Slartibartfast

How's the blind spot with that tire carrier?

Looks like the bedliner job a friend of mine did to his Blazer.

Definitely shouldn't have to pull the pitman. It was a while ago when the starter on my '95 went out (and back then I was mostly just handing other people tools) but we got it out by removing the heat shield--gave us just enough clearance to get it out one way or another.

+1 for double checking, but if both the oil pressure gauge and the idiot light (I'm assuming the sensors are separate) indicate a problem, I'm inclined to believe them. Was it doing this before you changed the oil and filter? And did it continue doing this immediately after, or do alright for a while and then develop the issue all over again?

The cut solenoid. Again, not sure if the R50 is rigged the same, but on the WD21, it's down under the throttle body, has one plug and three vac lines, and it's how the computer shuts off the EGR when it wants to.

I'm not as familiar with the R50, but that looks like a charcoal canister to me.

Yep, that should do it, just make sure the ends are the right size for your hose. It was a while ago that I did mine and I don't remember what size I used, and I don't see the filter I used for sale either.

Sounds like time to test the EGR-C, then.

I remember seeing other sites listed as possibilities, but both my '95 and '93 came from Kyushu.

BleepinJeep did something similar to a Heap recently. I don't know if the Pathfinder intake routing would be as cooperative but I guess you could run up the inner fender and punch into the cowl from the end. So long as the intake wasn't right at the bottom of the cowl or right under one of the vents (so the cowl could still drain a fair amount of water without the intake sucking it in) it looks like a good way to go. I hadn't thought about water boiling in the crankcase! That's awful. I'll bet it didn't do the bearings any favors, either.

Keep in mind that these don't really read anything--they're just pressure diaphragms and valves. The BPT is actuated by pressure, not flow. If I've got this right, and the BPT is acting as a regulator for the EGR, it should ensure that the EGR passes about the same amount of gas regardless of exhaust pressure. Pressure rises, the BPT closes the EGR a little to compensate (higher pressure but smaller opening = no change in flow). If manifold pressure drops, whether there's a leak or not, I'd expect the EGR to open a little (lower pressure but bigger opening = no change in flow). That's simplifying things, of course; I can't imagine they're perfectly matched, and besides, the vacuum source for the whole mess is the intake, so the flow rate is changing with manifold vacuum anyway. The BPT's presumably just making the relationship between manifold vacuum and exhaust recirculation a little more predictable. But you're asking about idle, and the EGR's not even supposed to be on at idle--and the BPT has nothing to do with that. There's an EGR-C (cut) solenoid that the ECU kicks on at high and low engine speeds that disconnects the EGR valve from manifold vacuum and lets the air back in, causing the EGR to close up. If your EGR valve is staying open at idle, my guess is that either your EGR-C is hooped or your EGR valve is hanging up and sticking open. Of course, this is all based on my hazy understanding of the EGR system described in the WD21 FSM, and my '93 doesn't even have a BPT valve (it was a California-only thing until late '93 or '94 IIRC). If you're trying to diagnose an idle issue on your R50, consult the EF&EC section of the R50 FSM before taking my word for anything.

Makes sense that a wet MAF would cause problems. I'll have to remember that one in case I get ambitious with a big puddle at some point. And yeah, a gas engine can take a bit of water without blowing up. Some guys use a water spray like seafoam, or run water/methanol injection to reduce temps while also raising compression. Since the water's not compressible, the air/fuel mix has to compress more, which can good to a point. Go too far and, like Citron said, you end up with a piston ramming into something it can't compress, and that's when the Kool Aid man visits your crankcase. I've always heard that you shut it off and blow it out (plugs out) rather than risk ramming it into a slug of water with the starter motor, or starting it and having it immediately ingest more water that's pooled in the intake. How did mud get in there? Did your air filter come loose or something?

Weird. AFAIK all WD21s came with the same setup, where the lock on the back goes left to unlock, right to lock, and full right to pop the glass. The service manual might have a diagram for the linkages, or you could get the missing cover and internal parts at a wrecking yard and get a good look at how it's all supposed to connect at the same time.

The bushings or the rods? Rockauto has the bushings cheap (suspension -> strut rod bushings). I've seen them called strut rod bushings, tension rod bushings, and compression rod bushings, so keep an eye out for that if you can't find them under one name. The rods, you might have to try factorynissanparts, courtesy parts, or a wrecking yard. Mine were clean enough to reuse so I didn't have to go down that road.

