Slartibartfast

Bought a new gas tank and new bolts to hold it up with... the fun part will be extracting the three bolts that snapped off when I tried to remove them. At least the tank won't be in my way!

Seat heaters were an option on these. I think the LE had it standard with the leather seats. IIRC if you find a set of heated seats, and the switches/harness, you can just plug them in, put the fuse in, and there you are. On my SE there are two blanking plates on the center console where the switches would go, and the Seat Heat fuse slot is empty. It seems to me like a great place to tap in a radio or something that you want fused but don't want to bother with an in-line fuse holder for.

You might try adjusting the throttle position sensor. I found this in the EF&EC section of the service manual, to which there's a download link somewhere around here. (I had a link, but it quit working. Anybody got a current one?) A misadjusted TPS might explain some of the lousy shifting and lack of power. Here's a screenshot from EF&EC page 12:

If you can leave a quarter inch or so of the old wire crimped in, you could just solder a new wire to it. Of course if you're going to solder to it, you might as well just cut out the corroded section and patch the new wire in. Or you could hit a junkyard and see if you can find a harness that hasn't been abused.

I don't know about R50s, but on the first gen Pathfinders, poor running after warmup is sometimes due to the coolant temp sensor crapping out. This can cause the engine to run rich, which can in turn cause problems with catalytic converters. Also, I'm pretty sure the 2012 "pathfinder" was the first to have a CVT, at least in the US. I assume yours has the four-speed automatic, and the sticker on the wiring stands for something else. (You've got a shifter on the floor that goes P R N D 2 1, right?) What do you mean by not getting results with the Dexron III?

My dad had a local shop fab up a new stock-spec exhaust for mine but I don't remember what it came to. The truck seemed to pick up a little power, and it got a whole lot quieter to drive. Excessive heat is pretty bad for representative democracies, too.

The stereo/tape/CD deck in my dad's R50 is twitching out. It periodically freezes up and won't respond to inputs, and when it does this, it refuses to turn off. Turn off the ignition, it's still on. Pull the key out and walk away from the truck, it's still on. The only thing that'll turn it off is pulling the fuse. When we put the fuse back in, it goes back to behaving normally, except that it's forgotten its presets and has to check all its CD slots. I searched around and found some cases of radios staying on in newer vehicles with faults in something called a BCM, but nothing about the radio freezing up. Has anyone had an R50 stereo do this? We'll probably just swap out the head unit, but if there's an easier and cheaper fix, I'd love to hear it. For now I've ghetto rigged it with a Reset button in place of the fuse.

Measure the bar?

Looks great!

The clips for them are pretty pathetic. I finally gave up on mine and just ziptied the vents to the sheet metal.

Does the Pathy have a trailer hitch? My family doesn't have a pickup anymore, but my dad bought a pickup trailer (basically the back half of a Ford Ranger with a trailer tongue welded to it) that he can tow with his R50. It's worked out pretty well, and IIRC it was cheap too.

IMO I don't see much reason to go for that plant. The transaxle looks like it'd be a pain to set up. You'd have to get the front axles to work with the Pathfinder CVs, and figure out what the front diff ratio is to match it to the rear end (if matching gears are available). It's AWD (so not much use unless it's got a center locker), and with the way the trans is built onto the motor there's no way it would take a conventional trans setup. Also, there's no warranty from that seller on diesels. Anyway, the engine's smaller than standard equipment for the diesel Pathfinders (the TD27, of which I see a few on Fleabay). A TD w/trans would be as close to bolt-on as it gets. One guy swapped his TD27 for a bigger diesel, but I can't remember what it was called. I think it was a 3.2L? Another guy was talking about putting a Cummins 4BT in a Pathy but I don't think the thread went anywhere.

That's one knackered diff. I'd expect to find more stuff on the magnet from a rear end that knackered, though. How do the sides of that little piece look? I'd expect a piece of a friction disk to be smooth on both sides, whereas a chip from a gear tooth or something would be rough on one side. I would also expect a clutch chunk to be of uniform thickness. Given the radius on the edge, my money's on clutch chunk.

