Slartibartfast

When it dies does everything (dash lights) go dead? If so check the battery terminals. If not, check the ignition system. It sounds like something is loose, but given that it's intermittent this may be a bugger to track down.

12mpg might indicate a problem, depending on how you drive. I get 15-16mpg out of mine (city driving, but not much traffic out here) and 19 highway. You might check your vac lines/MAF/etc. And yeah, these are heavy SOBs. The only lightening mod I've seen involved a sawzall and wouldn't have worked out too well in the winter.

Good that you got to it before the key gave up! I almost want to go check my crank bolt now. Black tranny fluid is not good. Get that out of there asap, and look at getting a new tranny cooler for it (probably best to assume the one in the radiator is gunked up). Hopefully the reverse issue is just a stuck valve and not a worn-out clutch pack.

The power to the cigarette lighter comes on with the ignition. Shouldn't be hard to tap into its harness.

^ That's damn cool!

"Let's take a picture of the new hood... yeah, Bubbles, stand right in front of it, that's great."

Sounds like the pump is fine. Also sounds like the wiring to the plug is okay (when you turn the ignition on w/o starting it, the pump should run for a few seconds.) Check the wires from the plug to the pump for continuity, it sounds like one of them may be busted off inside or at a connector. Whatever you had to jumper over is clearly not working. The FSM has full wiring diagrams, for what that's worth.

That actually looks really good!

Yep, there's a relay. It's the rearmost one in the block of relays you're missing the cover for. I've heard of the wires that connect to the pump failing (rather than the pump itself), you might check those before replacing the unit.

Now pull out the front amp. It's a bit tricky to get the attachment points through the hole, but IIRC I pushed it back a ways and then pulled it out through the large hole where the trans computer sits. You can put the trans computer back now. Unplug both amps. (The small flat-bladed screwdriver will help with this.) Don't cut the plugs off just yet. The tables include color codes, but I found it much easier to sort out the wires while they were still in the plug. The diagram reads looking into the end of the plug BTW. The Crutchfield table tells you which wires are which and, at least in the 95 table, which ones to splice. All you're doing is hooking inputs to outputs. Left Rear + Input is going to go to the positive wire on the left rear speaker (Left Rear Speaker +), and so on. My only change to this setup is the wiring for the front tweeters. For anyone not familiar with tweeters: they're just little speakers built for high frequencies. They're not built to handle bass, so we need to filter that out. Capacitors let current through until they've charged up, which makes them block constant direct current (DC) but pass alternating current (AC) or DC that fluctuates. Speaker signal is fluctuating DC with different frequencies. Because little tiny caps charge very quickly, low-frequency fluctuation is close enough to constant DC to get blocked, while higher frequencies go right through. I assume the factory amps cut filtered the frequencies going to the tweeter leads, and to run without them, we need to get some caps up in there. (The rear tweeters don't have their own wires from the amp, so whatever caps they've got between them and the rear speakers should continue to work with the new wiring job.) Basically, you hook the tweeters up like normal speakers, except that one wire connects through a capacitor. I tested my setup with jumper wires stuck into the end of the stock plug. It's not necessary but it is an easy way to make sure you've got your connections right before hacking into the harness. The front plug has +/- input for either side, +/- for both door speakers (marked as woofers in the table), and +/- for each tweeter. That's three + leads and three - leads per side. The table shows where in the plug they are. Connect the three right + lines (input +, woofer +, tweeter +) together, then do the same for the left + lines. You'll have two joints, one for each side, both with three + wires. Strip, twist, solder, and insulate. (If you don't have shrink wrap small enough, put a chunk of a hot glue stick in there with the shrink wrap. It works great even if the shrink wrap is oversize.) Now cut and strip the - leads for one side. Twist together the input -, the woofer -, and the - leg of a capacitor (marked by a black stripe on mine). Twist together the cap's + leg and the tweeter's + lead. Take care not apply heat directly to the capacitor or hold heat on its legs for too long. Insulate, then do the other side. You'll be left with two wires (12v accessory and amp remote) that go nowhere. Turn on the stereo (you may have to turn it up a bit) and check that sound is coming from all forward speakers. If it all works, wrap some electrical tape around the spliced end of the harness and ziptie it to one of the unused screw holes inside the panel to keep it from flopping around inside the panel. If you're taking the front trim out anyway, or replacing your tweeters, you could just as easily mount the cap next to the tweeter. I was soldering the amp wires anyway, so this location made sense. The rear plug goes just like the table says. Match like with like, strip, twist, solder, insulate. You'll make four connections and again be left with two unused wires. Turn on the stereo and make sure the rear speakers are working. Wrap and ziptie as with the other lead. Once you're satisfied that it all works, put the panels back in. You may have to pop a few of the plastic clips out of the sheet metal and reinstall them in the panel before clipping it back on. Be careful installing the upper panel, as part of it has to slide in behind the panel that comes over the wheel well. If you don't align this before clipping it in and try to bend it into place, you'll kink the edge of it. Once that's lined up, pop it back in place. Bolt the seatbelt hanger back up and slide the cover up over the bolt. Reinstall the phillips screw and its cover. Thread the seatbelt back into the lower panel, reinstall the panel, then put the door back in. Put the rear strip back in, make sure the clips are seated, and then reinstall the plastic screws. You can just push them in, but this may make them more difficult to remove next time. That's about it. Power up your stereo and see what your head unit can do. Mine seems to have picked up a lot of bass, and it feels more balanced (I can turn it up louder without harshness). I turned on the 'loud' setting and it got the doors rattling. For $4 I call that an upgrade. I know this isn't the most involved how-to ever but hopefully it'll help someone.

