Slartibartfast

Know someone with a 3D printer? Listed for an R50, but looks right to me. Would need to be printed in ABS or better. My '95 had a piece of cardboard up there, held with baling wire through the attachment points on the glass. Worked fine. Didn't look great, but neither do the OE sunshades, thirty years on. I tried cleaning and flattening the sunshade that came with my '93. Went about how you'd expect. Ended up making a new one from a political sign and the plastic bits off the factory one. I like your console box!

Is the hose itself failing, or just leaking at the end? I ask because the steel lines the heater hoses hooked to on the VG33 I'm working on were rusted to absolute buggery at their ends. I don't know how they weren't leaking yet.

Good to hear you got it, and that it did what you were hoping for! That snap ring fought me on mine, too. Probably because I was using needle nose pliers instead of snap ring pliers. I added a little grease to the mechanism (one hub felt dry and crunchy compared to the other), but yeah, no need to pack them. Check the bolts after you've run it for a while. Seems like each time I have my hubs off, they work loose after a bit. I tighten them back up, and they're good from then until I have them off again. Probably just the gasket compressing.

LOL don't mind us, we're easily distracted by weird gearboxes.

The transfer case computer compares the front and rear wheel speeds, which is how it knows when the rear wheels are slipping. The non-VDS trucks monitor the front wheel speed from a sensor on the front output of the transfer. Basically it's watching the driveshaft rather than the wheels. In stock form (or with the hubs locked), this works fine. But it gets confused when the hubs are unlocked, because as far as it can tell, the rear end is going highway speed, and the front isn't. The service manual has a list of error codes that the transfer computer can throw, readable via Consult or der blinkenlightzen. I'd be curious to see what code they actually throw. Possibly code 6, wheel speed sensors? Computer sees improbable data, blames the sensors? Looks like it can also flash the light once every two seconds if it thinks your tires are mismatched, which could also make sense with the front/rear wheel speeds not matching up as expected. I would not be surprised if drag in the clutch pack spins the front drivetrain somewhat, but it must not be spinning at full speed, or the computer wouldn't know the difference, right? The electric pump doesn't run in 2HI. Otherwise it kicks on in reverse, and at speeds under 30 km/h (if I'm reading the chart correctly), when the mechanical pump (driven off the input shaft) isn't making enough line pressure to work the clutch pack. But yeah, this is all completely irrelevant to this thread if csprinkle's rig has the manual transfer.

Looks like 10-7/32" x 1-11/32", and the total across is 33-7/8". Measured in the dark, with a tape measure, in units the hood wasn't designed in, for maximum accuracy. Looking to return the R50 to its roots?

How did you connect the aftermarket radio to the Bose amp? I don't know the R50 sound system, but when I put a head unit in my '95, it didn't have a line-level output, so I wired the outputs of the HU's amp to the inputs for the factory amps. This did work, but it was not ideal, not least because it amplified the stupid beeps that Sony programmed into that head unit to an uncomfortable volume. I remember picking up some bass and mids when I got around to bypassing the amps. If you've got the amps connected to a line-level output, or a converter, then you're probably in better shape than I was.

Oil leaks can be a pain to track down. Valve covers are a good bet, though. Check and loctite (or have your mechanic check/loctite) the power valve screws while the intake is apart. IIRC there's an oil cooler on the VQ that tends to leak, so check that too. +1 for going straight to the service manual. The later service manuals waste a lot of space telling you what buttons to press on the special Consult scanner that you don't have, but there's usually real diagrams/troubleshooting if you scroll down a little. For the trans code, I'd start with the circuit test at the top of AT-151. Funny, my '95 had the harsh 1>2 shift too. My '93 has a softer 1>2 than it should. I haven't looked into it, probably an accumulator or something. Might be worth chasing if you drop the pan to go after that torque converter solenoid, but otherwise I'd let it be. Mine hasn't gotten noticeably worse over the past 30k miles, and I've got a replacement transmission waiting in the corner, so I haven't gotten excited about chasing the issue.

Locking hubs are for the front wheels only. Running with the hubs unlocked gives you a slight reduction in drag, because the front CVs, diff, and driveshaft aren't coupled to the wheels when they don't need to be. Unlocking them won't turn a Pathy into a Prius, but yeah, it should coast a little easier, and use a little less fuel. The trade-off is that you have to get out and lock the hubs to use 4WD. This is annoying if you forget about the hubs until you're already stuck. I use 4WD a lot in the winter, so I lock mine at first snow and leave them that way until after the thaw, so I don't have to think about it in between. Just remember to lock yours before you set off on those rare days when Seattle sees snow and you should be golden. 27 spline hubs are for the real early WD21s. You need 28 spline hubs. There's a comparison thread here for the various hub options, including which do/don't work with the stock wheels. If you've got the manual transfer case (stick through the floor), then that's all there is to it. If you've got the automatic transfer case (knob on the dash with an "auto" setting), then you may get a warning light on the dash after driving for a while with the hubs unlocked. Some info on that in this thread. TL;DR: the transfer case computer gets a little confused, but the transfer case itself doesn't seem to care.

