Slartibartfast

Looks pretty clean apart from the one corner! Looks like you got a decent roof rack with it too.

Jesus that thing took a hit. Good to hear he's alright.

I had my injector rails off when I had my intake apart and didn't touch the drain plugs. Just pulled the lower rad hose, let it drain out, and had no issues with coolant. I did the water pump and timing belt at the same time, no issues there either, at least not that I can remember (nothing that caused problems).

Yeah, IIRC there was an empty plug back there on mine, too. I have heard of some rigs not having knock sensors at all. Oh, and while the intake's off, have a look at the rubber lines running under it, make sure they're in good shape. If you want to check or clean your idle air system, you'll have an easier time of that with it off too.

Sounds like it should.

I have heard that the later 3.3 starters will fit, and have a different design. Could be that. I would just go on Rockauto and pull up a picture of a 3.0 starter, and a 3.3 R50 starter, and see if one of them looks like what you've got.

I chipped the casting flash out from around the plug wells. They're supposed to drain, but I guess the crew cleaning the castings at Nissan didn't get that memo. The guy I got the idea from used a die grinder and made his pretty but a big screwdriver and a hammer did the trick for me. I was in the same boat as you as far as pulling the intake before touching the plugs due to the debris (largely mouse crap in my case) around the plugs, so hopefully the redneck port job will make my next plug change easier. I also relocated my knock sensor to the back of the driver's side head so that if I ever did need to fool with it, I could do so more easily. The harness was long enough and the threaded hole was there already. I doubt I'll ever need to screw with it, but it was quick and I didn't want to take the intake off again. (I had it off again almost immediately... to anyone comparing intake gaskets, don't get the Victor Reinz stamped steel crap. Fel-Pro worked for me.)

Auto hubs are a pain. I took mine apart and found that the clutches were worn out (way thinner than the minimum spec in the service manual). I was able to dig out a big snap ring that holds the actual engaging bits in, and it looked like if you slid one onto a CV shaft and turned the outer part with channel locks, it should extend the engagement spline bits into the locked position. Put it back together without the clutches and I'll bet it would stay locked. If it rattles out, a little JB weld or a couple tack welds should fix that. I put my malfunctioning hub back together with new grease and it went from sketchy to entirely useless--clearly the nasty old grease was the only thing making it sorta work. I replaced them with manuals and haven't had an issue since. If you want to be sure it's not the diff before you replace or jerry-rig the hubs, put the truck in 4x (or otherwise lock the front driveshaft), jack up the front, and spin one side's CV by hand. If the driveshaft is held stationary, spinning one CV (by spinning a wheel locked to it or just spinning the shaft by hand if the hub won't play ball) should make the shaft on the other side spin the other way. Or don't bother, it would be the first front diff failure I've heard of from one of these.

Does it stall if you turn the wheel to its limit at a stop? There's a pressure switch on the power steering system that tells the computer to bump the idle up when the pump is working hard--as it is when you're running it against the steering stop (full lock). Could be that your switch isn't working, and the steering pump is stalling the engine when you're off the gas and working the steering hard. Swapping belts shouldn't cause that (unless you knocked the wires off the sensor) but the old belt might've been slipping enough to prevent a stall.

The yard I went to didn't want to sell just a handle (they wanted to sell me the whole door LOL) but they're cheap on Rockauto or Fleabay. Both plastic handles on my '95 broke within a few months of each other. I bought one from Rockauto but had some fitment issues (not sure why). After the other side snapped, I didn't want to deal with plastic junk again so I ordered a set of chrome ones from eBay. I even transferred them to my '93 when I parted out the '95. Slight surface pitting after a few years but I don't worry so much about them shattering. They're fiddly as hell to do but not too bad once you've done a few of them. The door card has to come off, then the plastic vapor barrier stuff, then you should be able to see what you're working with. There are two nuts like k9sar said (a ratcheting 10mm wrench makes this a little easier) and also IIRC a little plastic clip retaining the bit of linkage that goes down towards the latch. The clip is pretty easy, fold it over on itself and the rod slides out. Getting that rod piece seated in its receiver at the bottom and in the door handle at the same time was the tricky part the first couple times I did it. Then comes putting the door card back on... a drinking straw over the lock rod to line it up helps loads but this is still my least favorite part of the process.

Fuel injection doesn't typically get vapor lock, but I think you're on the right track looking for a fuel issue. Most of those codes make sense with fuel starvation. A friend of mine's Alfa had the same symptoms when the wiring for the fuel pump was flaky. A bad connection somewhere was breaking the circuit, likely as it warmed up, and it would just crap out as it was driving down the road. We finally figured it out by checking for power at the pump when it had stalled out. I would remove the access panel under the rear carpet and check the wiring for the pump, including where the wires go into the tank, I've heard of a few people having corrosion issues there. If it all looks good, run it around the block until it craps out again, then check for power at the pump while someone else tries to start it. You may also be able to hear/feel if the pump is running.

Low beams -> switch -> relay trigger.

