sandor

I wouldn't say that. The VQ comes in many different forms, and is pretty stout as well. I have heard of plenty of guys on maxima.org that have s/c'd and even turbo'd the vq30 with no internal mods. Guys have run them up to 8400 and even over 10000 revs with no problems. I've extended my rev limiter to 7200, and take it there frequently; there is a lot of extra power up there on stock internals. The VQ35HR's in the new 350Z and G35's can take the power too. I'd say they are equally stout to the venerable VG30.

What can I say...mine wasn't anywhere near as bad as yours...it just had a few small holes here and there, and it didn't pass a safety. The holes were the size of coins or smaller. Once I went to get the small holes fixed, it was going to be a case of putting more small patches over the existing small patches, or do it right and get the whole thing done. Small patches don't do anything...they just make it look good. I don't want to discourage you, but that is going to be A LOT of work. If you don't get that thing repaired so the frame is straight and square, it won't pass a safety either because the handling will be adversely affected. What you really need to do is what everyone else is suggesting. Find a parts pathy with a good frame (good luck up here in Ontario) or find one in a local wrecking yard that you can at least get the rear frame from. Chop off the whole back half of your frame, and weld in a whole new back half. That would be a whole lot better, easier and cheaper than trying to repair yours. Either way, it is going to be a lot of work. Forget about all other repairs until you get the frame done, cause without that frame fixed, you won't pass a safety. By the way, those dust sheilds on the rear brakes aren't manditory. You don't have to replace them.

I had the frame on my 95 repaired recently by a welding shop. The frame was a lot worse than I thought because apparently there were many poor attempts at fixing it prior to me owning it. It looked good, with a few bad spots, but apparently, the spots that looked like they were repaired, were repaired poorly. The shop, who has done work on many pathy's previously, rebuilt almost the whole outside of the passenger side frame from the front wheelwell all the way to the back, and a lot of the inner side as well. To do the inner side, where all the electrical, brake and fuel lines are run, they cut the outer side right off, then welded new metal on the inside of the frame, then welded new metal back on the outside. They also cut out rot on the bottom of the frame and welded in new metal. They did that for both the drivers and passenger side. End outcome, if you look at the inner side of the frame rails, the frame may still look like it has rust holes, but there is all new metal welded in behind it. From the outer side, like your photos, it looks proper with all new metal welded in. All new metal is covered generously in tar undercoating. Just to give you some reference, they spent 18 hours on my passenger side, and another 9 hours on my drivers side.

As per the FSM, jack up the rear end by the differential, and spin a tire by hand. If both tires spin in the same direction, it's an LSD. If they spin in opposite directions, you have an open diff.

Although the VG30e was designed to run on 87 octane, running higher octane won't hurt. It does burn cleaner, but won't increase the overall performance of a properly tuned engine. To benefit from higher octane, you will need to add timing of bump up the compression. Running a couple tanks of premium will clean out mild deposits, but won't do anything for heavy carbon deposits. Premium fuel certainly won't add to the deposits, but too low octane or crappy gas will. My 97 maxima (VQ30DE) requires minimum 91 octane, I use 94 almost exclusively and get better performance and gas mileage because of it. I switched back to 91 when gas prices were high, and the mileage drop was noticeable. With 94, my throttle body never needs cleaning. I've taken it off acouple of times to clean it inside and out, and there are virtually no carbon deposits to speak of. I only inspect it now. The same can't be said for other maxima owners that want to save a couple bucks at the pumps and use 91 or lower.

AFAIK, driving around with your hubs locked, or one hub locked, has no ill affects on dry pavement as long as you are in 2WD mode. The hubs just lock the CV axel to your hub, so the axel (or axels if both are locked) will spin while the vehicle is in motion, where they would not normally if the hubs were unlocked. The problem comes when you have a hub or both hubs locked + 4WD + dry pavement...then you could do damage. For your second question, 4WD + locking one hub on the trail wouldn't break anything, but the front end would have next to no propulsion. Unless you have a locker, which I beleive you don't, the differential splits the power, and generally the wheel with less resistance gets more. If one hub is not locked, that side will have next to no resistance (cause it's not turning the wheel, it's free-wheeling), and get most of the power. The wheel with the hub that is locked will do nothing, so it has the opposite affect to what you were looking for.

got it!!