I started taking pictures, then realized that was dumb because it's tough to tell which way the camera's facing when it's inside the wheel well. So I took a short video instead. Hope it helps. (Dropbox link)

Annoyingly, I just stumbled across the Grant #3560 kit, on Rockauto of all places. Wholesaler closeout, so if you need one, grab one. Wish I'd seen that earlier! Looks the same as the kit I ended up with.

Clean rig! I haven't found a diagram showing the flares. I suspect they were installed at the port, or maybe the dealer, not least because the bolt heads are 3/8". It's been a minute since I had mine off, but I think I remember enough to give you a rough idea. The mudflaps with the cones go on the rears. The round-head screws go through the curved line of holes in the flaps. The front flares are meant to clip to a trim strip under the front bumper, so you should be able to identify them pretty easily by having the spot for the clip. The plastic clips go along the tops of the arches, inside the wheel well, over where the fender tabs meet the flares. The rounded bit faces the fender, on the top side. I assume they're meant to suck the flare tight against the fender as the bolt is tightened. That said, you may have some trouble fitting those to a two-door. The flares changed mid '92, I assume to match the square bumpers changing to the rounded ones, and those look like the later ones. I ran into this when I bought a rear flare off a '92 that didn't fit my '95, because the tabs along the top of the wheel arch were in different places. (I haven't tried interchanging the front flares, no idea if they changed the bolt pattern there as well.) The clips were different, too. Hinged rather than flexible IIRC. The shape of the arches should be the same AFAIK, so even if the tabs are wrong, I'll bet you could come up with something to make those work. Maybe new tabs glued to the flares to match your fenders, if you can work out what type of plastic it is/what kind of glue it likes. If you don't have the trim under the front bumper to clip the front flares to, you could just round the leading edges with tin snips so they don't look like they're missing something. I did that to mine after a deer strike mangled that fussy trim piece, and I couldn't be arsed to try and straighten it back out again. I'll try and remember to take some pictures of mine later. PM me if it's been a few days, things tend to fall off my back burner.

I would check the plug wires, make sure nothing's been chewing on them. If nothing jumps out, pull one wire at a time (carefully, easy to shock yourself). If it makes the engine run worse, put it back. If not, then you know which cylinder is misfiring. Then it's a question of spark, fuel, or compression. Check that you've got spark at the plug end of the wire, check that the plug is good, check the resistance on the injector, and if none of that shows the issue, do a compression test. I had this happen recently on mine. Checked resistance on the injectors and found that the injector on the misfiring cylinder was well out of spec. It somehow fixed itself when it cooled off so I've been ignoring it for now, but I imagine it'll remember that it's dead sooner or later.

Ah, yeah, that sounds like it's good and dead then. Funny you mention rodents. I had a packrat on top of my gas tank the other day. Had this weird noise like fuel was sloshing, when the truck wasn't moving. I'm not sure what the little guy was chewing on or kicking or what, but it led me right to him. Naturally he also crapped all over the intake manifold.

Yeah, WD21 PS uses ATF too. This made me assume that ATF was good enough to top up the PSF res on my friend's van, which led to one of the more puzzling things I've seen a vehicle do. Over the next couple of hours, it pissed all the ATF I'd added past the pitman shaft seal, while somehow holding onto the old burned GM PSF, or at least enough of it that we didn't lose power steering or brakes. Maybe PSF has slightly larger molecules than ATF. Maybe the fluid was 90% stop leak by that point. Or maybe that van ran on spite more than it ran on gasoline. If the fuel pump is priming enough for that initial startup, that suggests it's not seized. It just can't keep up, which is weird. Weak pump would make sense. I'd be tempted to swap out the rubber lines on the pressure side, in case one is falling apart and blocking itself off somehow. I assume you've thrown a filter at it already. Fronty looks clean! Too bad there's no access hatch for the fuel pump like there is on the WD21/R50.

