Mr.510

I also don't like i anything. Even ignoring that Android phones are faster and more versatile. I've got a Droid 2 and it rocks. Someone that's seriously into this stuff told me the i Phone 4 is two years behind the current Android stuff... but I know nothing of Apple stuff so take that for what it's worth!

x2 I am more than a little biased but I believe the VG engines are better units than the VQs. My brother is a career (30+ years) Nissan parts guy. When my sister decided she wanted an R50 my brother told her she could not get one unless it was VG powered. The timing assemblies in VQs are prone to failure and they take the whole engine with them when they do fail. A round-tooth VG timing belt is rated for 105k miles and I've personally seen them go 200k. If changed at the proper interval with a factory Nissan belt they just plain do not fail. VGs typically live 250k miles with average maintenance and crap oil. With good maintenance and synthetic or high-detergent dino oil they go 300k easily and I've seen a couple go 400k. VGs are the last truly 'overbuilt' engine from Nissan and are still in production for other markets. I've built racing engines for many years. As time has gone by the manufacturers have built many of the 'tricks' that a race engine of years ago would have had into stock engines. HP keeps going up along with fuel mileage because they are building more highly-stressed engines in stock form. Volumetric and thermal efficiency have gone up due to effectively more radical cam profiles, higher-flowing intake and exhaust tracts, higher compression ratios, and knife-edged cranks with skinny bearings and light connecting rods as well as short-skirted pistons. This means newer-design engines don't generally live as long in stock form and can't be modified for large increases in power without spending really serious money on the internals. As for increasing the power of a VG33, I'd either turbo it or do headers with full exhaust, cams, and a chip or Nistune.

Attending: 5523pathfinder +1 Kyle94 (maybe plus one... dk yet.) silverton SilverPath +1 copilot Mr.510 Maybe: Skulptr +2 (pending my return status!)

Mr.510 Capitol Forest 6-20-10

Adam, I am going to sue you for making such an untrue statement about Americans! How dare you tell such lies? I'll see you in court! And yes, I gave them permission to use my videos as well. If some of our trucks make it into a commercial you guys will have to tell me about it as I don't have TV.

I voted for Jared's Pathfinder. Hey buddy, if you're reading this: We miss you!

It may be Velvacoat or something similar though I don't know what was available at the time these guards were made? My coater uses some powders that cure softer than your typical stuff. I have no idea what the material actually is but they only do powder, no wet-sprayed finishes. They put it on restaurant chairs as it is less likely to chip when the chairs get smacked together or knocked over. It also feels 'warmer' to the touch. Kind of hard to describe on the internet. It's not soft like tool dip or vinyl, it's just a tad softer than a 'normal' powder. The surface almost feels tacky, but it isn't. Anyway, back to taillight guards. I took a couple pics of mine tonight so you guys can see the forward mount. Also note that mine have laser cut bars made of flat stock rather than round bars.

Interesting that there isn't a hole in that side tab on yours. I'd think brush would wedge between the guard and the quarter panel. Is that a problem? I got mine off of eBay several years ago. They do have the Manik logo'd serial number foil plates on them so even though they were used I'm sure they are Manik. The powdercoat on them is just slightly soft and rubbery.

I also have Manik guards on my taillights though mine have one more wrap-around bar and it looks like the tubes might be bigger diameter? The tab at the front of mine has a screw hole in it. The guards were powder coated after that hole was drilled so I assume they came that way. I drilled my quarter and put a 10-32 SS screw through with a washer and nylock nut on the inside. Big glob of clear silicone to keep it watertight as well. I like the look of the guards and they have probably saved my lights in heavy brush and saplings... but I've also broken a taillight by smacking the guard on a tree.

