Slartibartfast

The US Pathfinders were all computer controlled, so you might not find many people on here who've worked with the mechanism you're dealing with, at least not on a Pathy. That said, an electronic dizzy with just two wires sounds like the Pertronix my dad and I put in our snowplow to replace the original points/condenser. This might give you some idea of what you're working with, assuming it's a similar system. I would guess that red goes to coil +, blue goes to coil -, and you don't need the condenser anymore, but I'd want to verify that before hooking stuff up and turning the key. I fried the first Pertronix on the plow by hooking it up backwards.

I'll be interested to see how yours go. I've got a spare set of CVs with one torn boot waiting for me to get around to them.

Hmm. Yeah, aircon idler is an easy check, but power steering sounds likely too. If you hold it where it's making noise, let's say 2k, and work the steering, does the noise change? The nice thing about a V-belt system is that you can remove the drive belts one by one to see which accessory is making the noise (and hopefully it is just an accessory).

I picked up a generic Trico pump off Rockauto when I got tired of limping the one in my '95. I had to butcher the plug a little to make it fit with the stock plug but it worked in the end. They do come with the proper plug end, if you want to do it that way.

I have no idea if a VG30 throttle body will fit a VG33 intake, but from what I've read, you don't keep the VG33 intake anyway. You swap in the upper intake and throttle body off your 3.0. That way, you have all the right sensors/vac lines/smog gear/idle air controls to plug into the factory harness and work with the factory ECU. $900 for just a motor sounds kinda steep, though, especially a motor that's had parts sold off it.

Wrecking yard is probably your best bet. They seem most common around '93 for some reason, if that helps any.

It's been cold and I've been distracted! The last pic is how it sits. Most of my shop time has been going towards getting the trans mounted in my dad's hot rod, keeping the snow plow running, and trying to hang a snowblower off the front of a riding mower. Hopefully things slow down this month and I can get back to this.

Good to hear the dizzy fixed it! Keep us posted on what you find.

Sounds like a score! You say it's got a '97 engine, you sure that's not a 3.3? AFAIK there shouldn't be much that won't exchange between an '88 and an '89. I would be a little wary of wiring and sensors, though, until you figure out what killed the ECU (if the ECU is in fact the problem). I say go for the LSD. I drive on wet roads and through snow a lot this time of year and it hasn't killed me even a little. Yeah, it gets tail-happy if you stand on it, but I don't stand on it when the road's slick. The few times I drove my dad's open-diff R50 I found myself spinning tires where my WD21 didn't. Not even wheeling, just starting off on gravel. I have had the LSD let me down in deep snow, but to be fair, I was pushing through wet snow up to the frame on summer tires... I probably wouldn't have made it as far as I did with an open diff. And I like my cat

Yeah, you can swap the ring and pinion, but you'll have to do some adjustment after the fact to get the gears aligned properly. I take it one rig is HG43 and the other is HG46?

Nice! I was looking through that thread the other day. Keep us posted on the rebuild, I'm curious what failed.

When I did mine, I welded a couple of pegs to a steel rod like a big metal F. I slotted the pegs into the cam sprocket and had a handle to hold the sprocket still while I removed and then reinstalled the bolt. It also made turning the camshaft to align it with the belt easier.

Nope, not good at all. You're gonna be finding toenail clippings in the carpet for ages.

Hmm. Yeah, probably something you could straighten, given enough time and skill, but it's a fair whack of extra work for something you won't really trust when it's back together. The pulley from the wreckers is the way I'd go.

Yeah, the pulley unbolts. Six bolts on the face. Note where the timing marks on the pulley were before you remove it because it can go on six different ways, and five of them are wrong--the engine won't care if it's on wrong but you'll have trouble setting ignition timing if the marks aren't aligned right. (Thinking about it, though, you could just try the light on each cylinder until you found the one that the marks were aligned to.) When I took my balancer out I used a duck's foot type where you screw long bolts into the holes in the balancer (once the pulley is off). The tool was fairly cheap and the balancer didn't put up much of a fight. Probably a wrecking yard or part-out item. How badly is it tweaked?

IIRC cranking it with your foot to the floor is flood-clear mode--cranks over without injecting fuel. I don't remember which model I read about this working on and I'm not sure if it applies to an R50. Assuming it does, it makes me wonder if you've got a slow injector leak that floods the intake with gas after you turn it off, making it hard to start until the gas drains past the rings. Seems like that would only impact the one cylinder it was leaking on, though, so I wouldn't lay money on it being that. Easy to pull the dipstick and see if it smells like gas, though.

Yeah, and probably best not to force it and break something inside. Good luck getting it out, like I said the only way I got a good look at it was when the dash was out. Hopefully there's enough room to get to it without pulling the dash or growing an extra joint in your arm.

HA-20 shows an adjuster at the compressor for the four-cylinder, but doesn't show the adjustment for the VG. The one for the VG is the bolt going down into the plate with the idler pulley on it. You also have to loosen the nut that holds the pulley on before the pulley will move. MA-10 has a diagram.

I'd be surprised if the return sucked anything in, unless maybe if the trans breather was clogged. AFAIK it just dumps into the pan.

Auto HVAC? I don't think there's any manual override for the blend door, but I haven't had to mess with it. I stared at mine when I had the dash off, moved the slider around to watch the little servo motors move, and hoped I'd never have to troubleshoot that particular system. My temp fix would be to remove the motor (if you can get to it), move the linkage until you get hot air out the vents, then zip-tie it so it stays there. Then take the motor inside and see if a little prodding will bring it back to life. I did take one of mine apart just for the hell of it and it looked pretty simple inside. It might just need the contacts cleaned.

Any bulb needs + and -, no matter the type. You do notice flickering more with LEDs than with incandescents. This is because an incandescent light has a hot filament inside that takes a second to cool down and quit glowing after power is cut. Interrupt the power for a fraction of a second and you probably won't notice. Cut the power on an LED and it goes dark instantly.

Check out EF&EC 25. No adjustment should be needed after a timing belt job unless you remove the distributor, which you shouldn't have to do. I did on mine, but only because I was pulling the intake manifold to clean the rat crap out from underneath while I was in there. I used this writeup when I did my belt, and didn't bother with a shim.

I had trouble with that too. I think the compression tester hose had a little bend in it, which was making it so the end I couldn't see wasn't going straight into the hole I couldn't see--so fiddle with the hose if if it's got a bow to it. Also make sure there isn't a chunk of something blocking it from threading in. These engines do accumulate crap around the plugs. I don't complain as much about the #6 plug since I started working on my friend's Chevys. The VG's #6 is a pain but you don't have to access it through the wheel well and there's no knuckle-splitting heat shield in the way. What I want to see is a Chevy engineer getting to the upper bellhousing bolts on an S10 Blazer without a lift.

Looks good! I did the same for the cargo light on my '95. One of these days the hatch switch on my '93 will fail and it'll get the same treatment LOL.

Yep, sounds like the usual signs of the position sensor in the dizzy crapping out. From what I've read (haven't had one fail yet) they'll do exactly what you're saying, run fine cold only to flake out when the engine warms up. Hopefully install goes quick and you don't have to spend too much time in the ice storm. Mark the rotor position before you pull the old one!