Looks sharp!

Looks like a gutless Xterra to me.

First off, let me just say that the only real engine work I've done was on a rototiller. This is not experience speaking. Guys on here who've done VG33 swaps will likely have better advice. That said... 1. My understanding is that the headers will fit fine, though the stud holes will require drilling. 2. If you decide on a junkyard motor, give it a look over before buying. See what the oil looks like, and look under a valve cover if you can. How it's been kept up is likely more important than the number of miles. 3. Looking at Mr. 510's swap thread again, he says the VG30 and 33 heads are the same basic casting but with the smaller exhaust studs. I imagine he had the VG30 ones laying around the shop, and given the rust damage in his VG33's bores, it's possible that the VG33 heads were more mucked up than he wanted to deal with. My understanding is that most VG33 swaps keep their heads. Just the VG33 swap with VG30 cams would be a much easier/cheaper build. The VG34 requires the VH45 pistons, mill work to the pistons, block bore+hone, and different rods or specially made bushings for the stock rods, on top of the stuff you need already. It makes sense if you have a collection of parts and your own machine shop, but otherwise it seems like a lot of effort and $ for a 0.1L displacement gain.

+1 on the tank bolts being a PITA. I busted two of the four that hold the skid on (both back ones) through a combination of frustration, corroded threads, what looked like old locktite, the three foot cheater bar I put on my ratchet, and the fact that I couldn't keep the ratchet square on the bolt. I haven't found the leak on mine yet. The underside looks just fine. I put some superglue around the breather tube coming out the top of the tank, and this seems to have cut the smell a little... when this tank's empty I'll drop it and get the bugger pressure tested.

I remember seeing a HB on here with a frame so rusty it looked like it went down with the Titanic. IIRC it was rusted all the way to the front fenders. The guy cut it up and rebuilt it, amazingly enough. Maybe it comes down to maintenance. The average pickup truck owner thinks to hose out the frame now and then, but the average SUV owner doesn't?

You should cover or plug the intake holes with masking tape or wadded up shop rags or something to prevent gunk (or tools) from falling in while you're working on the head. It'd be a pain to get a bolt or something out of there, and a bigger pain if you didn't notice it went in until you hit the key.

That was for the alarm siren. AFAIK the sensors are all plugged in. Also re: the resonator tube, if mine ever had the tube over the rad, it was gone long before I met it.

Here are a few of mine. Engine bay. Here's what's not original: spray-painted hood insulation, missing plastic cover from the distributor, headlight relays hanging off the mending strap on the front battery hold-down post, yellow wire with the brake lines for the driving lights, extra wires off the + terminal, and the hood alarm switch wires. There's also an empty plug behind the EGR where the alarm siren used to hook up. Close up of the EGR setup with its vac lines. The grey line is a temporary replacement. There are two valves, one of which you can sort of see behind the first one. I think I remember reading that the the 94/95 have the two valves (EGR and EGR-BPT) like this, as do the California MPFI Pathies, but pre-94 trucks in other states only have the one valve at the back. (?) Positive terminal, with fuse links etc. The orange and bright green wires are part of my relayed headlights and driving lights (not stock). The fuse link behind the battery: And so long as we're posting pics, here's most of page EF&EC-4 from the 1995 FSM to tell us what we're looking at.

http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/topic/36213-how-to-run-codes-for-the-auto-transmission/ The power mode switch may look different on your 93 but AFAIK it works the same. Torque converter sounds likely to me as well.

Mine pushes 4k + up the one steep hill I routinely hit (and that's only a 45). From what I've read they'll go a little past 6k before they start to lose oil pressure, but of course that's assuming the seals/rings/etc are in good condition to begin with.

Sounds like the computer thinking it's being helpful to me, no idea if that's normal though.

I'm on a Mac, with Firefox, no issues here. I do occasionally get 'this page uses an unsupported form of encoding' or something along those lines, but refreshing the page always clears it up.