Hopefully the new fittings do the trick and you can escape it for a while! A friend of mine feels the same way about power steering fluid, after going multiple rounds with a dying hydroboost system in a van. For me, it's brake fluid. Weird issue on the Fronty. Have you confirmed that the computer still has power when you let off the key? Would be a weird way for the switch to fail, but I'm reminded of older points/condenser systems that'll do that if the ballast resistor lets go. Only has spark while cranking.

Figures they'd find a way to overcomplicate the valve covers, then screw up the documentation. Good work wading through it!

Looks like the rear bumper is hanging down in the second picture. Take a look at that and see what's broken. I'm guessing someone backed into something. Might just pop back on, might have broken clips? I don't know how those attach. New York is worrying. My '95 spent the first part of its life in New York. The body looked alright, but the frame was rotted through, and every bolt under it was a fight. Hopefully this one was looked after while it was in the US, and the owner didn't go to all that trouble to ship a rustbucket across the pond. Definitely check underneath, especially the strut towers, like Hawairish said. This PDF shows where they like to rot, and also the band-aid that Nissan slapped on that bullet wound. If I looked under and found evidence of that band-aid, I would treat it the same as a giant rust hole, and back away slowly. I've bought from Amayama and Partsouq. I assume they'd ship to Europe, don't know that for sure though.

Unless the tires block the end links, you may not even need to take the wheels off. When I did my front swaybar bushings, I think the only thing I used the jack for was trying to line up the ends of the bar to where I could get the end links put together. I remember fighting that part for a while. If you do take the wheels off, make sure everything's chocked and on stands when you're working on it, especially while you're yanking/jacking on stuff trying to get the end links to line up.

I'm guessing OE is either this or this, but check the diagrams against your pedal assembly to see if I'm looking in the right place. I ordered these when I did mine. I remember them fighting me a bit, but I haven't had trouble with them since. The description says they fit '84-'17, so I guess Nissan held onto this stupid design for a while! And yeah, sounds like a lot of people use coins or similar. There's probably a plastic trim clip that would work just as well. Or one of those stick-on felt pad feet for furniture.

Sway bars shouldn't screw up the alignment, if that's all you're doing!

