Slartibartfast

The first thing I would do is make sure that the shifter goes through its full range of motion (from 2H to 4L and back again). I've heard of similar issues where people have swapped in a transfer from a different platform (made for a different floor pan) or mixed and matched the linkage and the lockout plate. Either the shifter hits the floor, or the lockout stops the shifter in the wrong place. Given yours is all WD21 parts, and worked previously, I would guess something didn't go back together quite right (assuming you had that linkage apart?), so you're shifting from neutral to 4L when it looks like you're shifting from 2H to 4H. I can take a picture of the linkage on mine for reference if that would help. I've also heard of people having the console apart, moving the shifter to get it out of the way, and being shocked to find no drive afterwards--because they forgot they put it in neutral. I may have done this myself at some point. If the transfer is in neutral, putting the auto trans in park (or leaving a manual in gear in gear) will not hold the truck. This is both a way to rule out the transmission, and something to watch out for if you're working on uneven ground--don't run yourself over with your own truck. I am of course assuming that your rear driveshaft isn't sitting in the corner laughing at you.

I have never cracked an RE4R01A open, much less rebuilt one. But I've seen enough questions about what's different between them that I figured it was about time I went down a service manual rabbit hole on this topic. The short version: VG and VQ RE4R01As are not the same. Even within each group, there are multiple variants shown. I have no idea which variant(s) the rebuild kits are meant to cover, but I would start by working out how many clutches yours has, and how many clutches the rebuild kit includes. The long version: The number of drive/driven clutches in each pack is laid out in the SDS at the end of the AT section of the service manual, so I looked at a few of those to compare them. Each manual shows multiple "codes" of transmission. The code is the last five digits of the part number for the transmission assembly. Go to NissanPartsDeal, punch in your VIN (or year/model/options), look up an automatic transmission assembly, and check the last five digits of its PN against the codes below. If it's not there, check the SDS in the '96 manual specifically, or see if the listing shows a superseded part number, and check the code for that one. I expected the first five digits to be the same for each part. They are not. Looking up which vehicle each code fits is therefore more difficult than it has any right to be, which is why I only bothered for the first four. '95 W/D21, codes 49X02 (31020-49X02, 2WD), 49X03 (31020-49X03, also 2WD), 45X60 (31020-45X60, VG/2WD), 45X72 (31000-45X72, VG/4WD) Reverse: 2 drive, 2 driven High: 4 drive and 4 driven for the first two codes, 5 and 5 for the last two Forward: 5 and 5 for the first two, 7 and 7 for the last two Overrun: 3 and 5 Low/reverse brake: 6 and 6 '97 R50, codes 44X82 or 44X20 Reverse: 2 drive, 2 driven High: 5 drive, 5 driven Forward: 6 drive, 6 driven Overrun: 3 drive, 5 driven Low/reverse brake: 7 drive, 7 driven '02 WD22, codes 43X64, 4EX01, 4EX06, 4EX67, 4EX68, 4FX07. First three are VG33E only, last three are VG33ER only. Reverse: 2 drive, 2 driven High: 5 drive for all, 5 driven VG33E, 6 driven VG33ER Forward: 6 and 6 on the first one, 7 and 7 on the second third and fourth, 8 and 8 on the last two Overrun: 3 and 5 Low/reverse brake: 7 and 7 VG33E, 8 and 8 VG33ER '03 R50, codes 4EX74, 4EX75, or 4EX76 Reverse: 3 drive, 3 driven. High: 5 drive, 6 driven. Forward: 4EX74 has 7 drive and 7 driven, the other two have 8 drive and 8 driven Overrun: 3 drive, 3 driven Low/reverse brake: 8 drive, 8 driven Again, I would look up what's in the kit vs what the code says you need. Hopefully they include enough bits to rebuild any of the variants over the years it's meant to fit. I don't know if anything else changed enough between the two to potentially cause you problems. Again, I'm not a transmission guy. If you're on the FB page, see if you can find what Elim Naelcm posted about his transmission. IIRC he Frankenstein'd a VQ R50 RE4R01A to work in his TD27-powered WD21, so if anybody would know, it's him. I haven't seen him around in a while, though. There was also a guy here who rebuilt a WD21 box, but I don't remember his name, and again I don't think I've seen it in quite a while. I also vaguely remember seeing an R50 trans rebuild on Youtube once--you might look that up and see if they mention which kit they used.

That does look a bit like an R/C car body with holes drilled for LEDs.

Nicely done! Almost looks like it came that way. Yeah, I imagine the ballasts wouldn't appreciate that. Maybe for the best though, given how bright the low beams are!

Reusing the old ones would probably be fine, but for the price, I decided not to trust my luck. Task failed successfully! Got a little snow on the hills, thankfully none in my way yet. I'm sure it's coming, though. And with it, a gaggle of broken snowblowers...

