, high capacity pan to run at speed in the desert so you gotta build one anyway if you want the motor to live. Getting the driveshaft past the bell housing is a question mark, next time I'm under a Pathy I'll see if the U-joint angles and bell housing clearance look possible. A notch could be cut out of the bell housing and a small diameter driveshaft built if necessary. Next you obviously throw away the stock arms and the T-bars. Build custom LCAs with pivot points on the chassis a foot or less apart and upper arms so long they almost hit the headers. Locate the coilovers just behind the CV shafts to reduce the amount of twisting load on the LCAs. I would modify and fully gusset the stock Pathy spindles as they allow you to retain stuff like readily available cheap CVs, hubs, and brake components. If they prove to be weak they could be replaced with something custom built from scratch. Then you have to work out the steering. It might be possible to run a short version of a center link with the idler and Pitman arms indexed inward when going straight ahead. Or maybe just move the inner TRE pivot points closer together on a custom CL that's stock width? I'd have to work up some baseline numbers on the A-arm angles to know if that's even remotely feasible. Worst case you'd have to put a Trophy truck rack in it or something, I imagine there's a ton of outdated, used off road race hardware out there for (relatively) cheap like there is in all other forms of racing? Next you need some custom long half shafts, this can be done the way Jimmy Baja did for his wide long-travel setup by sleeving them with some DOM tube but that's not exactly the 'right' way to do it. The right way is custom billet shafts and they are gonna be about a grand. I'm going to guess such a setup's limiting factor would be the stock-based spindle and bearings. You could probably run 35s but due to the drop in unsprung weight 33s would probably be better for high speed use. If it were done by sleeving the CV shafts and running a weird center link that retained the stock box and idler, and there's room for the front driveshaft, I think I could pull it off for less than $5k turn-key. Who wants to be first in line? Yeah, didn't think there'd be any takers!

Good job! Today I finished wiring in my high-wattage headlight relay harness. They screwed up and sent me a 9007 harness in a 9004 package. Same plugs, different pin outs! Dennis figured it out. Had to swap all three wires around on all three 3-pin connectors. Wasn't too bad once I figured out where the release tabs were to get the terminals out of the plastic housings. Tomorrow I'm going to swap in my new headlight bulbs: 100/55w halogen 9004s. Stock 9004s are only 65/45w. I'm more excited about the 10w increase on low beam than the high beams... which I expect to be astonishing. 100/80w bulbs are commonly available but the lows are way too bright for the street, not to mention illegal. I searched for a long time to find a domestic source for 100/55w 9004 bulbs. Hopefully they live a while on low beam as I run headlights-on all the time.

When you go to pull the diff out raising the engine a couple of inches helps a whole bunch! This gives room between the oil pan and the mount that sticks off the front of the diff tube on the RH side for the diff to rotate down and out. I use my transmission jack to R&R diffs and they still suck. If you can get the bolts out that hold the RH diff isolator to the frame crossmember that would make things much easier I'm sure. I had a four foot cheater bar on mine and decided to leave them in rather than break them off in the frame. The cross bolts through the isolators are torqued to aboot 7.5 million foot pounds but they are through bolts with nuts so you don't have to worry about breaking them off and messing up your frame. Stuff like that I put a Craftsman (no Qs asked unlimited lifetime warranty) socket on a breaker bar and put the floor jack under the end of the handle to break them loose. You get good at using methods such as this when wrenching on big stuff like Unimogs.

^ This. Some people have removed the oil pan and pickup so they didn't have to drop the front diff but that's an even bigger PITA and getting it back together properly without ending up with a leaking oil pan gasket just isn't worth the risk. I see. You wouldn't normally have the trans out before the engine so that's not a 'normal' option. Dropping the trans is definitely much worse than dropping the front diff! You don't have to move the transmission to separate it from the engine, you just move the engine forward leaving the trans in place.

If it wasn't a wheeler my Pathy would have a Holley 350 on it right now! I like the fact that my truck can run on it's side, and I've idled it back onto it's wheels twice...

You don't need to drop the oil pan but you DO need to remove the front diff. The diff is the worst part of the whole swap.

