Slartibartfast

Got curious and checked the manual again. Looks like the snap rings for the U joints are also shims, and you select different snap rings to get the axial play into spec. The manual has part numbers for various thicknesses. No idea how you'd know what to order before getting into it. I don't know if anyone actually bothers with this, but I would at least check the play before putting it back in. PD section of the FSM.

I don't know driveshafts well enough to judge how much slop is too much, and I don't see a spec in the manual (though it does spec total runout at 0.6mm). The only truly bad one I've seen was in our '63 Scout, and that thing was so whupped it was sagging in the middle. I wouldn't expect an IFS truck to put enough stress on the slip joint to wear it out. If you can't make it go clunk wiggling it by hand, I would call it good enough--but, again, I'm not a driveshaft guy. I have heard of driveshaft weights coming off, though not on one of these that I can remember. I would expect to see an obvious bare spot and busted welds where the weight used to be if this had happened. The diff bushing symptoms don't match yours from what I remember. Just something to check while you're in the neighborhood.

Hey, mine only makes a dismal moan on right turns! Damned if I know why, I've done all four wheel bearings.

Good thinking trying the old wheels again for a sanity check. If it's fine with the old wheels, I would try swapping the new ones around to different positions to see if you can make the wobble better or worse, in hopes of tracking the problem to a fault with a single wheel.

Unless the joints are so flogged that they've eaten into the yokes, or the driveshaft has obvious dents/chowder marks/slop in the slip joint, I would just throw a set of joints at it and see where that gets you. Check your front diff bushings while you're in there, I remember someone on here had a vibration that came down to the diff flopping around under load and putting the joint at weird angles.

I'm not a tire guy either, but I have not had any wobble issues with the 31" tires on my '93, despite them being mounted and balanced by muppets. "They just do that" sounds like an excuse. I'm not familiar with hub spacers, but I would check the fit on those. No use having a balanced wheel if it's mounted off-center. +1 on checking the wheels for runout. If the wheels look okay, check the tires too. A damaged or defective tire could have a high spot in the tread even if the wheel is true. Have a look at the front end bushings (control arms and rack) while you're under there if those weren't on your list before. All four wheels being out of balance the second time is odd. Check your wheel weights. When I had mine mounted/balanced, the muppets used the wrong kind of weights for the rims. One actually fell off in my hand when I went to put the wheels on. Had I run them like that, I'm sure I would've had wobble for days. I wouldn't expect a domestic steel rim to trip them up, but I didn't expect the local shop to send mine home with the weights falling off, either. Hopefully tire shop #2 is better at what they do.

The usual/easiest swap is the VG33 from the early R50 Pathfinder, first-gen Xterra, or first-gen Frontier. It runs off the stock computer if you keep your old intake. You can keep the V belts using an adapter, or use the VG33's flat belts instead (easier if your donor is an X or Fronty). This thread covers boring and porting a 3.3 for more power and swapping it into a WD21. Lots of good info there, even if you're not going as far as he did. IIRC someone tried putting a Nissan VH45DE V8 in one of these, but it didn't work out. I've seen GM 3800, 4.3l, and LT1 engines swapped in, though. And of course people whack turbos and supers on VGs too. Are you sure the trans donor was an '06? I thought those only fit up to '04.

Here's one. Not sure why eBay brings up headlight switches and old-school floor-mount dip switches. Something something algorithm.

Pretty sure it was eBay.

The pulleys aren't keyed to the balancer, so they're commonly assembled the wrong way around, and you'll never know until you go to set the timing. IIRC it's just held to the balancer by six bolts, so it shouldn't take long to put it back where it should be so you can time it with a light.

PM'd.

Does sound like a loose connection somewhere. Check battery terminals, fuse links. If the terminals are alright, try to work out which systems are affected when it acts up. Headlights? Radio? A group of affected circuits could lead you to a shared fuse/fuse link/ground. If it's losing everything at once, that points back at battery terminals or cables. Can you make it act up by wiggling wires while the truck is parked? And yeah, I doubt it's related to your P0420.

Entirely possible. If so, it was pretty well done.

I've never taken one of these clamshells off where the plastic wasn't either gone or well on its way, though to be fair that's a sample size of four. And, yeah, those plastic trim screws are the worst. After buggering a few of them I realized you've gotta use a flat-blade screwdriver with as little down force as possible. If it's slipping, hook a fingernail under the head as soon as it lifts. An early HB I scavenged had regular metal screws into plastic inserts, like how the front corner lamps mount, not sure why they moved away from that. Good luck with the bearings. If you still want to borrow that socket, I think the pass opened this week.

The column covers always do that. Weak brittle screw posts. Probably doesn't help that it's in a prime spot to get smacked by knees. Mine wasn't worth putting back on, so I made a metal one instead. It ain't pretty, but it's stout. Can't help with the fungus, that's nasty. Hopefully there isn't a great gob of that inside the switch.

Throttle body and MAF would've been my first checks too. I don't know the 3.3 idle control system very well, but that's what I would check next. There's a wax motor that is supposed to crack the throttle open for fast idle when cold. EC-27 and 28 in the '97 manual show a procedure to check and adjust it. There's also an idle control valve controlled by the computer, but if that was going I think you'd have issues all the time, not just on cold starts.

When I replaced my soft lines, I cut the ends off the old hoses and welded them up to make caps. Overkill for sure but it works great. You can also prop the gas pedal down a little (a photography monopod works great for this) so the master blocks fluid from draining, though I haven't used this method in a while. I prefer knowing air can't get in there even if it wanted to.

