Slartibartfast

Unbolted the rearmost exhaust hanger, jumped on the pipe a few times, put the hanger back together. No more exhaust rattle against the tow bar!

Manual hubs or auto? And does the hub lock up properly when it's doing this? You can get the auto hubs to bang a little if you're spinning the rear end when they engage, but it's not really a click. I haven't found the manual hubs to make any noise, though you might check and make sure the bolts haven't backed out or something. Honestly your issue sounds more like a CV going bad.

Looks good! How deep did you have to grind to get the deep dents in the first pic out?

Ah, I see. Yeah, I would imagine no temp sensor would give the climate brain the impression that the inside of the truck is ludicrously cold. You could probably get away with running the sensor without the fan (might not be as reliable though), or splice in a little 12v computer fan to replace the squeaky factory one.

That is an odd one. It does sound like the problem has to be between the cable and the trans. Did you check just the gear for the cable, or the gear in the trans that turns it as well? I haven't heard of one of those going out but it would explain why the speedo cable isn't getting driven. What I did when mine quit on me was remove the cluster and drive it around the yard like that. The cable spun, which told me the problem was between the cable and cluster. Turned out I hadn't clipped the cable end into the dashboard properly (I'd taken the dashboard out recently), so it wasn't engaging the cluster properly. Might be a good test for yours to verify that the trans isn't driving the cable.

Factory service manuals are here. Not in Spanish, but better than nothing.

Leaves and twigs didn't remove the low/intermediate blower motor speeds. However, the resistor pack you remove to clean out the HVAC box (the one that sets fire to the leaves and twigs that accumulate there) is where I'd start. That's what gives you different speeds for the blower motor. The high speed setting bypasses it. Lower speeds run through various combinations of the resistors inside to limit current and thus fan speed. It's behind the glovebox. I hear you on wanting the manual HVAC. My '95 (parting out) had manual, the '93 that I've almost got back on the road has auto, and I did vaguely consider swapping systems until I had the dash out and saw how much work that would be. It's kind of cool to see how all the actuators and stuff work, but moving a lever is much easier than tearing the dash out to troubleshoot that mess.

Just don't go after that EGR pipe with torque alone, that's what sheared most of the threads off my old one.

My dad's '03 used a quart every 1000 miles. We never did figure out why. It still made good power when he sold it. Our research at the time suggested that oil consumption on these isn't all that rare, though I know a lot of guys on here run them without issue. Maybe it had eaten its swirl valve screws. I never liked the electric throttle, but it didn't seem to bother my dad (except for the time it malfunctioned), so I guess that's more a personal preference.

Sounds like torque bind to me. 4H makes the front and rear driveshafts turn at the same speed. When you go around a corner, the front end covers more ground than the rear, so the front driveshaft tries to turn faster than the rear. AWD rigs have clutches, a center diff, or a viscous coupling to allow this. Part time 4x4s generally* don't, and rely on the wheels slipping a little to make up the difference. If you're using 4x on a slick or loose surface as intended, this works fine. Try it on pavement and it binds up as the front end fights against the rear end and makes the diffs bind up. Usually the weak link is still traction and one of the tires will slip a little if you force the truck to move. Sometimes (especially if it's had a lot of this abuse) the weak link is the transfer case, a CV joint, or one of the diffs. Like Beatup said, try it on wet grass or something, it should do fine there. *The one exception is the Auto setting on the ATX14A transfer case that some of the later rigs came with. If you put the 4x4 dial to Auto, the transfer acts like the clutch AWD setup in some Subarus, cutting in 4x only when the drive wheels start to slip. It's not a bad idea if you're dealing with a mostly clear road with patches of ice or something similar. Put the dial to 4H and it should lock the shafts together the same as the most other part-time transfers.

Interesting. Check the soft brake line where it meets the hard line and the hard line if the soft line's alright. It might be hard to pinpoint the leak since the area will be wet all over, but maybe if you have someone pump the brakes while you look it'll show itself more clearly. That's how I found the leaky plug on my MC.

I haven't dealt with this personally, but I would suspect that it's not just water conducting electricity. Water, road dirt, corrosion from the wires where water's gotten into the cracked insulators, seems like you could pass some current through that. I seem to remember an ETCG video where he found some current flow through the layer of dirt on top of his car battery. I haven't stared at it recently, but IIRC all the fuel pump and sender connections are fairly close together on top of the pump. It wouldn't have to make a dead short, it just has to draw enough juice to add onto the fuel pump's current draw and overwhelm the fuse. It is interesting that the pump didn't come back immediately with a new fuse, but didn't blow the new fuse either. That would have me suspecting either a loose connection or a fault with the pump itself. Have you pulled up the access hatch to see if there's anything obvious? I did deal with a bad fuel pump connection once on a friend's Alfa. We'd drive a ways, the engine would quit, we'd check various things, and then it would restart and we'd think we'd fixed it. A few miles later it would crap out again. Near as I can tell, some part of the fuel pump harness was getting hot and losing contact, then regaining contact as it cooled. When we finally checked for power at the pump and found none, we hotwired the pump from the headlight circuit and all was well (until the headlight switch melted). Interestingly, my friend re-wired the pump later and found that it blew fuses, suggesting that the power demands of the pump might've been part of the problem.

... a loud squeezing sound? I'm just imagining the sound of trying to empty a ketchup bottle...

It takes four or five strong men to drown it?

Hopefully you've figured this out by now... if not, here you go.

http://www.nicoclub.com/FSM/Pathfinder/

Well, update three years later... apparently how I showed above is not a good way to do it. I went to swap the boot into my '93 and it's torn again, with a little dryness/stress cracking here and there as well. I'm not sure I want to drop another $30 + shipping right now. Anyone found a redneck home replacement for this part?

Any codes?

Yep, you can get relocation blocks. Installing one of those is on my "eventually" list just to get the filter somewhere easier to access. It's a little tight even with stock exhaust!

I think you're on the right track with the VSS going out. The sensor for the temp gauge is located on the aluminum coolant neck bit where the upper rad hose meets the engine. There are two sensors there, one for the computer and one for the gauge. The smaller one with the single wire (and the big rubber thing instead of a proper plug) is the one for the gauge. Look for corrosion, check for open-circuit with an ohmmeter. The spade connector on mine had actually come loose from the rivet just enough to turn by hand, which I'm guessing wasn't helping the temp regulation any. If you suspect the wiring or the gauge, I'm pretty sure the temp gauge should peg out on the hot side if you short that sensor wire to ground (key on).

It would probably fit in with the glass recycling if you drove over it enough times!

Sorry, different guy... who apparently also read the Hitchhiker's Guide.

I've read that about front-end alignment, but not about wheel balancing.

The magnet won't help much with brass, but I'll bet it would find something else to stick to in there and be even more difficult to remove. Maybe try a piece of thin rubber tubing hooked to a vacuum cleaner? If you put pantyhose or something between the hose and the vacuum, you can check afterwards to see if it actually caught anything.

The angle sensor is built into the distributor and seems to be a common source of issues on these. You can remove it (mark where the rotor points first so you can get it back in right) and spin it to see if the bearing's alright. Check the MAF plug and wiring, pull the MAF itself, check the filaments for grime, clean very carefully with solvent that won't leave a residue. I've used isopropyl alcohol on the corner of a rag with good results. When the coolant temp starts reading wrong, the fuel mix gets weird. Again, check the plug first. I think the FSM lists the normal resistance vs temperature for a good sensor.