2WD and off-road capability are a tough combo, but yes, LSD should help a lot. I have the LSD in mine and have no complaints about it. Much better than an open diff, but still good road manners. If you're looking for an actual locker, selectable and ratcheting lockers do exist for these, but they ain't cheap, and you will have to learn how to set up gears on an H233B, or find someone who does. To get the LSD, you can swap the entire axle assembly, or just the 3rd member. The axles are a little different depending on which brakes they've got. Drum has single-row bearings and a thrust block in the diff; disk has double-row bearings and no thrust block. I think you can swap 3rds between the two, but you would have to swap that block in or out. If you have drums, and want disks, I would grab a complete disk rear axle assembly (get the parking brake cables too!) rather than playing mix-and-match. Otherwise I'd look for an axle with the same brakes as yours and just swap the 3rd. If you swap 3rds in a drum axle, check your axle shaft end-float afterwards. You may need to swap some shims around to keep the wheel bearings happy. (This adjustment is covered in the service manual.) The bolt pattern on the 3rd member changed in '89, so look for a '90-'95 donor. WD21 (Pathfinder) or D21 (Hardbody) 3rds should be the same AFAIK. Four-cylinder trucks got the C200 rear end, so watch out for that (make sure the diff you're pulling looks like yours). Also check the gear ratio. Should say HG43 or HG46 on the data plate near the wiper motor. (Might be worth swapping in deeper gears if you plan to run larger tires.) Most of the later trucks have 33-spline axles (ours are 31-spline), so don't bother with those. Download the service manual ('90 off Cardiagn.com if yours is square-dash, '95 off Nicoclub if yours is round-dash) and check out the RA and PD sections (rear axle and propshaft/diff). This writeup also covers the H233B LSD, specifically building a later one up to the higher breakaway torque found in the W/D21--less useful in your case given the axles you'll be looking at already have the good stack, but still useful to see how it all comes apart and what makes it work. It is possible to stack it a little tighter than stock (My1Path played around with that a while back), but it sounds like you end up with a full spool and/or broken parts if you take it too far. If you're not used to driving with LSD, keep in mind that it does tend to make the truck a little tail-happy on slick surfaces, which may be why the LSDs were nerfed in the later trucks. Don't forget the oil additive! I used a tube of CRC's limited slip goo in mine, mixed with conventional 80W90. I have heard of them chattering and breaking stuff if run with straight oil. I have also heard that they don't grip for crap with synthetic oil, which is why I used conventional in mine.

The joy of changeover years. Good luck!

02/00 would be February of 2000, right? I would be surprised if VQ/VG exhaust interchanged. I would look up the OE exhaust parts for your rig on NissanPartsDeal, and then look up the same parts for one of the years the kit is supposed to cover, and see for yourself if the PNs changed. Then see if you can find actual pictures. Or compare the gaskets--if they're the same, then the flanges should be too.

That spot's never gonna rust! I'm not super familiar with the underside of the R50, but I see some plumbing in that picture. If those are the transmission cooler lines, they would be my first suspect. Could be where they connect to the trans, could be a spot rubbed or rusted through, could be a loose hose clamp, could be a rubber section giving out. If there's tranny fluid on top of that plate, I would expect to find the leak somewhere over it, or somewhere uphill of it, probably running down a harness or a hose to get there. If there's so much muck everywhere that you can't tell, clean the area as much as you can, run it for a bit, and see what gets oily again first. A friend of mine had a hell of a leak on her Dodge that turned out to be the park/neutral switch. The switch itself was leaking around the electrical connections, and fluid was running from there to the side of the case, down to the pan, then dripping onto the cooler lines, and finally dripping on the exhaust. I was starting to suspect the pan gasket was bad until I unplugged the switch and found ATF behind it.

Unfortunately I don't think you're going to find mail-order new seats that'll bolt up. If the seats are just worn out, I would try and find a set of newer R50 seats in better shape. Maybe have used parts shipped, or meet someone halfway if they're parting one out? I've read that the left/right R50 seat bottoms are interchangeable, so if you can't find a good driver's seat, or you only need the bottom, I'd look for a passenger's bottom instead. Should be easier to find one in good shape. I did something similar on my '93. The WD21 seats do not interchange as easily, so I had to tear to seat bottom down to its frame and swap over just the foam pad from the donor. It was still worth it! The old foam was so bad that the bolster was dropping shreds of itself into the seat track. It is totally possible to swap in seats from something else, but you'll have to do a little fabrication to make it happen. Zed put Mustang seats in his WD21 and seemed pretty happy with them. WOT put Acura seats in an R50 (no pictures, unfortunately). Looks like your early R50 doesn't have airbags in the seat backs (not sure what year that changed, or if Canada and the US are the same there), so you don't have to worry about disabling the SRS if you do swap seats. If you get seats with airbags in them (might be hard to find used seats without them anymore), I would at least tape up the airbag connector for peace of mind. And if they have heaters in them, make damn sure you know which plug is which before you wire them up!

Good to hear you got it, though I would do some digging into that fuse setup to see what's making lousy contact. I lost the headlight circuit one night when a cheap in-line fuse holder that I'd used for my relay harness straight-up melted. Luckily the fog lights still worked.

The '97 R50 FSM (free download from Nicoclub) shows these ratios: 1 3.580 2 2.077 3 1.360 4 1.000 5 0.881 Reverse 3.636 The '90 FSM (free download from cardiagn.com) lists different ratios in first and second for the 2WD and 4WD slushboxes. For 2WD (four-cylinder or V6): 1 2.785 2 1.545 3 1.000 4 0.694 Reverse 2.272 Looks like your overdrive with the manual is much less aggressive than the overdrive in the slushbox that you swapped out. This is likely why the 4WD trucks tend to have 4.3 ring and pinion gears with the manual, 4.6 with the auto. What's your axle ratio? Should say on the tag in the engine bay, by the wiper motor. HG something. The '97 trans will have a speed sensor rather than the speedo cable drive you need for the '88 (assuming you haven't done a round-dash swap). I assume you could fit the speedo cable drive from the old trans to the new one, though I have heard that they can be a bugger to remove. Be very careful with the gear on the end, sounds like they're not fun to track down replacements for.

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.