I've never seen a spark plug do that. Hopefully there's enough of the head left for the insert to seal.

I would just grab a couple gator clip leads and a battery and start trying bulbs. When you find a bulb that doesn't light up and the jumpers get hot, you've found your problem.

Just suitcase-connector spliced in IIRC, should be easy to find under the clamshell. My '93 has another wire spliced in there for the marker lights, probably to the alarm system.

No schematic, but if I'm remembering right... there's a black relay by the passenger's side hood hinge. A signal wire runs from that into the cab to the fog lamp switch on the console, and from there to one of the low beam wires in the steering column. The fog lights plug into a harness with a constant ground and + going to the relay. (IIRC each fog light's + feed went all the way to the relay without teeing into one wire, but don't quote me on that.) When the relay closes, it connects that line to battery + through an in-line blade fuse holder. I don't remember exactly where signal ground went, if it tapped into something else or had a ring connector or what, should be easy enough to figure out though.

I replaced the crank seal and the leaking stopped. I was convinced it was the pump, but I was told it was more likely the crank seal. I decided to try the easier fix first. I did notice when I got down to the crank seal that there was a lot of oil between the seal and the washer up against it, which only made sense if the crank seal was doing the leaking. Oil was leaking through the seal and the washer was flinging it all over the oil pump. Again, though, I couldn't see this while the belt and everything was still on.

Checked fuses?

Mine looked like it was coming from the pump too--turned out to be the front crank seal instead, with the spinning crank throwing it all over the underside of the oil pump. I was very happy to find this because the oil pump looks like a royal pain to remove.

Battery ground bolt snapped when I went to check it! With the surfaces clean, and a new bolt, nothing's changed with the lights. The running light circuit tests about 1v lower than the battery when I test at the rear lights. The front markers test low too. I tested at the switch with the lights on and it shows lower voltage than the fuse box, but not as low as it is in the back. I bypassed the switch with a piece of wire jammed in the plug, no change, so it's not the switch. Cleaned the switch because I was in there anyway and found some discoloration around the marker contacts, not sure what to make of that, but it's clearly not the problem. Checked the fuse link on the battery, nothing wrong with that. Seems like something is wrong between the fuse link and the switch, but hell if I know what that would be--I'll have to do some research and see what I can come up with. I'm thinking I might run fused + from the battery to the running light circuit at the headlight plug and see if that works--if it does I can rule out the wiring between the switch and the tail lights. All I can think of at this point is that something is drawing too much power and overwhelming the tiny little wires Nissan used for everything. On the plus side, a good scrub with 800 grit got rid of the chalky oxidation on the headlight switch, so at least something's better than it was when I started.

First I'd heard of a coated TB. Did a little digging and found a thread on BITOG talking about the drive-by-wire systems throwing a tantrum if you clean the TB. A little change in air flow is apparently enough to freak it out. Hopefully new gaskets are all yours needs!

Had a tug-of-war with a buddy's Ford. Well, alright, maybe it was more an amputation than a tug of war. But somewhere under all that RV crap is a 460-powered 28' Econoline waiting to become a ramp truck. We just have to find it.

With how much carbon I scraped out of the intake port for the EGR on mine, I would believe that. I would also be surprised if the small amount of steam that made it up the EGR pipe was enough to do anything. Worth a shot I guess.

Alright, ruled out the trailer completely. The trouble, whatever it is, is with the truck. There's a weak circuit somewhere. The trailer light convertor had its own body ground, so the body ground for the tail lights should be irrelevant to its operation. It's gotta be on the positive side. The tail lights dim slightly when the blinkers come on, and the interior lights (all LEDs) dim slightly as well. Battery is fully charged, fuse links look okay. My voltmeters are worthless for testing blinkers (analog sweeps too slow and digital refreshes too slow) but I've got an old dashboard voltmeter that's quick enough to give me some idea of what's going on, and it's slowing the rear blinkers down around 10v (at the truck harness, no converter plugged in) if I run the hazards and the running lights at the same time with the engine off. With the runners off, it looks more like 11v. On the running light circuit, the meter shows a small drop when the hazard lights are on, but it's less than a volt. At the battery, it barely moves. If I hook constant + to one of the brake/turn filaments, that light will blink opposite to the lights on the truck. Clearly not enough current to go around. Really seems like it has to be a ground but again, the convertor had its own ground and didn't rely on the harness, and it still didn't work, so I'm starting to wonder about flasher units, fuse links... I cleaned the battery terminals, checked the relevant fuses, checked a couple fuse links, no smoking gun yet. The next test I need to run is checking for power between the harness ground and the body to rule that out, then from blinker + to a known constant +... then to stare at the EL section until I figure out how all this is hooked up and what between the battery and the lights is causing problems.

Trailer lights are brand new and the bulbs look like standard 1157s to me. They light up just fine when I power up the trailer harness directly. I've run a test lead from a body ground in the truck to the ground screw on the trailer frame with no improvement. I even tried running the jumper all the way to the light housing to rule out a bad ground between the housings and the trailer frame, no change.