Slartibartfast

Sounds like the usual symptoms of the camshaft position sensor in the distributor going out.

I don't know nearly as much as I should about how these slushboxes work, but I have heard of bad solenoids in general causing overheating. The torque converter heats the fluid whenever the lockup clutch isn't engaged, so if the lockup clutch stays open all the time, I'd expect that to dump some extra heat. (Enough heat to roast fluid in that short of a time? No idea.) I'd expect it to drive reasonably close to normal without lockup (you might not notice on flat ground if you don't watch your tach) and I don't think a failed lockup solenoid would trigger limp mode, either--a guy on here cut in a switch on his so he could kick it on/off at will and I don't remember his computer pitching any fits. (Limp mode holds it in third, BTW.) A friend of mine got lucky with the slipping trans in his S10. He did some research, opened it up, and found a broken accumulator spring. He replaced a few small parts and it's been fine since. But the key there was that he caught it early. Even if yours started as a bad solenoid, the failure of first and overdrive, followed by the torque converter locking up, sounds like the damage has spread. Definitely do your research. Take a good look at the fluid you drained out. Check it for chunks. If it's burned but clean otherwise, maybe it's worth tearing into, at least enough to drop the pan and see what's stuck to the magnet inside.

Sounds pretty stuffed to me. Dark brown fluid says that trans got hot. Unless you've been towing fully-loaded tractor trailers up mountain passes since you changed the fluid, I'd guess something failed inside the box and caused it to overheat; then, as the fluid degraded, the clutches started coming apart and the debris started jamming up passages or solenoids. There's a diagnostic on US models where the light in the "power mode" switch flashes to tell you what the TCU thinks is wrong with the trans. Might be worth checking, though it sounds like it's probably too late in this case. Make sure you flush the old fluid and crud out of the cooler lines and replace the cooler before replacing the trans. You don't want the gunk the dying trans spat up getting into a fresh trans.

New swaybar links on the front. Old bushings didn't look too bad but had probably lost most of their flexibility over the years, and both bolts had worn maybe 1/3 of the way through on the LCAs.

Additional engine grounding, I guess. The sensors on the engine need good grounds, so more grounds = more better.

If you have a manual transfer case, or leave your auto transfer case (dial on the dash) out of auto mode, it should be fine. If two driveshafts and two sets of joints hasn't made the vibration go away, then it doesn't sound like the driveshaft is likely the problem. I'd pull it and see if the truck still has the vibration without it.

I don't know the R51 but my WD21 has a bit of a whine just off idle that I've been meaning to track down. It seems to be coming from the intake, suggesting that there's some kind of burr or sharp spot somewhere in the intake system that air is rushing over and making noise. I haven't worried about it too much. To check if it's the belt, you could just remove the serp belt, run the engine, and see if the noise is still there. Air filters are cheap, you could try a replacement there and see if it changed anything if you thought yours might be the issue.

This is the first I've heard of the rear window hinges breaking, and some of the guys here wheel hard. Plastic parts (particlarly 20-year old ones) aren't my favorite either but I'd be surprised if your offorad abuse is enough to shatter them regularly. The rear hatch shouldn't be flexing enough to put any real strain on them. Hell, I caught an apple tree with the hinges on my '95 (they doubled as mounts for the spoiler) and all that did was tear out the screws for the spoiler.

Guys bolt the VG30I intake to VG33Es, should be no issue putting it on a VG30E.

Ain't Tapatalk great? I read a while back that the two-pinion carrier is cast, and the four-pinion carrier is machined, so you should be able to tell them apart just looking in through the fill hole at the carrier (even if you can't see the gears). That said, I've never had mine open, so this info is secondhand at best.

+1 on changing everything you can while you're in there. I skipped my crank seal because it showed no signs of leaking, and then the SOB started piddling as soon as I had it back together. Tearing it all apart isn't any more fun the second time. I don't remember messing with the spring in mine, but yeah, once the tensioner is locked down, it shouldn't be doing much. I have a vague memory of trying to set it up with the tensioner the wrong way around and things not lining up but it was a while ago. The diagrams in the FSM are likely to be more help than I am.

