Slartibartfast

That sucks! Mine ended up being the crank seal, but given that you just had the whole thing apart, who knows. Hopefully it's an easy fix.

I suspect it's mostly corrosion or dirt that does them in. There's such a small point of contact between the terminal ends and the fuse that it wouldn't take much crud in between to start turning amps into heat. Whatever the cause, losing my headlights while driving home late was enough to make me swear off the buggers for good!

Keep an eye on that bug guard if you park under trees. The PO of mine put a bug guard on it, let it fill with wet pine needles, and left it to fester, with predictable results for the paint. Hopefully the later ones are better designed to shed whatever falls behind them.

If you want to tap into them to switch accessory lights, you can tap into the wiring where it meets the switch (under the clamshell on the steering column). That's what I did. I've got mine rigged up so that one set of headlight contacts (the switch actually has separate high/low contacts for each side) goes to my homebrew headlight relay harness, and the other set goes to the switches and relays for my fog and driving lights. If you're looking for a power feed, just run a fused line off battery +, the tiny little wires going to the headlights are only marginally good enough for what they're already doing. And use a proper blade fuse holder, I've melted two of the plastic ones with the glass fuses.

If they all worked one day, and then the next they're all out, I'd start with the dimmer switch. Bulbs burn out but they rarely have the coordination to all go together.

LOL glad to be of service. Looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with!

Always nice when it's a cheap fix!

Should fit back to '88 (IIRC the '87 had a three-speed auto), and forward to the end of the VG33 in mid 2001. Sorry to hear about the frame rot, the same thing got my '95.

Huh. Well, good to hear it's starting properly now.

If the valves were loose, I'd expect the motor to burn a ton of oil. Also, like Citron said, loose valves wouldn't change their behavior with higher octane gas. The only thing octane rating should change is preignition. Having it only happen at low revs makes me think you might have a vacuum leak that's leaning out the mixture.

200 miles later... damn, that sucks! Seems odd though that the gears it won't catch are all the ones you pull back for. Before you write off the trans, I'd pull the boot back and check to see if something's just blocking the shifter, or if your clutch job finished off a trans mount or something and the shifter rod is fouling against the floor. IIRC your donor options for the MT are pretty much any first-gen Pathfinder or Hardbody with the VG30 or any of the Nissan trucks with the 3.3 (early R50, Xterra, Frontier). The later manuals (post '95) had the fill hole moved up a little so you don't have to pull the shifter to fill them up properly, for what that's worth.

I had a similar issue with my '95. It was intermittent, but when it was acting up, it would stall at stop signs, or even sometimes when I was slowing down for a sharp turn (which made losing power steering that much more exciting). Messing with the MAF and TPS wiring and then restarting it usually cleared it up for a while. I never figured out exactly what was behind it. I suspect the TPS or its connector was to blame--it's got a switch inside that tells the computer when the throttle's closed so the computer knows it needs to control the idle, and I suspect that switch wasn't doing its job. Then again, it could just as easily have been a problem with the idle air circuit, something in the EGR, or any number of other things. Whatever was wrong never had the decency to fail completely so I could track it down. I would expect a vacuum leak to cause a constant problem, not an occasional one, but it's worth a look. Or just replace the vac lines and get it out of the way, since vac line is cheap and changing them is pretty easy. With the O2 unplugged, the ECU should change the air/fuel ratio a little, so having the idle change a little when you unplugged that doesn't necessarily suggest a problem. If you want to rule the sensor in or out, there is a test mode for the ECU where it'll flash the green LED in sync with the operation of the O2 sensor, allowing you to check whether (and how well) the O2 is working. There's a step-by-step in the service manual.

Much better! Not sure what the last guy was thinking with the paint choices. I've been running no clamshell since I put my dash back in--the old clamshell was in such bad shape it didn't seem worth reinstalling. One of these days I plan to build something a little more rugged to replace it.

Should be a one-way clutch like a bike. If you can turn the pinion both ways without turning the shaft it's hooked to, then yeah, that's not right.

LOL good to hear it was a simple solution!

My understanding from screwing with other starters is that the solenoid gets power first, its plunger pushes out the shaft with the pinion on it, and when the pinion is out far enough to engage the flywheel, that same plunger runs into the electrical contacts that send power to the starter motor. It sounds like your contacts are engaging the motor before the pinion can engage the flywheel properly. The spinning pinion won't catch the stationary flywheel, and when it tries, you get the ching sound. I'd take the new solenoid (and the old one, if you've still got it) apart, compare them, look for anything obviously wrong, and then try to reposition the contacts or add shims or whatever you need to do to increase the plunger's throw before the contacts come together. The pinion should be damn near all the way out before the motor chooches. It could also be that the teeth on the pinion (or flywheel, like snowboard said) are so chewed-up that they would have to engage deeper than normal to grab. You could probably tell that just by looking at it. Given the limited throw on your bench test, though, my money's still on the contacts in the solenoid. I did have the clutch in the pinion fail in my '95. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what went. It engaged the flywheel just fine (no ching sound, no grinding), but when the starter motor kicked on, it made a godawful squealing noise like a drill bit having a bad time.