Sounds like the switch controlled by moving the stalk is okay, but you've got an open in the time delay circuit. I would hook an ohmmeter to the two-pin plug from the switch and see if you've got a resistance that changes when you try to adjust the interval. If not, I would guess broken wire or bad pot, or maybe some stupid fiddly bit of plastic connecting the knob to the pot. The question then is whether the stalk will come apart in a civilized fashion or whether the old plastic is gonna do old plastic things and leave you worse off than when you started. If the resistance checks out, I would take a second look at the wiper amp. EL-71 in the '90 manual has a check for it (not sure what exactly it's checking, though) and EL-68 shows the circuit diagram. If you've got resistance at the switch, and the same resistance at the plug for the amp (looks like you'd test from red/blue stripe to ground), I'd have a poke at the amp. Edit: found this. Same symptom, bad amp.

I can't find a photo for that part #, I'm guessing it's the one with the twist knob at the end for the wiper frequency? I've got a spare wiper switch, but it's off a base model Hardbody, so it doesn't have the intermittent function. I haven't checked whether the plug is the same. (Edit: just checked, yep, same plug. Plugged it into my '93, works fine. The intermittent function is a separate two-pin plug.) Gonna have to be more careful with mine. I didn't realize they were unobtanium.

I was going to say there's no way this primitive ABS system could tell if the rear brakes were working, but I just checked the service manual and among the codes you'd expect there's a code just marked "other" (code 5). The diagnostic procedure for "other" is to overhaul the rear brakes, and if that doesn't do it, replace the ABS brain. The manual offers no further explanation. There's no cutaway or hydraulic diagram for the actuator, probably because they didn't expect anyone to take it apart. The electrical diagram shows an unmarked switch inside the actuator that I would lay money is a shuttle or a pressure switch or something of that nature, and would explain this mystery code, if only they'd been bothered to label it. So, yeah, I don't know how it knew what was wrong, but it sounds like it did, and you did exactly what the manual calls for! Mine was boring. It just coded for an open speed sensor circuit when it got wet.

Drop a line if you're in the area this summer! I'm hoping not to need that tool again for a good long time.

Turns out I shot way more footage than I thought I did. Also turns out I mumble, but I knew that. Anyway, here's what I did on mine.

Yeah, RA did sell me a set of VG33 intake gaskets for my VG30 once. That was a fun job to redo. I had a look and found the footage from when I did mine. I think I was letting it sit until I knew if my rear wheels were going to fall off afterwards. They haven't, so I'll brush that up and get it posted. It's less a "how to" and more a "watch this guy struggle" but there might still be something useful in there.

The Rockauto system is usually pretty good. Nissanpartsdeal is my usual go-to for identifying parts and year ranges and whatnot. I ordered most of what I used from RA, but they didn't have the lock washers, so I bought those through Partsouq. I like those CNC'd sockets. Mine is not nearly that nice. I cut some strap steel to fit the splines, then welded them to a pipe to keep them in formation. I tried welding a bolt to it to use with the torque wrench, but, yeah, that didn't hold up so well. A sacrificial 1/2" drive socket would've been better, but by that point I think I had realized that my torque wrench didn't even go that high, so I welded on some rebar handles called that good enough. The drawings in the service manual call out PNs for some of the tools they suggest (though others just say "suitable tool"). I looked some of them up when I did mine and found what I think was the right kit, but the listing didn't have any pictures and it was priced stupid high. And yeah, I'm not sure what function the torque spec is serving here. It's not like you're gonna set preload given how tight those inner races are pressed onto the shaft. Maybe it's supposed to push the races home if you didn't get them fully seated with the press? It might just be a standard torque spec for that thread size and pitch for all I know. I bought a cheap press for mine (the cheapest Northern Tool had) and had to stack some wood under its legs to get enough clearance to get the whole axle in there. Worked great after that, though. I do like Towndawg's solution.

The R50 drum/WD21 disk rears are built the same, but the drum WD21 rear is a different beast with a single row on either side and the axles butted up against a thrust block in the diff, with shims on either side to set the end-float. I did the rear bearings in mine recently (WD21, disk) and there isn't really an adjustment for them. Just a very high torque spec for the nut that holds it all together, which I'm not sure how you're supposed to get, given that you'd need the world's deepest socket or a really weird crow's foot to get a torque wrench on it. I just gave 'er wha by hand with the spline wrench I welded up to remove them. I've seen people use a hammer and punch instead, but I didn't want to risk damaging the stupid spline nuts. And, yeah, you'll need a press and some creativity in setting it up for the various operations you'll have to do to get everything separated. The service manual has a pretty good breakdown, though of course it assumes you have the super-special Kent-Moore kit for everything. Too bad it has to come apart for a seal, that's a lot of screwing around for one piece of rubber. But if there's oil coming past the outer seal, that suggests the inner has been whupped for a long time. If you're going to the effort of replacing the seal, I'd plan on doing both seals, the O ring, and the bearing as well. Mine weren't actually bad (much to my annoyance--I was hoping they were the source of an annoying noise) but they did show some discoloration on the rollers and races, and there wasn't a whole lot of grease in there anymore. Looked like the inner seals failed and diff oil washed the grease out. I also had to put a fair whack of stress on the old bearings to get the axle to budge. This didn't leave any obvious damage, but I was happy I had new bearings that hadn't been abused like that to put it back together with. (And then there was the race I dropped, where the plastic cage broke and the rollers scattered from hell to breakfast.) I shot some video of the job when I did mine, then never did anything with it. Let me know if you get stuck on something and I'll try and work out what I did there.