Slartibartfast

Check the fusible links by the battery + terminal.

No worries, good to hear you got it figured out!

The EL section of the service manual has a diagram of the starter circuit, so you can go through and check each thing and see where the power stops. I don't know of a digital version of the '88 manual, but I've got an '89 manual up on Dropbox that should be about the same. Does yours have the stock car alarm? I'm not sure when those started. I had an intermittent no start/weak start a while back that (somehow) came down to the alarm harness. I had already thrown a battery, a starter, an inhibitor relay, and an ignition switch at it before I thought to tear out what was left of the alarm system, and to my surprise it hasn't acted up since.

I would be tempted to remove the headliner and look for the leak from the inside, because the water might be running along the inside of the roof a ways from where it's getting in to where it's showing up. But if you're sure it's not the sunroof or the windshield seal, then yeah, makes sense it would have to be the roof rack. I have heard of people looking for water leaks by pressurizing the cab (tape up the vents behind the rear side windows, set vents to fresh air (not recirc), blower on full, windows up/doors closed), and then spraying soapy water on the outside to see where it bubbles. I haven't tried this one myself, but it seems like it should work, if it's a big leak. Certainly easier than dropping the headliner.

Check the sunroof drains.

Don't see why not. If it's been broken for a while, you may have to cut back a ways on either side of the breaks to find clean copper and fill the gap with new wire. Might've mentioned before, but the marine grade heat shrink with the hot snot inside is the good stuff.

That is a weird one! Good to hear you got it tracked down. Now I'm wondering if I left any of that harness behind when I swapped out my shocks...

I'll bet you could get to those bolts with just the upper intake removed. I recently replaced my knock sensor (which I had previously relo'd to the back of the driver's side head, inboard of the cam cover plate) without pulling the intake. If I could get to that, I'll bet you can get to these. With the intake out of the way, you might even be able to see what you're doing.

Good work tracking it down! I hate working on brakes. I would not be surprised if the booster was the whole failure, and the wheel cylinder just happened to be on its way out at the same time. Hopefully the new booster outlasts the last one.

I vaguely remember the Sony Xplod I put in my '95 not working until I plugged in the antenna. It should've had a ground already from the harness, so I'm not sure what the issue was. I didn't chase it at the time, and that was probably a decade ago. The service manual shows three fuses involved with the stereo, all in the box by the driver's left knee. 10A fuse in the middle of the top row is switched power to the head unit, 15A to the far left of the top row does the audio amps (not the problem if the head unit won't turn on), 10A third from bottom right is constant + for the head unit (for the clock and the radio memory). There should be two pins in the radio plug that get 12v+ when the key is on, and just one when it's off. I would test for power at each fuse, even if they look good. If one is popped, check that the wires in the adapter harness go where they're supposed to (I got a trailer wiring adapter that was wired wrong out of the box), and check that nothing got pinched when you bolted the new radio into place. If you have +12v on both sides of all three fuses (key on), but nothing at the plug, then there's a wiring issue between the fuse box and the plug. Again, look for evidence of something getting smashed when the radio went in.

I don't know the VQ, but I'm told a bunch of stuff changed between '01/'02 and '03/'04, enough that it may be less work to track down a later donor than to get what I'm assuming is a cable-throttle engine working in a drive-by-wire truck. (I don't know offhand when that changeover happened--if it was mid '02, and the donor was late '02, you may be in better shape than I'm assuming here.) I use the parts lookup on nissanpartsdeal a lot to work out when parts were used. Might help with working out part compatibility. CamperDan mentioned the cam phasers--look those up for '02 and '04 and see if it's the same PN. As usual I'll plug the factory service manuals. Free download from Nicoclub. EM and EC sections will come in real handy for this. There's some good info in there if you can wade through all the hand-holding for using special scan tools that you don't have. And yes, do take a bunch of pictures, both for your own reference and to help the next guy who asks the same question.

Are they still sending letters for the old rust recall (NTB11-064f)? I thought that was only for the salt states.

Unless the '94 frame was modified or damaged, or the bumper was built to work with a body lift that yours doesn't have, I would expect it to bolt right up. I don't think I've seen one like that before, so I'm assuming it's custom, or maybe a modded Jeep bumper? Looks good from what little of it I can see. I would have a look at the brackets and welds before deciding how much load to trust the receiver with, especially if it's a one-off. I haven't worked with the Nissan brush bar, but AFAIK it's just bolted to the bumper. Unless it's got additional brackets that I don't know about, I imagine it would all come off together. Remove the lights/unplug the wiring first so you're not fighting with that while trying to hold the bumper up with your knee. And yeah, it's better to host pics elsewhere and link them in, unfortunately.

Low speed could mean a lot of things. I would pull codes first, see if the computer can tell you what it's upset about. Could be something didn't get plugged back in. Could be the new engine's throttle body is slightly different from the old one, and the computer was alarmed by the sudden change, and now it thinks the throttle's broken and it's running in limp mode. I don't know which engine you're working with, or when model changes happened in your market. I'm assuming this is a like-for-like replacement rather than some crazy swap. I have read that the early VQs are pretty picky about which year you can use for replacements due to design changes.