In 1995 I decided that I would no longer buy Christmas presents and I would make them instead. I do not have good pics of the ornaments I made or pics of all of them... but it's Christmas Eve and I feel like posting what I have. I'll have my parents keep their set out when they take their tree down so I can take better pics of the whole series. I designed all these ornaments in CAD, programmed, and machined them. I used an adhesive fixturing technology that evolved with the years and allowed more streamlined and complex shapes as I refined it. The parts are all 6061-T6 sheet in .062 thickness. They were pocketed and profile milled with a .0625 2 flute carbide end mill. A pilot hole was used in pockets for plunging as ramp entry exceeds the capacity of the fixturing method. Most of the pockets had to be fully machined into chips as the chunks left in their centers would not stay adhered and would break the cutting tool when they popped loose. They are hard to see in some of the pics, but each ornament has the year milled in using a .031 2 flute carbide ball mill as well. There was a very long, steep, expensive learning curve on this project! Buying gifts would have been cheaper the first couple of years but saving time or money was never the point. The first year I did a snowflake ornament. Lots of area for adhesive but I still scrapped more than I completed. The two parts are identical other than the "1995" milled into one half: This ornament is only about 3" in diameter but is by far the heaviest design I made. This one requires a large branch on the Christmas tree! In 1996 I was able to use a slimmer profile but still needed lots of adhesive area near the tips and the center. The 'spokes' are .125 wide down the center and .093 elsewhere: In 1997 I decided to try three interlocking pieces that 'snap' together. I also made the year a prominent part of the design rather than engraving it with a ball mill. This whole part is .062 wide profile. My fixturing method was perfected by this point: 1998 is my favorite of all the ornaments. It is also three pieces and is about 6" tall: With the approaching turn of the millennium I decided to do a simple "Peace on Earth" kinda thing with a peace sign in the middle of a globe for 1999. This one is many people's favorite, I honestly don't care for it all that much: That's all the pics I have at the moment. I think I did three or four more ornaments before deciding to not participate in Christmas presents at all. I'll try to get some better pics of the whole series and post them up in the next week or so. Merry Christmas everyone!

Yep, this is a possibility. Use one inner CV joint and the other outer joint. I'm going to pull a junk CV shaft out of my '88 and Silverton has a junk one out of his '95 so I'll see if the two can be combined to make an 'adapter CV shaft'. The later style (28 spline) inner joints are true, 6-ball CV joints where the earlier ones (27 spline) are the 3-pronged 'U-joint' style. That's why they changed from six-bolt to five-bolt flanges. The 3-prong style has two bolts between each of the flutes of the housing. The 28 spline ones have five bolts evenly spaced around the circumference of the housing. That one is a tough order to fill without spending *huge* money. Most production CV joints have about the same amount of maximum angularity. Also, in applications where you can get a 'high operating angle' CV joint (930 Turbo CVs in VW applications) the increased angle means the outward force on the outer housing it much higher and they tend to break while at extreme angles. They also run much hotter and wear out more quickly when run at high angles. With the stuff we tend to do (low speed, sharp joint angles, and very high torque) we are lucky that our stock CVs live a relatively long time. You'll notice that Baja Fab long-travel front end increases the front track width by several inches per side, thus allowing more suspension travel without increasing the CV angles.

Yeah, what they said. The early vs. late flanges/shafts do not interchange where they plug into the diff. I have a set of each sitting next to my bench to try to figure out if there is an easy way to modify something to make them work. For now the answer is that if you want to change your spline count you need the diff, CV shafts, complete spindle assemblies, and (of course) locking hubs. And don't forget that they changed the TRE taper size somewhere around the beginning of '94 (?) so that messes up the interchange of the spindles as well. Just for a little clarification, the short-side diff flange has a single bolt in the center of the flange that retains it. The long side has four bolts that hold a flange with the support bearing in it to the housing. Early and late bolt in the same but there is a difference inside the diff that I need to sort out.

Alright, so I kinda went off on a little rant about discussions and unrelated stuff in the ToTM nomination thread in the Poho a little while ago. I've noticed that in the months where there's a whole bunch of chatter in the thread there don't tend to be as many entries. I like to see lots of pics of Pathfinders! So... I guess what my suggestion boils down to is that any post in the nominations thread that doesn't contain an entry pic and the user name of the truck's owner be deleted. This keeps the thread small, and will hopefully encourage more people to enter. As I said in Poho, the occasional 'nice pic!' or the like is cool, we don't want this to be a police state or anything I don't think. It would just be nice if we all tried a little harder to keep it to nominations only. Also, if it does get out of hand please let a moderator or administrator know so they are aware of it. I don't want anybody to get in trouble over this or anything, I just want to see more Pathy pics! Thank you Pezzy for the cleanup on aisle 1!

