12A

got the peice of crap towed home...

Castrol Magnatec 10w40 in the pathy with the Z24. will be running Mobil 1 5w30 with the FJ20ET in the pathy. the rotaries i own all get Penrite HPR40 which is a 25w70 oil. will not use valvoline oils in any of my cars as i dont like the colour or smell of the oil. may sound strange, but will not happen!

started wiring the FJ20ET loom to fit in the pathfinder and started making a list of stuff still needed for the conversion

as they say, if you cant find em, grind em!

holy crap... i just re read what i wrote... hahaha!!! and as for taking the pathy easy, i give mine HELL, and nothing has broken yet, other than the engine and reverse, and both were my fault! (sorta?)

i personally wouldnt go near a CRV or a Rav4, from a mechanics point of view. both are tiny engines for such large loads, and are not engineered to be able to take those sort of loads. the car will be stuffed before you know it! If your set on getting a new vehicle, i would personally be looking for a ute, as they are designed as a commercial vehicle, thus, designed to be loaded up. Any of the "compact sport" vehicles (such as CRV or Rav4, or Xtrail etc.) are for soccer mums, to be blunt. If you need the ute enclosed, remember there is always the option for a canopy! personally, i would fix the pathy, but hey, Im a mechanic. It wouldnt be costing me anywhere near as much. I could recommend some vehicles, but i dont know what your budget is, i dont know what cars cost for you over there, i dont know what cars are available to you. Hope this can help though.

definately! i always drag the g/f along when i feel like hitting up the bush! she loves it!

its addictive unfortunately! i bought my pathfinder as a daily while i built a RX3 mockup, and am used to 200SX's and the sort. first time i went wheeling, i was hooked and just put my other cars up for sale so i can dump the money into the pathy!! definately take a camera next time. i find it makes you try more daring things when you have a camera, after the perfect shot. shows you the limits of your car fairly quickly, and what you need to upgrade!

2.5 is excessive. i would be using 2.25in piping personally. i work at an exhaust/performance specialist

glad to see that someone else pointed out marking the front torsion bar points. here is my method of rotating the splines from the front of the torsion bar. i went about it differently to most. Being a mechanic, i already knew what i was tackling. after jacking the car up and putting it on jack stands, i drowned everything in WD-40 to begin with, undid the rear torsion bar adjusters and removed them completely, then removed the rear circlips. you will find the torsion bar is pushed up against the crossmember at the rear. I put my trolley jack under the lower control arm and lifted until the car was about to come off the jack stand. if you have a look at the torsion bar in the crossmember now, it wont be wedged anymore. I then levered the torsion bar anchor towards the rear of the vehicle whilst hitting the front of the torsion bar with a mallot to free it from the lower control arms. rotated it a few splines, and put it all back together. James.

does the car missfire on startup? does the temp get hot on the gauge? does the overflow bottle bubble? is it difficult to start? do the radiator hoses get pressurised in the first 20 seconds? is there a sparkplug that is discoloured to the others? i doubt EXTREMELY that you have a headgasket issue. the idea of coolant going through all the mufflers etc then out the rear of the exhaust without other issues, to make you think you have a headgasket issue is inconceiveable in my head. even a coolant leak into the intake manifold wouldnt cause coolant to be in the exhaust without some other much more noticeable problem.