I finally got around to doing this last night, and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was. I took a few pictures of the job and figured I'd share them with the class. Most of the info came from the site linked below. Major thanks to the member who posted that link a few weeks ago! Bypassing the Factory Amps The factory head unit doesn't drive speakers on its own. Its output is line-level, and goes to the two Clarion amps that drive the actual speakers. Put an aftermaket head unit its place and the amps become unhelpful. You can't turn up the head unit much or you'll blow your eardrums out, so you end up sending a quiet signal to an amp that's been sitting in a quarter panel for 18+ years. I lived with this setup for a year or two, and it wasn't terrible, but after reading about other guys' stereos I decided to see if my head unit would sound better on its own. Note that this isn't as good as running new and proper speaker wires. The factory wires are quite small and their run is pretty convoluted. If you've just dropped a couple hundred bucks on speakers and a nice head unit, you might as well wire it up properly. If you're like me with a Sony Xplod, $30 speakers in the doors, and factory Clarions everywhere else, this is pretty good bang-for-your-buck. You will need... This Crutchfield table for your model year, printed out (links to other years are at the bottom). Ratchet with a 14mm socket Big phillips screwdriver Small slotted screwdriver Wire cutters Wire strippers Solder Shrink wrap Soldering iron or butane torch Two capacitors. I used 4.7μF electrolytic caps after seeing them recommended on Nico for use on R50 tweeters. Make sure they're rated for more than 12v. Mine are 35v and cost $4 for the two at a Radioshack. (If you don't have tweeters, you don't need these.) My truck has the eight-speaker system. Six-speaker hookup is the same. Four speaker will be simpler (no tweeters). The '95 wiring table has separate sections depending on how many speakers you have, so make sure you're looking at the right one. The amps in 94-95 are located in the right hand side of the cargo area. According to the Crutchfield tables, 93s have one of the two under the dash, and 87-92 have one amp, rear speakers only, in the dash. Since I did this writeup on a 95, some parts of it won't apply to older rigs. A few plastic panels have to come out to access the amps. First, remove the strip of trim between the rear carpet and the hatch seal. This is the bit with the cutout for the hatch latch. The screws are plastic, so unscrew them carefully and without applying much downward pressure, or they'll skip right back into their holes. Once they're backed out, the whole thing should more or less lift out. With that out of the way, fold down the passenger's rear seat, remove the access panel (the bit you have to reach into to get at the tail light), grab around the inside of the hole, and pull the whole plastic lower panel off. You'll have to bunch up the seatbelt a little to free it from its slot. Now the upper panel has to come out. Push the plastic seat belt bolt cover out of the way and use the 14mm socket to remove the bolt that holds the hanger in place. Once that's out, find the plastic screw cover at the back corner of the trim piece. It's got a little cutout on one side where a slotted screwdriver can easily pop it out. Remove the phillips screw hiding behind it. The top panel should unsnap much like the lower one. If your truck's an automatic, the passenger's rear quarter panel has three main units in it. The foremost one is the transmission computer, and it's in the way of the front amp. Undo its three screws, push it forward until the back of it can come out of the panel, then pull it out and set it aside. Remove the screws holding the rear amplifier bracket to the body. The aluminum-faced bit is the amp. It shares a bracket with a clear-cased electrical component. I'm not sure what the other bit does, but don't trash it, it isn't part of the amp. Remove this unit from its bracket by sticking a screwdriver under the metal strip that secures it and pulling it free. This reveals a couple screws holding the amp to the bracket; remove the amp and put the clear-cased bit back on. Put the bracket back where it was.