This article was posted to an email list I'm on. Everyone that welds should read it. I de-grease parts for welding with lacquer thinner and make sure they are thoroughly dry before getting them hot! Common Cleaners Can Turn Into Poison Gas

You probably went to Bobaloo's. It's just up the hill and across the street from Safeway but I think it's a bar or tavern so a few people would be left out. Jimmy D's is Ok, and the Mexican place in the Safeway strip mall is decent but I think Fiesta Mexican Restaurant in the Log Plaza is the best food in town. JR's Hideaway is supposed to have good food but it's a biker joint with a rough crowd from what I've seen. If I were traveling a long way for this run and wanted/needed to camp I think I'd plan to do so either East or South of Puget Sound. The weather in Belfair can be downright nasty and we get more than double the annual rainfall Seattle does.

Correct on all counts. No pass required or anything, no night wheeling, free primitive camping in the big staging area and I think a small fee at the 'Horse Camp' campground? It'd be a cold, damp, windy place to camp the time of year we'll be there. Not what I'd call fun in any way, even if sleeping in your Pathy! Expect overnight temps in the low-'20s, 10mph wind that does not stop, and driving rain and you'd be well prepared. Bears in camp are the norm so I rule out tents completely for safety reasons. Tahuya ORV is about four miles as the crow flies almost directly North of my place in Belfair. It used to be a ten minute drive at the speed limit but now it's about fifteen minutes as Elfendahl Pass Road washed out between North Shore Road and Belfair-Tahuya Road a few years ago and hasn't been repaired. It saw so little traffic I don't think they should even spend the money to fix it, though it was the most epic-twisty road in North Mason County... and starts half a mile from my house. The best pizza place in town didn't survive the economy but there is other good food in Belfair. If some people feel like hanging out for dinner afterwords I'd be down for that. When this run gets close I'll post two better routes to get there than Google or Mapquest seem to know about. Both cut 15-20 minutes off the drive from the Narrows Bridge. The shorter-mileage route is twisty-fun goodness with great scenery and the other is mostly highway but bypasses the town of Gorst. Also worthy of note is that it's quicker and cheaper to drive around and take the Narrows Bridge than to take any of the ferry routes, though if you don't ride a ferry often it can be worth the time/money just for the experience. The Seattle - Bremerton ferry is the longest ride (1 hour) and the most scenic. Coming into downtown Seattle at night is pretty cool if you've got your wife/GF along.

D'oh! I didn't even notice the sub-title of the thread regarding time frame.

What's it Tahuya? Sorry, local joke. I'm down to go. I've only been there twice in the last year and a half... in spite of one of my houses being 10 minutes away! It should be sorta soft out there and there will be (optional) deep water in several places. It never really gets all that muddy at Tahuya as the primary soil is a hard-packing glacial till affectionately referred to by locals as "Tahuya Concrete". There are a few good mud holes and some of the hill climbs get pretty well eroded and chewed up. Tahuya is a great place for stock trucks. To anyone that's got little or no experience and/or does not want to risk damaging their truck: Tahuya is a great place for you to have some fun. There are man-made rock obstacles and climbs that challenge anything, including my Unimog, but most of Tahuya is relatively tame. All terrains work great there. The one thing I suggest on picking a date is that we be sure there isn't an enduro motorcycle race going on. They run a couple a year I think and effectively use up the whole friggin' place. Mountain bikers hold some events there too. I know the right people to talk to and will find out what's scheduled when. What approximate time frame were you thinking? January maybe?