Rat Trap's steering wheel was starting to get gross. Hand sweat, sun damage, and the previous owner's lung darts had left the outer rim cracked, turning brown, and starting to smell. Then I remembered that aftermarket steering wheels are a thing. Maybe the minitruckers are onto something, I thought. I figured I'd keep things simple by going with a wheel and a column adapter from the same company. Grant's website showed an adapter kit for these trucks, #3560, so that was a good start. I had a look through their catalog and decided on their #1160. Simple, black on black, leather grip. No rainbow chrome, no trucker babes, no flames. http://www.grantproducts.com/images/product-images/lg/1160.jpg Summit had it well below list price, so I ordered it from there. They didn't have the column adapter, and Grant's website's checkout didn't work, so I ordered that from elsewhere. The folks I ordered the column adapter from emailed me the next day to say that they didn't actually have one. I checked around, and found a bunch of other retailers listing them as discontinued or out of stock. The few who claimed to have them either didn't get back to me or confirmed that they couldn't get them either. Grant's site also listed a fancy billet adapter, #5560, but I couldn't find one of those, either. There are a bunch of cheap D21 column adapters on eBay. They're all drilled for six-bolt wheels. And the #1160 wheel I had ordered, which by this point was already in the mail, is five-bolt. Nissan Nut's page suggested that Grant #3596 would fit instead. I found one on eBay. It came in an "American Products Company" box. (Made in Taiwan, naturally.) It doesn't say Grant on it anywhere, but it looks just like the Grant kits, the splines are correct, and the three-bolt pattern matches the spacer. Is it a knockoff? Is this Grant's own off-brand? It's what I could get. The wheel came with a spacer. The spacer adapts between Grant's three-on-1.75" pattern (which the column adapter uses, as do some of their simpler wheels) to their five-on-2.75" pattern, which their "Signature Series" wheels (including this one) use. It's made from welded steel, and it feels sturdy. Unfortunately, it spaced the wheel too far back, to where I had to reach for the lights and wipers. It's also stuffed into a rubber sleeve, which doesn't fit it very well. Flipping it around doesn't help, either. Either it's so loose at the front that you can see the metal part of the spacer through the wheel, or it's so loose at the back that you can get your finger in between them. And it's tight enough in the middle that it gets stretched into a polygon by the spokes of the spacer. I suspect its primary function was to sell the billet adapter kits. Naked spacer in the middle, misshapen rubber thing on the right. On the left is the Forever Sharp MG15-B billet spacer that I used instead. It's half an inch shorter, which fixed the gap to the stalks, and it looks way better than the floppy rubber turtleneck. It actually looks quite nice! It also solved a dumb problem with the column adapter, which is that you need a special three-bolt puller to remove it. The Forever Sharp spacer is drilled for both 5 on 2.75" and 6 on 2.75", so you can bolt a standard wheel puller across two of the six-pattern holes to pop the hub assembly off the splines. (The holes are threaded #10-32, same as the Grant spacer.) Either spacer goes in between the column adapter and the nut. Unfortunately this leaves the end of the steering shaft slightly short of the end of the nut. I don't think it's going anywhere, but, yeah, I don't love that. I have yet to decide if it bothers me enough to take it back apart and do something about it, but I'm leaning towards swapping that nut for one that doesn't have a washer attached to it. The turn signal cancel mechanism fought me a little bit. The APC column adapter has two holes for roll pins, which take the place of the tabs on the back of the stock wheel. The pins aren't long enough to hit the cancel lever on the switch if you push them in all the way, which I found out the hard way. The second time, I installed them about a quarter inch into the column adapter. That sorta got them working, but, strangely, only in one direction. I figured the pins were just a little too close to the center, so they weren't engaging the cancel lever properly. To fix this, I removed the turn signal stalk (as pictured below), stuck a 1/4" extension in through that hole there, and used that as a punch to gently persuade the pins outwards a little. This might not be the right way to do it, but the signals cancel perfectly now. Actually, they cancel a little better than they did with the stock wheel. Round and square dash have different turn signal cancel mechanisms. Square dash has a single cancel lever on the switch, and two tabs on the back of the wheel, spaced about 120* apart from each other. Round dash has two separate cancel levers on the switch, with a space between them, so Nissan moved the tabs on the wheel out to 180* to account for that space. (Square dash wheel on top, round on bottom.) The APC hub has the 180* spacing of the round-dash, but my truck is square-dash, so the steering wheel has to turn 90* for the pins to hit the cancel lever (I think stock is about 60). I thought the factory setup was a bit trigger-happy, so I consider this an improvement. That rounded sheet metal cover came with the column adapter, and it doesn't cover it very well. It's got a pretty big gap to the clamshell. My clamshell is a redneck abomination of my own devising, so I can't say for sure that it wouldn't match the original clamshell a little better, but I know the stock wheel was not gapped out that far. Maybe the correct kit comes with a longer cover? I'll probably make up a new one that actually fits at some point, but today is not that day. I've read some complaints about the horn buttons on Grant's 3-bolt wheels. This wheel doesn't use that design. The five-bolt wheels use a self-contained horn button, which friction-fits into the trim ring. It's got two spade terminals on the back for the wires. One wire comes from the column adapter (which uses a piece of circuit board for the slip ring), and the other goes to a ring terminal, which I put under one of the three bolts holding the spacer to the column adapter. This system works just fine with the factory horn contact on the column, and I didn't have to modify or adjust anything to get it working properly. Sadly they don't have any amusing replacement horn buttons, or even a Nissan one. Just domestic brands, their own name, blank, or "4x4," in case you need reminding of that sort of thing. I've driven around a bit since installing the new wheel. The leather grip feels nice, and it doesn't have a rancid mixture of hand sweat and lung dart residue festering inside of it, which is a welcome change. The smaller diameter clears my knees better, but it's not so small that I feel like I stole the wheel off the riding mower. And I like the look--it looks upgraded, without looking like I've mistaken Rat Trap for a racecar. That said, the fit and finish could be better. There's a little glue residue on the spokes, the leather wrap ends closer to the spoke slot on one side than the other, and that one out-of-place white stitch at the bottom bugs me a little. The horn trim ring has a garf under the paint, and came with some paint scratched off around one of the screw holes--screw holes which mysteriously don't exist in Grant's product picture. The picture conveniently omits the spacer with the can koozy around it, too. So, yeah. This turned out to be a bit more of a can of worms than I had hoped, and if I was going to do it all over again, I don't know that I'd do all the same things. Now that it's all said and done, though, I like it, and it's staying. One last thing: I did reach out to Grant's customer support about the adapter. Grant's tech support guy confirmed that the #3560 kit was out of stock, but said he'd managed to track one down. (Naturally I had already ordered the other kit by the time I got that email.) So if you need a Grant column adapter, try their customer support--they may be able to hook you up.

Check your fan clutch.

I was offered eight or nine hundred to put a clutch in an old Yota a few years back. I was surprised too, but I'm sure it was less than a proper mechanic had quoted him to do the job. Especially if the mechanic had seen the truck!

This one? Looks like the OP's site is down, so that's a Dropbox link.