The_Magicians_Eye

That's basically what I was thinking. Outside of the cost of manual hub and some new gear oil this should save a ton of money. Still not sure I want to do it with the irs though. Love the idea of manual hubs though. It will also let me run in low gear 2 wheel drive if I don't lock the hubs.

Just brain storming at the moment. If I tired this I would get manual hubs for sure. What do you think about the strength of the stock IFS with a welded diff while wheelin? At the moment when wheelin the front end looses traction all the damn time due to the open diff. If it was welded I would assume it would eliminate that stress reliever of loosing traction and prepositionally put a ton of stress on the CVs. Am I wrong? How do you think if would hold up? I've been reading about guys with solid front axles doing this and only locking one hub when they are worried about making turns. They seem to think it's a great idea to do this to the front because the front is what pulls you over rocks and other things on the trail. the rear just pushes you into it. As one of them put it without the front climbing over a rock the rear could potentially slide you sideways rather than pushing you over it. Another argument was that if you junk a hub that the welded front will still allow you to have 3 wheel drive to get you out of the 4 wheel drive situation. Without that you'd be stuck trying to get out with only 2 wheel drive. The more I think about it the more I like this idea. Just worried about the stock IFS. Someone please shoot me down out of the clouds if I'm not taking something into consideration that I should be.

Correct my if I'm wrong. When you're hubs are unlocked they don't turn the axles right? Don't they just spin on the spindles free of the axle. So if I where to weld the spider gears to create a locked axle and my hubs were unlocked it should drive like normal correct? Has anyone done this? I can see why you don't want to do this in the rear dif if you daily drive your pathy but shouldn't this work in the front?

I think I paid $35 each for my skyjackers. Somewhere around that price anyway.

Nice! I would have paid $40 for mine if someone would have pulled them. That was kind of a pain in the ass to do in a wrecking yard. Just make sure you get the thicker springs.

The guy with the red pathy is on my friend's list on facebook. His name is Martin Islas. The suspension in the video is 4x4 but he took it out. He ended out building a whole new front clip with 2 wheel drive trophy truck type front suspension. I don't speak Spanish so it's hard to talk to him. All I know is that he had the Pathy up for sale about two or three months ago. Here's the 4x4 long travel completely removed from the pathy. Here is what it looked like when it went up for sale.

Sure you can do that. My point is that I don't feel it's worth it. Why spend that kind of money just to have to go through all that effort? You can accomplish the same thing for far less money, time, and effort. Plus the other option are much more reliable.

Back Spacing should be between 4" and 3.5" Wheel with should be 7" 8" Anything wider than that and you're going to have to do some trimming. Hell you might have to do a little trimming with 31" tires on 8" wide wheels with a 3.5" back spacing. Nothing major though. I believe the stock rear spacing is 4" on 7" wide lego wheels.

Yes they go inside the springs and as he said your hands will be cramped up pretty nicely after fighting them into the springs. I'm not knocking the product I just realized better springs was way cheaper and way more effective for my needs. The bags are around $100 if I remember correctly. I really liked the why they felt when I first aired them up. I ended out having to put over 35lbs in to level the truck though. My front end might be lifted an inch over stock. Not sure though. The bags are strong but I was worried since day one about the amount of extension and compression the springs would be going though with those bags in them while wheelin. I don't know, after having them and using them for about 6 months I wouldn't recommend anyone go this route. That's just me. I would recommend air shocks over these just because an air shock's design seems to work better with our very flexible 4 factory 4 links. If you have a lift these are a waste of time/money. They barely make contact with the top and bottom spring seats in a stock spring. I honestly think the lift is coming from the bag pushing though the springs (like a fat chick in fish nets) helping to prevent the coils from compressing as easily. Again I don't think they're a bad product I just found that the money could have been spent on better more permanent solutions to the problem. That's just my

It's kind of a give and take. It blocks the passenger side view but it opens up the center quite a bit more. It's not bad. Nothing that should bother anyone. Put an adult in the passenger rear seat and they will block the view just as much. I like that the center view has a better viewing angle though. In my opinion it's way worth the trade off. Plus if you look at my 2011 truck of the month shot you well see I was dragging the spare on the ground. So yeah it had to be raised to prevent that. There is one major perk though. It moves all that weight closer to the hinges and relieves quite a bit of the pressure put on them.

I have those same bags. I took them out after I installed the JGC springs. I'd recommend returning them and just getting a higher spring rate spring. One thing that bothered me is that they require more air than their max air pressure to really do anything. The other thing is that mine always seemed to loose their pressure. Not sure where the leak was but I suspect the amount of flex that our pathy's have had something to do with it. Again I'd return them before you can't.

Damn it didn't even cross my mind that these came with RHD. Any pics of those tire racks? I'm guessing they're hard to come by?

"RHDish" ???? sorry I'm slow

So I need to complete a few things before I can finish my rear bumper. Here's the first step in completing those tasks. I relocated my spare tire location on the stock carrier. I moved it up about 6 inches and over the the passenger side to help eliminate the leverage it's putting on the carrier. The welds look like complete @!*% because I'm using a 90 amp harbor freight welder. So no close ups lol. I basically cut out the plate that the tire mount bolts to. Moved it over one section and up about 6 inches and welded it back on. Next steps to come: 1. Remount my hi-lift. 2. Relocated my license plate to the center of the spare. 3. Build a removable fuel can carrier that will hold two cans on the driver side of the spare. 4. Finish my rear bumper. 5. Post pics on NPORA lol.

