Slartibartfast

Ah, didn't realize this was older. Figures it was too easy to work, good to hear you got it in the end though.

I could swear I've seen that TSB too, can't seem to find it though. My understanding is that you basically run the engine off injector cleaner for a short period of time to flush the crud out of the fuel system, like adding fuel treatment to the tank except it's much more concentrated, and therefore more likely to do something. Seems like a good idea to me. Let us know how it goes!

The manual VQ R50s are pretty rare and parts may be a challenge to source. A guy on here a week or so ago was looking for a flywheel for his and the only ones available are stupid expensive through Nissan, and the PN didn't cross-ref to anything else that I could find. (I didn't check the second-gen Xterra, though--they had the 4.0, not the 3.5, but I don't know that the bolt pattern is different.) The auto VQ engines have a set of valves in the intake that the manual VQs don't, suggesting that the computer is different too. If you're dead set on it I'd start looking for a whole truck--either as a parts donor so you've got everything you need in one place, or to build up with parts from your current truck so you don't have to mess with harnesses and computers.

I'm not too familiar with the R51, but I'd start by checking for strawberry milkshake of death (SMOD). Defective trans cooler in the rad mixes ATF with coolant and kills the trans. Look for schmoo floating in the coolant overflow tank, swollen rubber on the rad cap, and check the trans dipstick. Easy to prevent, expensive to repair. IIRC the 4.0 had some timing chain guide issues as well.

I did mine with a twelve-point. Unless the bolt head is chewed up, I'd expect the twelve to work just fine. Good luck!

Fleurys makes spacer lifts for the R51, looks like a cheap way to go.

That clutch plate doesn't look like it enjoyed being pried on.

Yeah, I wanted to rebuild my starter, but the brush pack didn't match any I found online. Kinda hard to rebuild it without parts.

The stalling sounds like what my '93 did when the idle air control was acting up. Cold idle was fine, but now and then, on warm idle, it would try to idle very low, low enough that it would stall when I put it in gear or came to a stop in gear. It drove fine otherwise, it just forgot that idling was a thing that it was supposed to do. The issue was intermittent and drove me bats as I'd mess with something, think that fixed it, and have it crop up again later. What finally worked (so far!) was to disconnect the hose going to the idle control (there's the big corrugated hose between the MAF and the throttle body, and there's a smaller hose with some elbows coming off of that and going under the intake back to the idle control--I disconnected that one right at the corrugated hose where it's easy to get to), shot some carb cleaner down it, and started the engine to suck it through. I did this a few times in a row in hopes of flushing out whatever gunk was making the idle control stick. It was hard to start immediately afterwards but cleared up quickly afterwards, and it the idle hasn't been an issue since. My '95 did the surging thing, though I don't remember the aircon being involved. I don't remember finding a smoking gun, either, IIRC I just messed around under the hood checking stuff for a while and then it sort of went away. The aircon system tells the computer to bump the idle up, so it could be a different symptom of the same fault with the idle control valve, or maybe I had a bad connection in one of the plugs I checked for corrosion. I think I checked the plugs for the MAF and the TPS, and probably the EGR control solenoid as well. I remember it stalling out once when the EGR solenoid plug fell out. That was fun to plug back in on a hot engine. It's probably not a vac line issue, but if they're original, go ahead and change them. They're cheap and easier to replace than to try and diagnose around if they're old and suspect. Not sure what you mean by a no-crank start. Click/no start is pretty common on these.

Ah, that makes sense. Now that I think about it, there's a bit in the manual that has you set CV end-float by swapping to a different thickness of washer. Makes sense that a thicker washer might not fit at all if the axle groove is at the other end of tolerance. Good to hear you got it in the end!

The compressor in my '95 did the same thing. Neon yellow oil all over the air filter box. I thought that seal was some special sauce ceramic thing, looks like a rubber seal in the picture? I'll have to look into it again for mine, assuming I ever get around to putting the aircon back together.

The fender doesn't say it's plastic, so I'd be surprised if it was. The rear quarter patches specifically call out being metal. Not sure I've seen plastic body parts for these, though I've heard of plastic rocker panel covers for some domestic trucks. I would look at an oil-based undercoat rather than a hard shell. If the hard stuff doesn't adhere well, it'll just trap moisture behind it, which will rot the metal faster. Look carefully around your strut towers, enough of those rotted out that Nissan did a half-ass repair campaign on them.

I checked nissanpartsdeal to see if there was some part number overlap between the models you mentioned and, yeah, the first part of the PN is the same, but the rest of it isn't, and naturally they don't offer dimensions or anything along those lines to tell you what the difference is. Short of finding a used one to have machined ahead of time, it looks like you're stuck paying the money or hoping yours isn't too chewed up and the machine shop can turn it around quickly. Good luck!