How's the angle on the panhard rod? It doesn't need to be dead perfect parallel to the ground, but the more you lift the truck, the steeper the angle on the panhard rod, and the more the axle goes side to side as it goes up and down. I would not expect a 1" lift on its own to have screwed this up, though. Might help to have someone push the back of the truck side to side while you watch the suspension. See if anything is moving that shouldn't be.

I usually use either solder or uninsulated crimps (with a proper crimper), then apply marine-grade heat shrink (the kind with the hot snot inside) to keep them dry. If you're used to making connections that survive in a marine environment, you should be golden. If you're not sure where a wire goes/what it does, download the EL section of the '95 manual from Nicoclub. Harness routing and wire colors should help you track down what's what. The colors are pretty simple, except that Nissan labels blue as L.

No worries! Good to see you got it in the end. It is nice to have the option to turn the offending component into sparks. How's the pedal feel with the damper removed?

That is weird. Have you tried rotating the tires? Bearings and brakes OK? I'd check the driveshaft U joints while I was at it. I'm also remembering a thread I saw ages ago--think it was JamesRich? Can't find it now. Rear ratchet locker, slightly different tire sizes, rear end wobble at highway speed as his ratchet locker coped with the mismatched wheel speeds. Don't imagine you've got one of those. The LSD can bind up and chatter if it's got the wrong oil in it, though. Does it change with steering angle, load/coast, or just speed?

Stuck nuts make everything harder. Looks like it'll do!

Did you replace all that stuff and then have this issue, or did you replace all that stuff while chasing this issue? The pedal does normally get softer when the engine is running (that's the booster at work), but obviously the pumping up and bleeding down ain't right. Bad seals in the master could cause the bleeding down, but unless it's leaking externally (or into the booster), draining the reservoir, I wouldn't expect that to set the BRAKE light. I would start by checking the two switches that control the BRAKE light. There's a low fluid switch in the brake fluid reservoir (float with a magnet, reed switch underneath), and there's a switch on the side of the parking brake lever (might have to remove the console to check on that one). Make sure the switches are good, the parking brake is off, and the res is up to the full mark on the side. If you're not sure, unplug them one at a time, see which one makes the light turn off. The BRAKE light can also come on with a couple of other lights (battery and "AT oil temp" if it's automatic) if the alternator goes out, but if it's just the BRAKE light that's on, then it ain't that. From your other posts, it looks like you've got a diesel. I don't know how the power brakes work in the diesel trucks, but I would not be shocked if the vacuum system for the booster had a pressure switch controlling a warning light--possibly that same BRAKE light. I don't have the right service manual to check that. If your parking brake and reservoir switches check out, let me know and I'll dig out my '87 manual. It covers a couple of diesel engines, maybe it covers what's different with their brakes. How did you adjust the rear brakes after installing them? My understanding is that you want to back off the parking brake adjustment, adjust the shoes with the star wheels, and then adjust the tension on the parking brake cables. If the shoes are held by the parking brake cables instead of the star wheels, I'd expect a bunch of free play between the wheel cylinders and the shoes, resulting in excessive pedal travel--maybe enough to require pumping? Again, though, I wouldn't expect this to give you an idiot light. I don't think it would explain the bleeding down, either.

I don't see why not. I've used the manual 1 and 2 in high range on steep switchback roads where I would've been riding the brakes the whole way down otherwise. Never had a problem, apart from wondering why it's not grabbing third when I get back to a paved road and forget to shift back to D. That said, think about how fast you're going before you gear down. I don't know that the computer would allow you to do a money shift, but I don't know that it wouldn't. If you slam it in first at highway speed, and it does it, you're gonna put the first connecting rod on the moon.

Given it's already borked, it won't hurt anything to break it down and see what let go. If it's built like the 720 damper in the thread you linked to, I would expect to find the piston cup either cracked or chewed up by corrosion in the bore. I'd be surprised if that seal was available specifically for this, though you might get lucky with a rebuild kit for a master cylinder with the same size of bore. But yeah, I'd probably just bypass it. That Nissan connector looks like an easy way to go, assuming the hard lines come out of the damper intact. The listing says it's M10x1 invert flare, so if you don't want to wait for shipping, you may be able to find a similar union/joiner locally. Just make sure the union is invert flare, not bubble like old VWs.

Intermittent issues are always a PITA to track down! And then when you fix it, you're left wondering if you actually fixed it, or if it's just off the fritz for now.

That'll be why it's not fitting up, then. You could swap in the whole diff from the D21, if the ratio is right, but that would be a lot of work for a weaker diff. Better to find the V6 diff/axle and do it right. I have a 4.6 ratio V6 front diff sitting in the corner, but I can only imagine what it would cost to ship that chungus over the border.

I would think the loud click is the starter engaging but not starting, which would point to the starter itself--but, yeah, starting right up when you wiggle the shifter sounds like a neutral safety switch issue. I would check whether you get the same click if you try to start it in gear, and see if the same wiggle trick works the next time it acts up. I had an intermittent no start/weak start issue with mine for a while that turned out to be wiring between the switch and the starter (old alarm system). I never would've expected a bad connection there to cause slow starts, but none of the other stuff I replaced fixed it, and it hasn't acted up once since I got the old alarm out of there.