I started out at Constance Machine in 1991 as the first full-time employee. Programming, setting up, and machining parts. We did mostly fish canning factory and experimental medical parts. Very complex and expensive parts with extremely low volume. Basically CNC prototyping. About two years(?) later we launched the 'Joes Racing Products' line of parts. I ended up as head of Engineering and New Product Development as we grew to 30 employees over 18 years. The Joes line was about half of our total production with the rest being commercial production machine work. About half of that was high performance automotive aftermarket. I did a lot of design work for Alta, Perrin, and a few others. What I did with the Joes line isn't really automotive aftermarket as hardcore race car parts really have nothing to do with 'real' cars. Racing parts is it's own industry. Getting into the performance automotive industry at the manufacturing end is really difficult. It's a teeny little niche in the corner of the manufacturing world. We sought out that type of work as we were gearheads that like cars/trucks and we had a well-known and respected brand name so we weren't just another 'no-name' job shop looking for work. My advice if you want to go that direction is to encourage your boss to seek out that type of work if any is available in your area. Get your hands in it a bit and meet some people. There are very few shops actually making performance aftermarket auto parts and every knucklehead with a slammed Honduh is willing to work at these places for $10 an hour for the 'cool factor' alone. That makes it very difficult to get into the industry at a livable wage. You are correct about how cool it is to see a design materialize! For much of my career I wold design a part, program it, machine, test it, etc. The last couple of years before I quit my position at Joes I had a really good programmer/setup guy. I trained him as my replacement for all on-the-floor work so I could devote all of my time to new product development. I worked swing shift while the rest of the company worked days. This allowed me nights alone to focus without the all day distractions of a production shop. I would often dream up a new product and create a 3D CAD model for prototyping in an evening. Half the time when I arrived the following day the fully machined prototype was sitting on my desk! Talk about instant gratification. That was truly awesome.

That's an amazing little coupling B. I've done some teeny stuff, but nothing that small and complex in a single part. I was (am?) a CNC machinist/programmer/tooling designer for 21 years. I don't have pics of most of the cool things I did, but do have pics from a few standout projects. On this particular project the concept and overall design was mine but due to time constraints I had a friend do the actual engineering and build the 3D CAD models. I did all the programming and machining myself. These part were made for the 2008 Ridler Award winning street rod Ferrambo. This is milling the backside of one of the floating brake rotor carriers, material is 7075-T651 aluminum: Operation complete: Flipped over into custom soft-jaws for a little detailed scallop work around the edges: This is a wheel centerlock nut, cut from a very hard stainless steel. I can't remember the alloy but it was brutal on coated carbide endmills: Here's a completed wheel nut alongside the brass socket I made to match: This is a drive spindle, that the above nut screws onto. The step at the end is about to get it's Acme threads. Material is 7075-T651: This is a shot of the completed assembly, you can see the rotor carrier through the wheel: And finally a shot of the whole car, to put it in perspective:

Why not start with a Hardbody pickup? The only real downside is rear leafs rather than four link. Or drop a HB cab on a Pathy chassis?

Ok, so if the 'new' motor is far apart pull the heads off of it ASAP. Do the carb cleaner in the ports thing and see if it's got a burnt or bent valve. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it does and the bottom end is OK. It sounds like your 'old' motor oil starved and VGs never live long after even a minor case of this. I tell people that if they ever see the oil pressure light when the motor is above idle to plan on replacing the engine in the near future. I honestly doubt the bottom end of your 'old' motor is going to live 100 miles if it tightened up like it sounds like it did. It may already have a spun bearing or three. The one thing VG engines have zero tolerance for is oil starvation. Ask the Z31 guys, they blow up motors autocrossing all the time with the oil pressure light never even coming on. Are you talking about doing valve seals on your 'old' motor? You may want to do that to your 'old' heads if you put them on the 'new' bottom end but they aren't going to do anything to help if it oil starved. I just had an idea: If we can determine that the bottom end of the 'new' motor is OK I will give you a set of good, ready-to-run VG33 heads for it. 80-some thousand miles on them I think? That way you don't have to mess with your 'old' motor at all, other than trying to make it live a little while to idle around town. (And I do mean idle! If you need to get to work or whatever don't let it see more than 2k rpm!)On that front, change the oil and filter and put one quart of Hilton's Hyperlube in it in place of one quart of oil. It will not hurt anything, won't screw up the seals, and just *might* make it live a little while longer. Don't throw the oil filter away! Drain it thoroughly and put it in a ziplock bag. We should cut it apart to check for bearing material if the motor doesn't explode right away. An oil filter media inspection will tell the whole story. I wish you were closer to Seattle!

