Slartibartfast

Spray painted Bill Murray's head on the underside of the hood. It's a long story.

... no voltage to the coil?

It'll probably look like somebody carved your truck out of a piece of granite. Not that that's a bad thing... if it keeps the rust down, might be worth it. It would be a royal PITA around mounts and trim, though.

The trace looks awfully clean and square-ended for a burnout. If the board was buggered enough to blow a trace, I'll bet several components would have already released the factory smoke. There's always the chance that your problem isn't that unit, but a bad wire somewhere between it and the lock actuators, a bad ground, etc.

If I'm going to sideswipe something, I'd rather hit it with the plastic than the metal. I'm leaving mine on.

I find it quite easy. They knew it would be driven in salted areas. And they designed the frame stupidly. Some days I marvel at how well my Pathy works... then I try to work on it and wonder what the designers were smoking. (That said, they were only made to last so long.)

Good news, it's fixable. Just got to work up some templates and do some cutting. My uncle might even teach me to weld, so, maybe this'll be a good thing. Chodygt, mine looked fine until I started beating on it with a hammer. Then it made the dreaded thunk (rather than ringing like metal should) and dust started coming out...

Pulled the rear bumper to clean and undercoat the rear frame, started scraping rust flakes from above the axle... and... The other side's a little thin but not full of holes at least. We'll probably weld patches over both sides... so long as we can keep it under $400. Otherwise, I've got a whole lotta parts. NISSAN, WHY YOU NO DESIGN TRUCK RIGHT?

+1 on the frame rusting. I just found a hole above my rear axle. FFFFfffffuuuuuuuuuuuu But yeah, as with everything, depends on what you want it for. I'd rather take a long trip in an R50, but I'd rather have my WD for logging roads (preferably with a good fishing lake at the end).

He said it would ruin the converters, so I doubt he meant cutting them out. Still, I have no idea how a straight pipe would damage the cat...

I think I saw a Terrano on here once with euro-looking tails, looked like it thought it was a Range Rover though. If you were ambitious enough you could split the plastic lens from the housing, make a mold, and re-cast in clear plastic... lot of work for a tail light, though.

Dunno about California, but in Washington if I remember correctly they're cool with it so long as it doesn't stick way out and there's a place for the turn signals and plate and all. But yeah, I would not want to get hit by that! On the plus side, no more shopping cart dings. @OP looks great!

LOL I have way too many projects. Here's the bigger of them: http://loosestandards.atwebpages.com/ It's a '59 Triumph wagon, four popper, awaiting sandblasting atm. Old British lacquer is tenacious stuff! Besides that, well... fishing... electronics... model trains... R/Cs... oh, yeah, and a Pathy that needs a little work.

Watched it get rained on with the sunroof open. My front fluid pump went out a while back, but I just popped it open, cleaned it out, polished the commutator, oiled the bushings, and put it back into service. It's worked pretty well since. The fluid gets into the bushings after a while and seizes them up, but it's nothing a little machine oil, sandpaper, and brute force can't fix. (If you can't find a new pump, why not hack in one from something else? Just change over the plug and you should be fine.)

^^ Same. I know my rear hitch switch works, because IIRC a light on the dash comes on if it's open. I've actually considered hacking something in so that I won't have to grope in the dark for the switch when getting stuff from the back.

If he gets in a bad enough accident for the integrity of the under-seat pan to come into play, chances are the rear passenger's screwed anyway. If it was frame work or a pillar or the seatbelts or something important, I'd share your caution, but the metal back there really just keeps the draft out and catches the pennies that fall between the seats. The seat belts bolt up elsewhere, so even if the whole affair gives way, the passenger's still strapped in. Perhaps the lesson is, don't transport lawsuit-happy people in a twenty year old car.

Couldn't be too hard, right? Pull a second brake lever from the junkyard, make some sort of bracket to fit the two (if you pulled the rubber trim out of the console, they might both fit w/o trimming anything), then run the cables to where the splitter used to be... then take it to a shop and ask them to check your brakes, and watch the tech guys try to figure it out.

There's no way around it. That is one ugly Pathy. Ten-speaker Bose sounds pretty nice, though.

Long drill bit?

Start click is pretty common, there's a solenoid in the starter that can get iffy. Or, your starter contacts may be dirty/corroded; given the mud (I hope that's mud) in your pics, you could easily just have dirty terminals. Clean them up, screw them back in, see if that helps. If you can, clean up the engine bay a bit. It'll make working on it a lot easier.

Deleting it entirely could cause problems with the emissions test. That would be something to check beforehand. Also I think it would turn on a check light or put up a code, and IIRC you won't pass emissions with a code or a light on. (My area doesn't do smog checks, so this is secondhand info.) From what I've read (Wikipedia), the EGR is controlled by vacuum from the intake (which you didn't tinker with, shouldn't be a problem). It channels some exhaust to the intake to suppress NOx emissions. So, lower back pressure would decrease the amount of gas going through the valve (same opening, less pressure), but I don't know if it would be enough to make a difference. Also, EGR (again according to Wikipedia) is turned off at idle (where it would cause choppiness) and under high load (where it would decrease peak power). If you're trying to see it work, revving it may not be enough; it may require actual driving. Short of running test leads through the firewall/vents/out the window, or having a friend ride the front bumper with a voltmeter, I'm not sure how you'd test its operation. But, again, an exhaust job shouldn't change how the valve opens. This is what I'm looking at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaust_gas_recirculation

I washed the bird crap off, replaced a front marker light (NEVER wash a plastic lens with alcohol, learned the hard way), and gave up trying to remember which position on the hatch lock did what.

Looks like it'll work. The little seatbelt clips on mine were busted, so I just made new ones out of wire. The stock bits break really easily, especially when someone gets in the back seat and doesn't know how they work.

Ammeter maybe? Although, if you had an altimeter, and your electrical system was pulsing, it would probably bounce around too. If it's not tied to RPM, then I don't see how your alternator would cause it. Check the voltage regulator? Is it a steady flash, or a flicker?

That's what we did then the floors in mine needed doing, just had the junkyard guys cut a floor section. Went right in. Mine wasn't rotted nearly as bad though, so we didn't have as much to hack out. It looks like you've got a bit of sheet metal still holding the hold down in place, so why not leave it (or at least one bolt if the end is rotten) in place, put your flat floor in, and then build up as necessary to secure the hold down? It should work okay without it, but I imagine it might rattle around a bit.