If it's got a good amount of thread engagement, it held torque, and it's not bottomed out, I'd expect it to do just fine. Good luck with startup! Double check your heater hose connections, the clamps are hard to see and easy to forget to do up.

Ah, that sucks. The click can be easy to miss when the torque wrench is set towards the low end of the scale, and on a torque spec that low you may not realize "it shouldn't be this hard" until you're well past spec. My 1/2" torque wrench isn't even marked for anything below ten. It's also possible the threads were already damaged by corrosion, or by the last guy going too far. Good thinking with the longer bolt! I didn't have the right torque wrench when I did mine, so I went to German spec (gutentite). No issues.

If you're going to do it, I'd do it while the intake is off, just because the plugs are easier to get to. Take the towels out of the runners first, of course.

Should be fine. If you're worried that coolant went down an intake runner, spin it over with the plugs out and it should eject anything it ingested. Good call taking the hood off, I did the same when I had my manifold off. One less thing to bang your head on.

^^Like he said, the alt's amp rating is the maximum load that it can keep up with, not what it puts out all the time. It only puts out enough power to maintain its target battery voltage. The more you load the battery, the harder the alternator charges to keep up. The better the alternator, the more load it can keep up with. The only difference your electrical system (with the exception of the charge wire!) will see from a better alternator is that the battery voltage will be more stable under load. I was surprised by how thin the stock charge wire is. After looking at the wiring diagram, I would cut the stock charge wire where it splices into the sense wire for the alt (they share a fuse link) and run a thicker charge wire from the alt to the positive terminal, with a maxi fuse or breaker at the battery end in case the alt or the charge wire shorts out. You can find charts online for selecting a wire gauge based on max amps and wire length. There's no penalty to going thicker than you need, except that thicker wire is of course more expensive. I'll probably upgrade mine when it goes out, but looking at Aaron's high score, that might be a while!

Generally a radio has two power feeds, a constant + and an ignition-switched +. I would check the radio plug for a constant + with the key off, and if it doesn't have one, that'll be why it isn't remembering your settings. I don't know why this would take the radio with it, though. The radio in my dad's '03 had issues with not turning off, controls not working, all kinds of weirdness. We replaced it with one from the wreckers, worked fine after that. No idea what was wrong with it.

Ultra black is good stuff. Again I would only use it around the coolant ports if the surfaces are pitted, and just enough to fill the pits. I would assemble wet. Cured silicone above the surface might prevent the gaskets from sitting flat, causing other leaks. The VG33 gaskets I had were stamped steel, which I would not expect to conform to an uneven surface.

The service manual shows the gaskets going in dry. If the coolant ports on the heads/manifold are pitted, though, I'd be tempted to give those surfaces a skim of silicone before doing them up.

Huh, I didn't know there even was a nav system for these. Best I can do is a link to the service manual. It's a US-model manual, but if the nav system was available in the US, you should be able to work out whether the climate control wiring is the same between the nav/climate unit you have and the climate-only unit you want. My mom's '04 Lexus has a similar early infotainment system. It looks like it was designed in Microsoft Publisher (or maybe Powerpoint) and makes everything it controls more difficult than it needs to be. I see why you want to get rid of yours! Good luck.

They're similar enough that I wouldn't expect any difference that would matter here. Make sure you get the intake manifold gaskets for the 33, the 30 gaskets are thicker. I accidentally got 33 gaskets for mine and nothing lined up. Not sure if they've got the same tapped hole on the back of the head that I used for the knock sensor.

When I had my VG30E apart, I relocated the knock sensor to the back of the driver's side head. There was a drilled/tapped hole right there ready to go, and the harness reached. It hasn't caused any issues, though I doubt it would be as sensitive if there was a knock to sense. +1 for chasing holes, just make sure you get the tap started straight. I salvaged an oxygen sensor bung in an exhaust the other day that I was sure was wrecked. The lower rad hose hooks up lower than the lower intake, so I imagine you'd be alright just draining the rad. I remember pulling the drain plugs on mine for some reason, but I don't think it was before I had the manifold out. One of them didn't even drip until I jammed something up into the hole and broke through the sediment at the bottom of the water passage.

I had the same problem with my center console. The second or third time I had to remember where all the spade terminals hooked up, I bought an extension cable for something in a PC (similar to this), cut it in half to make two mating pigtails, and wired one side to the switches and the other to the harness. I'm not going to call this the right way to do it, but it was cheap, it was easy, and it worked. Looks like you can get ethernet cable in "extension" form as well, and I'll bet it would be easier to fish through an A pillar. However you do it, draw up a wiring diagram so you're not reverse-engineering your own work later on.