Huh. So it's fully bright until you hit 50, then it goes dim immediately. Bizarre. I would expect flickering if this was a wind issue, and having wind suddenly be a problem at a specific speed (and an even number at that) seems unlikely. Bending back on the mounts is possible, though I'd expect you to notice it flickering as it buffeted around in the wind. I also wonder if it might be picking up vibration from the truck and it just happens to hit the right frequency at 50 to get the bar wobbling around enough to spread the light and make it seem dimmer. If the lightbar is easy to dismount, I'd throw it in the footwell (maybe wrap a bag around it so it doesn't blind you) and then go hit 50 again. If it doesn't dim, your problem is mechanical. If it still dims, I'd bet on electrical issues. (Another good test would be to check for voltage across the light bar--as close to the bar as possible so you'll catch any issues with your wiring. If the voltage drops when the light dims, it's definitely electrical.) Where's the light grounded? I'm thinking along similar lines to what Citron suggested, that it's sharing a flaky ground with something else that draws power when you hit 50. A while back this guy reported that his JDM Terrano had some kind of warning buzzer built into the cluster that kicked on at 50. He reported 50 MPH, not your 50 KPH, and I've never heard of anyone else dealing with that same buzzer, but I figured I'd throw it out there anyway on the off chance it's a Terrano thing and you've grounded the light bar to something questionable in the dash. Even if you're pretty sure of your ground, you could run a test lead from it to another known good ground just to rule out the ground as your issue. The only other dumb idea I've got right now is that something's causing interference in your electrical system--not necessarily a load, just electrical noise that's confusing the driver circuitry for the LEDs. I consider this about as long a shot as the speed buzzer, but if you run out of theories that make sense, you could try testing the light bar off a separate 12v source (lawn tractor battery or something). If it still dims at 50, then there's that dumb idea ruled out.

Looks good. Why the beveled ends on the bar though? Seems like an awkward thing to cut.

Wow. That sucks. I don't know what would cause that, other than a defect with the new pump or something getting sucked into it. Maybe it wasn't tempered properly? At least the damage is limited to the pump.

Provided the nut in the other lane is doing the same.

Photobucket really is a dumpster fire. It used to work pretty well, so of course they updated it and made everything look slick but not work. I remember someone brought up a better option a while back and I thought, I should look into that, but then I never got around to it. Buggy-style could be fun, especially if you've got another one to keep nice.

As some of you may have suspected, the top of an ammo can is hard on the elbows and gets hot when the sun's on it. The stock console lid is too narrow. The only logical solution was to walk through a wrecking yard with a friend and an ammo can lid checking each rig for a console lid that would fit. There was one in an 80s Camaro or Trans Am (looked like this) that fit nicely but was too rotten to use. Second place for fitment was the console cover from a Lexus ES300, probably third-gen judging by the pictures on Wikipedia (we didn't bother lifting the hood). It's a little longer than it needs to be but the width is just about perfect, and unlike the GM part, it was in good enough shape to take home. Don't mind the gold anti-seize-looking stuff on it, the PO of the Lexus left some makeup in the console and apparently it popped. It cleaned up pretty well with some alcohol. With the inside plastic tray popped out, the latch unscrewed, and the little plastic standoffs nibbled out with side cutters, the upholstered part fits snugly over the can lid. I still like how well that Camaro cover fit, but after looking at pricing for new ones, I think the $5 the wreckers let this go for is more my speed. The color's even reasonably close to the color of the seats. The rest of the console still needs a lot of work. I'll get back to it eventually.

Well, if we're doing brand acronyms, here are my favorites: F****r Only Runs Downhill God's Mechanical Curse

I found a padded cover for my ammo can console from a Lexus ES300. Getting classy up in here. I mean, yeah, it's going on an ammo can mounted with bedframe, but still. Nothing says luxury like not smashing your elbow. And then I found a rat with hooves on my way home. Dumb blighter was standing in the other lane, looking towards the shoulder, and decided at the last minute to turn around and throw itself in front of me. One broken signal, one broken driving light, and of course the bumper jammed the fender into the tire, but it doesn't look like anything too important got hurt. I'll pull it straight tomorrow, and start thinking more seriously about building a better bumper.

Huh. I've always thought my rig's backing visibility wasn't too bad. Then again, I learned to drive in a CRV, so maybe my standards just started low. The D21 power mirrors look like they're the same as the Pathy ones, but the manual mirrors are a different style. I doubt the glass is any bigger but the brackets look like you could bodge bigger mirrors (from another make/model or generic) onto them more easily and cleanly than you could modify the cast alloy chunks the power mirrors mount with. I have occasionally considered a backup camera for dealing with trailers. That might be your best bet, if you can find a good place for the screen. And on the off chance you were considering the cheap fisheye stick-ons, don't. I tried one once (off a parts car so luckily I didn't pay anything for it) and actually pulled over to remove the thing. It took up a surprising amount of the mirror and caught glare like crazy.