Looks great! The bars in front of the headlights bug me a bit but it still looks good. How did you end out mounting it? Looking forward to seeing the rear bumper. Mine if only half way done. Was wanting to finish it up this weekend but I blew it off for another weekend. I need to address the tire rack, hi-lift location, and license plate before I finish it. Trying to figure out if I want to ditch the factory tire rack for a bumper mounted on or mod the factory one to suit my needs. Anyway again it looks great. You've been on a role with the mods. Can't wait to see what else is coming in the near future.

Unless I'm wrong the only way it would do that if you cranked them past full extension. That's no way to fix the problem. It will only lift it and cause unnecessary stress on the front end.

That light bar runs right through the middle of your stock headlights. That's going to suck big time when driving round town at night. It might cause you issues with the law too depending on your local laws. Other than that what's it weigh in at? I mine has to be lighter than yours and it's to heavy for the stock torsion bars. Makes the front end feel real squishy. Just something for you to think about. Other than that it looks good.

I'am interested. But what if we don't like how they turn out? I don't give a crap what color they are. I'll go buy some SEM plastic paint and fix the problem as long as the price is right and I like the final product. I vote two or 3 pod. I can work with ether or. So because I'm lazy and don't want to read all the posts can some please tell me how much I have to put in the pot to get one? How close are you to making this happen. As far as color make them all black or gray and call it a wrap. Like I said we can paint them to match.

I had those air bags. They leaked. I took them out when I put the JGC springs in. I'm pretty sure I'll be getting better torsion bars. Cranking the stock ones will only put more strain on the joints and steering and it will still more than likely feel squishy do to the extra weight.

http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=32375&st=0

Top is the Before Pic. Yes it's jacked up but all the weight is still on the rear end. I forgot to take the pic and didn't want to start all over. I had a 1/4 tank of gas at the time of the pics. Ok so for those that don't know this is what I was trying to accomplish... I wasn't looking to lift the truck. I like the height that it sat at but with the addition of my front bumper, roof rack, rock slider and my soon to be finished rear bumper the added weight was becoming an issue. With just me, the women, and the two kids I was riding on my bump stops in the rear. This is completely unacceptable for many reason that I don't think I need to explain. Basically I'm building this pathy to wheel with, drive my a$$ to work, and tow a small trailer when needed. I also want to keep the 31" tires simply due to their cost. So basically I was stuck wondering what I should do to solve my problem. I had the option of EMU medium duty springs (3/4" lift), AC 1.5" lift (they wouldn't tell me what the spring rate was), or to head to the junk yard and hope I could find the proper Jeep Grand Cherokee (JGC) spings. What the proper spring would be was up in the air to me. This was all new territory. Everything I found on the net was simply people looking for a low cost lift. Their needs seemed to be all about lift and tire size where mine were load capacity, flex, and keeping the lower ride height. The EMU springs were what I thought I should go with at first but I'd have to wait for Steven from Rugged Rocks to get back from King Of The Hammers for me to even be able to order them. Plus that's a nice chunk of change to throw at what I felt was a risk. I was worried that they would still sag to much when I was completely loaded. So anyway to shorten this story up I ended out risking $25 and some of my time by heading to the junk yard and grabbing some JGC springs. Here is the amount of up travel I had with no one in the truck and only a 1/4 tank of gas. I didn't measure it but I'm pretty sure it's around 1" or less. Here they are: Here they are sitting next to the stock Pathy Spring. The Pathy spring is on top. Here is where I cut the JGC springs: One of the things I was worried about when cutting the springs was the springs being to short. My shocks are 2 inches longer than stock and I didn't want issues with them falling out at full flex. Luckily they were the same size as the stock springs after being cut. However for those wondering how long of shocks they can run. I wouldn't run any shock that is longer than the shocks I have (2 inch longer) right now. At full extension the spring has very little pressure on the seats. I'm confident that longer shocks would result in having to mod the spring mounts to insure that they stay seated. Before: After: I'm not sure what the wire thickness is on the JGC springs that I found. There was no markings on any of the ones I found at the JY. However these where visually the larger of the bunch that I found. They came out of 98. The After measurements were taken after a full day of driving it around. I didn't adjust the front bars as all. However The rear is so much of an improvement that the front end short comings are very noticeable. I definitely need higher spring rate torsion bars. So basically I'm really happy with how it turned out. It feels much better and I can't wait for my next wheeling/camping trip. Hope this helps a few people.

I ended up with some JGC springs. Not sure how thick the wire is do to no markings but from a visual perspective they were the thickest out of the bunch they had at the JY. I'll create a new post here tonight with pics showing what I did and how much I cut. I ended out with 2" of lift over that it was with my stock 21 year old springs and the extra weight of the armor. I'm overall happy with it. However it made me realize that I need stiffer torsion bars now. Anyway like I said I'll write something up here in a few with pics and what not once I take a bump and change my cloths so I can climb under the truck (I just got home from a day out with the family).

Hey were did you get the liscense plate light? I need to move mine too before I finish my bumper.