Or somebody tried to change out the starter motor, got pissed off, and let it know what he thought of it. I wonder what kind of damage the bullets did to the engine bay/etc? The gas tank door one in particular can't have been pretty.

Amp removal/bypass! Pretty easy actually. Pics to come.

IIRC they were originally wired to come on with the low beams only, so yours were correct until the mechanic somehow buggered the wiring. The FSM doesn't seem to cover them, so I'm not sure how they were originally hooked up. Mine were screwy when I got the truck, so I dunno how they were originally. Here's how they are now. (The two lights are wired in parallel, in case that isn't clear.) One wire from the lights hooks to ground (the truck's body). This could be one wire from each or one combined wire, doesn't really matter, whatever's easy so long as they're both grounded. The wires coming out the other side of the lights go together and to the switched part of the relay (mine's on the passenger's side firewall by the hood hinge). The relay connects that wire to fused + (mine's just a wire with an inline fuse going to the positive battery terminal). Then you've got the relay coil hooked to ground on one side, and to a wire running into the cab and to a switch on the other. If you want to turn them on regardless of the headlights, hook the switch to + at the fusebox. Running fogs and high beams together is illegal in some states (I have no idea why), so mine are hooked to one of my low-beam headlight leads, which wasn't being used after I did the headlight relay mod. Switch off, no fogs. Switch on, low beams, fogs come on. If you want you could hook it to the parking lights instead so that you could run fogs with no headlights, if for some reason you wanted to. So with the fogs on, you have current flowing from ground, through the lights, through the relay contacts, to battery +. You also have current flowing from ground, through the relay coil, through the fog light switch, through the headlight switch, and then through the factory harness to battery +. Hope this helps!

Another way to find a leak, duct tape a vacuum cleaner to the tail pipe (engine off), turn it on, then feel/spray around for suction. That way you don't have to worry about heat and (depending on the state of your vacuum cleaner) you may be able to hear the leaks.

If you do buy manual hubs, someone here would probably buy them when you're done with them!

Is the res low? That'll make the light come on. Also I didn't unplug the ABS when I did mine, just pulled the fuse under the dash.

Damn... what a thing to come home to. Looks like he was using jackstands, I can see one lying on its side next to the truck. Doesn't look like the rear tires were chocked, which probably allowed it to roll forwards once the trans was unhooked. My dad told me to put the wheels under the truck if you take them off to work on it, to give it something to land on other than you if all else fails. This is also a good argument for working on a concrete pad... tougher for the jackstands to tip over if they're on solid concrete vs flexible plywood on an uneven lawn.

And just to throw this out there, temperature is very important to the reading... It seems to fluctuate quite a bit by temperature.

My dad had the exhaust studs fixed when he bought the truck, but it still leaked at one of those flanges. He tried scabbing it with some kind of putty, and when that blew off, we decided that the cat was probably blocked up. It's run a lot better since we had the exhaust replaced (from the bottom of the headers back). I'm not sure if the cat was actually clogged or if the old flanges were so corroded that the gasket couldn't hold. Either way, it doesn't have a flange there anymore.

The torsion bars are basically just springs, I don't see how they could squeak. I've heard that poly bushings squeak like mad if you don't grease them, so you may be onto something there. Make sure you don't do the bounce test with the e-brake on, I know mine makes noises of its own.

JJ, any pics of your setup? I just tried to stick a piece of hose in mine but I can't find any room between the brackets and the carrier.

I know my 95 has an access hatch under the carpet, but I can't say for sure if the two-doors are rigged the same way.

If you suspect it's got a dead cylinder, try unhooking the spark plugs one at a time. If you find one that doesn't make the engine run worse when you unhook it, that cylinder's not firing.

Filling the bushings with a stiff grease might help. IIRC Nunya drilled and tapped the grease holes on his to add Zerk fittings, and in the linked thread it looks like Kingman managed to fudge it with a regular grease gun and a straw. Adding some kind of stop to the driver's side top corner would probably cut down a lot on the vibration (since it's the only corner without a support, and it lets the whole carrier flex... not one of Nissan's better designs). If you don't mind looking like a redneck you could just jam an old cushion between the carrier and the body. That should shut 'er up!