'Old' motor: If it smokes under load after it's warmed up it is more than just valve seals. Also, generally if the valve seals are toast they probably got that way because the valve guides are worn out. The further you open the throttle the less it should smoke if it's valve seals. As you open the throttle manifold vacuum drops. It is manifold vacuum that sucks oil past bad valve seals. Once this starts to happen the guides are history in short order as the oil burns onto the valve stems and the resulting baked-on carbon wears the guides very rapidly. Smoke only at startup, idle, and on deceleration is generally valve seals. Lower load/higher vacuum = more smoke. More smoke with more throttle is generally rings. Higher load/lower vacuum = more smoke. Many engines have a combination of both. On your 'new' motor: You have to pull the heads to do rings so you're into a full engine gasket set, T-belt, etc. Crank has to come out too so you can clean the block after honing the bores. My VG experience says if it's got low compression on one hole caused by rings it has a broken ring, the bore is hammered dog poop, and the block will have to be bored. This is NOT a common failure on N/A VGs. More likely it has a burnt valve. You might be able to put your 'old' heads on the 'new' bottom end if it is a valve problem on the 'new' motor and a rings issue with the 'old' one. I think this is most likely from what you described. If you need a stock motor on a budget a good used one is the best value hands-down. Unless you can combine two by only buying head gaskets and a timing belt that is. If the 'new' motor is still mostly together don't pull the heads yet! Put it back together and do a dry compression test followed by a wet one. This will tell you with certainty if it's a valve issue. If the compression goes up way more on the bad hole when oil is added to the cylinder than the others the problem is either a broken ring or piston. If the heads are off pull the rockers so all the valve are closed and spray carb cleaner into the ports one by one and see if you get a bunch more leakage on one valve. Also, look for obvious cylinder wall damage in all six bores.

I wonder if you'd do well with a hardhat-based welding helmet? They give a whole lot more options of headgear and there are those rear-strap headgear setups with a band at the base of your skull that stay on really well. Speedglas makes a hardhat/shield setup. I didn't realize the Readywelder could be hooked to a DC stick welding power supply to give adjustable, constant current. As opposed to batteries being the only power option. Durrr, it's just a spool gun! If you want too down the road you could pick up a buzz box off Craigslist for $50 and have an easy adjustable welding power source when working around the shop/garage for major projects. I also didn't realize that they have an option for shielding gas, I was thinking they were flux core only. CO2 would be very nice and it's super cheap to refill. With $22 worth of CO2 I can probably MIG weld full time for a couple of weeks! That stuff goes forever as it's stored as a liquid. By contrast argon for TIG welding is about $60 per 150cf bottle and I can only get a few days full time out of a bottle.

Congrats on the welder purchase! The portability of the Readywelder is really cool. Wow, I haven't seen one of those welding helmets in years! My old boss had one of those and he used it for production welding and actually preferred it to an auto darkening hood. Only thing that sucked was he couldn't talk while welding without flash burning himself! For general light use you might consider a relatively cheap auto darkening hood. The market is flooded with them. You just have to be careful about 'shading' the sensor(s) and preventing the lens from darkening. Most of the cheap auto darkening hoods go from about shade 5 to shade 10 so they are pretty dark to see your way around between welds. You can always flip them with a head nod like a conventional hood when you're 'close' as well. If I had a Readywelder I'd take it on the trail with me and get one of these leather hoods as they are the best for welding under a vehicle or at crazy angles: They also roll up into a nice little package that might even fit in the Readywelder's case? They are hotter than hell to wear so I would only use one for trail repairs or when splatter burns are eminent. I've got a Speedglas hood with adjustable darkness, sensitivity, and delay. It goes from shade 9 to 13 at the push of a button. It is shade 3 when 'light' and shade 5 when powered off so you can use it for torch work by turning it off. I only use this hood for TIG as it just doesn't have enough coverage for MIG IMHO. For MIG I use a full-coverage Huntsman standard window flip-hood with a leather neck flap attached at the chin. I run a shade 10 gold filter and it's perfect. If you get a static (non-darkening) hood I highly recommend a gold mirror filter. They make a huge difference in how well you can see over regular tinted glass.