No, don't say why, or even what--it's fun to guess what you mean.

EL section of the service manual is your friend!

Wired up a couple cheap LED pods for reverse lights. Holy crap, I can see behind me!

No worries, good luck inside the doors!

Flushing with spirits or diesel is probably where I'd start. Because the trans is fairly simple inside (no oil pump or passages), I'd expect the milkiness to flush out much more quickly than it did from the motor.

Check the spark plug while you're at it. And yeah, sounds like the driveshaft's all good. Odd that the engine waited until that was done to act up!

Mine's at 239k and still running fine on straight 5w30. Looking forward to watching the build, and hopefully figuring out what was wrong with your 3.0. Sounds like it had been running wounded for a while.

Revenge from beyond the grave! Bet it cools better with that out of there.

I don't know if these were balanced together or apart--but it's not weight balance I'm thinking of here. The problem I'm suggesting is that a U joint is not a continuous velocity joint. Get any kind of angle on it and the driven end will speed up and slow down just a little as it goes around. Two U-joints lined up properly will cancel this out, so that the transfer and front diff spin smoothly together; two joints out of phase (clocked wrong or running at different angles) can compound the speed variation. This guy explains it pretty well.

Dang. Well, weld up some pipe and put some casters on it and you've got a couple of really nice desk chairs!

Huh. That sucks. +1 for checking your work, though I'd be surprised if you got a joint to bind bad enough to give you "scary" levels of vibration. Off center, maybe, but I'd be surprised if that was the problem if the clips fit. Did you end up pulling the splined bit apart? If it goes back together with the yokes out of phase, it'll vibrate. It should look like ]=====[ with the two ends parallel. I can't think of what front-to-back would solve. It didn't vibrate before, so if you didn't change the direction of the shaft when you had it out, your problem lies elsewhere.

You do need a converter box. The trouble is that many trucks run one 1157 bulb in either taillight, with the dim filament hooked to the parking lights and the bright filament running both the brake lights and the turn signals. Four-pin trailer wiring is set up the same so that it'll wire up easily. Pathfinders do not have brake and turn combined; brake has the bright filament of the 1157 all to itself and turn has its own separate 1156 bulb. To connect this three-filament setup to a four-pin trailer, you have to get a converter like what XPLORx4 linked. It should come with full instructions and labeling on the unit itself to make the wiring fairly straightforward.

Unfortunately Photobucket decided to go from free picture hosting to paid picture hosting, overnight, with basically no warning. They don't want money from you, they want money from whoever the pictures belong to. And they want $400/year, so don't hold your breath that the pictures are gonna come back. I have yet to find a reliable way to view those pictures, even on Photobucket's buggy pile of spam-bloated crap they call a website. Sometimes you can click the image, and it'll come up on their site (still as a placeholder), but show the user's name. Click on that and you can view their album, and possibly find the pictures you want from there. I was unable to get into the account on the thread you're talking about and suspect the account's been deleted. Also, my laptop fan is still running balls-out from the amount of crap that Photobucket tried to run on my machine, some of which is evidently still running in the background. (Edit: Turns out it was a pop-up window pulling a whopping three gigs of ram!) This video (made by a member here) might just have what you need, or at least get you started. It's been a while since I had my doors apart, but it sounds like you mean the clips that hold the metal actuator rods into the door handles? IIRC you just rotate the bottom of the clip off the vertical part of the rod (it's just clipped on), rotate it out of the way, then pull the top of the rod (where it's bent 90°) out of the clip. I'd post a picture, but I was on Photobucket too. Oh, and

Kind of cool to see matching pre/post facelift R50s side by side. Even though I know it's the same platform, the post-facelift ones always look bigger to me somehow.