Good to hear you got it going! Easy mistake to make. Jumping tensioner is definitely not right, that's supposed to be locked down. Consider doing the crank seal, cam seals, and bypass hose while you're in there. I skipped the crank seal on mine because it wasn't leaking yet and it started leaking as soon as I got the SOB back together.

My understanding from the WD21 manual is that exhaust backpressure makes the BPT reduce vacuum applied to the EGR valve, causing it to close. I assume this is meant to regulate the flow rate of exhaust gas through the EGR valve, preventing high backpressure from pushing more gas past the EGR valve than the engine and ECU are expecting. But yeah, FSM is your friend here! It doesn't always explain things as well as I'd like but it gets you most of the way there.

Mine also turns the CEL on with the key on/engine off, and so did my '95. The CEL, at least as near as I can tell, is wired to the red LED on the ECU. If you watch the dash while running codes, the CEL flashes along with the red light on the ECU. So the five blinks you saw may have been the first part of the ECU flashing a code 55 (all clear) if you left it in that test mode. My suspicion is that one of the ECU's test modes turns that red light off when you're key on/engine off, and the last guy to work on your truck left it in that test mode. Then you took it out of that mode to check codes, and the CEL returned to normal operation. Or, I dunno, gremlins. Either way, sounds like you've got the idle sorted out.

The dipstick's back towards the firewall on the passenger's side. You can add fluid right through the dipstick tube with a funnel. There are two ways to drain. There's a drain bolt on the pan, but if you just drain that, you're leaving old fluid in the torque converter. The other way is to unhook one of the transmission cooler lines, stick it in a bucket, start the engine, and run it until it stops blowing fluid out, then refill through the dipstick tube and repeat until the fluid comes out clean. That's what I did on mine. Great time to add an aftermarket cooler, maybe a filter. I put a magnefine on mine while I was in there after noticing a little metal shimmer to the fluid coming out. Come to think of it, I should probably change that at some point. Setting trans fluid level is kind of a PITA because the trans has to be warmed up before it'll read right. I actually ended up overfilling mine a bit and having to drain some out using the drain plug. When I helped a friend do the fluid in his S10, we kept track of how much fluid came out (poured it into old oil jugs) and put the same amount back in--a little fiddly but it saved some screwing around after the fact. Hard 1>2 is not uncommon with these. I'm not sure why. Hopefully new fluid works to smooth it out.

EF&EC-12 has a good diagram of the TPS. I'd just hook an ohmmeter to the closed throttle position switch pins and mount the sensor so that those pins connect just slightly before the butterfly goes to dead stopped, but you could also probe the center connector and try to match the voltage graph there.

From what I've read on here, the valve reliefs on the 3.3 are cut so deep that the valves and pistons only overlap ever so slightly, so you'd have to have a valve at full lift at the same time the piston's coming up to have a problem. The smaller the overlap, the greater the chance of getting lucky, which it sounds like a lot of people do with the 3.3. Either way, good to hear yours lives again!

Yeah, it's not hard to make a battery run down with a bad stereo install. But a flat battery tends to stay flat unless recharged, so again, your description of it acting like the battery's flat and then cranking up no problem a minute later suggests that the problem's not a flat battery. I've run down car batteries several times and I've yet to have one deliver an unexpected second wind. Hopefully it's something simple.

People do like to butcher stereo wiring, but I think it would take a pretty determined butcher to screw up a radio install bad enough to have it mess with the cam sensors. Unless other things running off the same circuit as the stereo are acting up, I'd leave the stereo out of this. Acting like the battery's weak (slow crank?), then acting like it isn't makes me suspicious of a bad connection somewhere, possibly a corroded or loose terminal on the battery. I don't know how the R50 ECU reacts to its power supply going in and out but I wouldn't be surprised if it caused some issue or another.

From that distance, it looks fine! Mine was a smoker truck too, but I had a whole good interior in a parts rig so I just swapped out as many pieces as I could and washed the rest. Your way sounds much easier!

Huh. Yeah, that sounds like a fun system to try and troubleshoot! Good job making it all work right again. Speaking of which... how's the power with that setup?

Might be discontinued due to the R12 fittings. Rockauto has hoses for a '95 (they went to 134a around '93 IIRC). I have no idea if they'd bolt up, but you could probably snag a used set at the wreckers pretty cheap to check the ends for compatibility with your system.