Update time! The VG34i has about 5k miles on it right now. It has the headers I produce installed and they are Chromex polished ceramic coated inside and out. After the headers is a 2-1/2" mandrel bent Y-Pipe, Mid-Pipe and Test-Pipe replacing the cat. Next is a stainless Flowmaster 50 Delta with a 2-1/2" mandrel bent stainless tailpipe exiting straight through the bumper 'school bus' style. I've been having major difficulties with the engine management system in the Pathy since a few months before I swapped in the new engine. It's been getting about 9.5mpg around town and pulling about like the stock VG30 while sounding a bit 'off' and having major flat spots and stumbles. With the stock engine the truck was undriveable when it really acted up and didn't have enough power to maintain speed. The VG34, even running like total crap, easily keeps up with (and passes) traffic. I replaced the injectors, MAF, TPS, CHT and harness, and CAS with good used parts. Each made a difference and each tested bad. Even after all that it still did not run right and was throwing the CAS code again. I found an '88 auto ECU on eBay and bought it for $60 shipped with a 30 day warranty. After swapping that in the truck ran like a top. I also noticed that it downshifts much more quickly if I'm rolling along and punch it. I had not noticed the trans acting poorly, but it's definitely much better with the new ECU. I guess a messed up ECU can screw with the TCU as well. After having it finally run decent and not throw any codes even during a couple hard sessions beating on it on the street I decided it was finally time for a little tuning. I started by increasing the initial ignition timing. I had set it retarded to 5 degrees BTDC for break in and to be extra safe with 10.3:1 compression and 87 octane fuel since I had no idea how much advance I could run with that combination. There is no knock sensor in the TBI system. I set it to the stock 12 degrees and had to lower the idle by more than half a turn of the adjuster screw. I took the truck out for a few 0-60 runs against the stopwatch and it improved immensely with the increased timing. If some's good, more's better, right??? With the VG30 I'd run as much as 20 degrees advance and found that it pulled best around 17-18. I set the timing to 17.5 degrees BTDC and the motor woke the f__k up! This made me very happy indeed. At one point early on in the battle to fix the injection I made an inlet restrictor for the air cleaner housing. Some time before I had cut off the stock inlet neck and welded on a piece of 3" stainless tubing that connects to a fitting in the firewall with a flex hose so the engine draws it's air from the cowl. I changed the air filter in the truck because it was absolutely gross and it immediately ran like crap. Swapping the dirty filter in made it run much better. This got me to thinking that maybe the TBI MAF relied on the pressure drop across the stock inlet horn's cone in order to properly measure air flow? I already knew they ran like absolute garbage with the air cleaner top off so this sort of made sense to me. I pulled the stock inlet horn out of the scrap barrel and measured it's oval shape then drew it in CAD and analyzed it's area. I made an airflow restrictor out of .010 thick aluminum sheet with the same restriction size and attached it to the end of the inlet tube with electrical tape. The clamp for the flex hose held it securely in place. The truck ran much better this way so I didn't mess with it again. Next up I installed a vacuum line from a fitting in the intake to my center console. I ran it through a grommeted hole drilled in a cover plate on the firewall as a permanent addition for testing. I hooked up my vacuum testing gauge and drove it around with Dennis reading the gauge. I read some guidelines on the Barry Grant (Demon carburetors) website a while back on sizing carburetors. He said that if an all out racing engine's vacuum at WOT at redline exceeded 1 inch a larger carburetor should be fitted as it is a flow restriction and is costing horsepower. He also said that on a street/strip car or similar 2 inches was acceptable and going to a larger carburetor would gain very little while screwing up drive ability. I finally had a definitive benchmark to shoot for in reducing inlet restrictions on various motorized projects. I decided that since the truck was running great it was time to see what happened without the inlet restrictor so I took it out. I do not remember how much vacuum there was at WOT at 5500rpm when the trans shifts with the flow restrictor in place but the truck got quicker without it! So as it stands right now at WOT at 5500rpm I'm seeing exactly 2" of manifold vacuum. This is not so bad and much better than I thought it would be. I'm curious to see what stock MPFI Pathies have though that won't be a fair comparison as my engine should be drawing significantly more air. I did check the vacuum at WOT/redline in Dennis' S12 with a stock VG30E and it is zero. So right now the Pathy on 33x10.5 KOs with a full tank of gas, most of my wheeling gear, and 160 pounds of ballast (Dennis) in the passenger's seat does 0-60 in 12.5 seconds at 12 feet above sea level and 60 degrees ambient. The rear diff is locked and if I'm rolling along in D at 25mph on dry tarmac and punch it the trans instantly drops to 1st gear and breaks the tires loose for about half a second before hooking them back up just before upshifting to 2nd. Next up I need to go on a highway trip to somewhere so I can see what the cruise mileage is....

I've got 4.625 gears but would like 4.9s, sort of. Gotta think about that a minute now. 33s slow a Pathy down a seriously depressing amount on the street. But I've decided to go back to 31x10.5s for street use since I now have separate sets of street and trail rubber. Only one time have I ever wanted more power or lower gears off road with the Pathy: When pulling siverton's Pathy off a rock the size of a refrigerator. That was the hardest I've ever beaten any of my wheeling trucks and I'm kinda surprised I didn't break something, besides both motor mounts. With the automatic and a monster cooler it'll climb anything and I never use more than half throttle unless I'm pulling someone. Oh yeah! Sparking burnouts at night FTW!

With 235s I'll I'd have is tire smoke!

It didn't break loose, just surprised me that it downshifted to 2nd at that speed and revved so much higher than ever before. This seems to have been a one-time thing as it will not repeat it now. I'm already running a RE4R01A-HD trans from an '01 Xterra. Today I changed my oil and filter, ran a vacuum line into the truck to get some WOT vacuum readings, advanced the timing a whole bunch to 17.5 degrees BTDC, did mulitple 0-60 runs against the stopwatch with different tweaks, and removed the air cleaner housing inlet restrictor that I put in to duplicate the stock pressure drop across the housing when I was first having trouble with the injection. With no other changes going from the stock size opening to the 3" tube that connects to my cowl it dropped from 13.1 seconds to 12.5 seconds 0-60mph on 33" KOs with 160 pounds of ballast (Dennis) in the passenger's seat and a full tank of fuel. Now Dennis' S12 SE-V6 is quicker off the line (expected, much lighter!) but my Pathy pulls away slowly if we both get on it from 25mph or so. Also, if it's in 2nd or 3rd at 25mph and I punch it the trans instantly drops to 1st gear and both rear tires break loose but only enough that you can feel them hook back up half a second later. (The rear is currently fully locked.) It's going to be interesting to swap a set of my 31s onto this thing to see how quick it is and what sort of traction problems it has.

Today my new (used) ECU finally showed up so I swapped it in. No codes, no hesitation, and the the VG34i finally hauls azz again. I also noticed that the trans shifts differently now than with the original ECU. It would seem that the ECU has more to do with when the TCU wants to shift the trans than I was lead to believe. I punched it at 60mph this evening and it dropped to 2nd gear and spun to almost 6k rpm before upshifting back to 3rd. It had never revved past 5500rpm while in Drive the whole time I've owned the truck until tonight. I also swapped back to my 'street' 33s. Now I gotta figure out where I'm going to store $1k worth of Swampers when they aren't being held down by a Pathfinder....

6061-T6 Well, technically it hasn't come out yet as the first production run is in the works now...

Correct. The adapter fits on the VG33 crank just like the stock harmonic balancer did. One of the biggest reasons I decided to make the prototype for myself was so that I could retain the vastly superior VG33 oil pump. These pumps are the only gearotor-type pumps used on sohc VGs. The rest are "gear inside ring-gear" for lack of an actual term for this type of pump. When run hard at high RPM the VG30 pumps are known for cracking the ring gear and losing oil pressure. Being able to keep the VG33 crank with it's much larger snout is a good thing too, though it was only the very early VGs that were known for the crank snout snapping off. In theory removing the balancer could increase wear. In practice many people have run lightweight aluminum "power pulleys" on Z31Ts for hundreds of thousands of miles with no known increase in wear to any engine components. A VG has a very short, stout, yet light weight fully counterweighted crankshaft. If there's any crank that should live a long and happy life with nearly no mass bolted to it's ends it's the VG crank. Would I delete the balancer on a straight six or an American V8? No! This is the prototype that's on my VG34. Production parts will be anodized for corrosion resistance. The spot drilled dimple at the top of the pic is TDC. Nissan should have put a mark here on the stock balancers so you could easily tell how to index the crank pulleys! Here it is installed on the crank: And with the VG30 pulleys bolted on: The pulleys are in the exact location they would be with a VG30 crank and balancer.