Slartibartfast

Invisible ink

That Trail'd can is a cool idea. Their site says in a few places that their cans are for water, not fuel, though that may be an EPA thing rather than a materials thing. That said, I'd be a little nervous about suspending twelve gallons of gasoline over the road in a container it's not supposed to be in by a single chain hooked to a twenty-year-old hoist designed to raise and lower a spare tire. A secondary strap or even a skid plate to catch it if it falls would make me feel a lot better about it. And, yeah, accessing those in wet weather would not be a good time, though I don't imagine you get much of that in AZ. If you're planning to use the extra fuel often, I would consider mounting a permanent tank in that space instead. You might find a writeup somewhere like Expedition Portal, or wherever the Cannonball guys hang out. You might look at how Ford did it, too--they built a lot of dual-tank trucks, and I'm told some of them even worked right. Trouble is, the dual-tanks I've seen have a second filler neck, and I'm guessing you'd rather not attack your quarter panel with a hole saw. There's probably a way around this. Whether it's less work than fetching cans from under the truck, I don't know. Whichever method you go with, I would come up with a heat shield between the fuel tank and the muffler, and consider installing a trailer hitch (if you don't have one already) to protect the fuel tank from a rear-end collision. I doubt the unibody was designed to protect the spare tire the way it would've been to protect a fuel tank. I'll bet the tank off one of those oilless pancake compressors would fit in there real nice.

Is there a screen on a solenoid, maybe? I haven't had a solenoid out of one of these, but IIRC the solenoids in my friend's 4L60E had screens to keep junk out of them. I would write down the instructions for the blinky-lights OBD and keep that in the truck so it's handy the next time it acts up. Figuring out what it's actually upset about could save a lot of guesswork.

What sort of play? Rotating, radial? Either way, I wouldn't expect it to only act up on decel. How's the oil level/condition in the rear end?

The filter's not ringing any bells for me, but the AT section of the manual should show it somewhere if it's supposed to be serviceable.

Overfilled fluid could do it. The fluid level rises as the transmission warms up, so if the fluid's on the high side normally, a little extra heat could get it high enough to get air whipped into it and make the hydraulics act funny, which makes the computer think the sky is falling. Make sure you check it with the transmission warmed up, otherwise it'll read wrong. I overfilled mine by about a quart by believing the dipstick when it was cold.

I doubt the oil leaks are related. Any codes? If you can't get transmission codes through the OBDII, there is a workaround using the old blinky-lights OBD. The diagnostics for that start on AT-48 in the '03 manual. I don't know if they're like the WD21 where they only store the code for one drive cycle, hopefully not. The "judgement flicker" setup is a bit of a PITA, might be worth a try, though. Once you know what it's upset about, you can track down why. Any issues with the engine temp?

Worth a shot, I guess. Let us know if it feels different afterwards.

You're in for the same job as a body lift, minus the supporting mods to the fan shroud and fuel filler (though you may want to loosen those so you're not yanking anything when you jack up the body). I haven't done one, but from what I've read here, there's not much to it. Given how little you'll need to lift the body to slip the mounts out, you may not need to remove the front bumper brackets. The steering shaft may still put up a fight. It would be a good idea to have new bolts on hand, or at least have a plan for where to get them, in case the old ones do not come out politely or are otherwise not good enough to reuse. Are the existing mounts collapsed?

I do like that gen of patrols! You can keep the mud, though.

Frenchy, I believe you are confusing our early fuel injection with more sophisticated modern systems. Modern vehicles use wideband oxygen sensors, which allow their computers to dial in any air/fuel mixture they want, so they can stay in closed loop all the time (once the sensors are warm, anyway). These older rigs use narrowband oxygen sensors, which are useless* for any mixture but stoich (around 14.7:1). The narrowband can't even see stoich--it can only report rich or lean, so the computer bounces the mixture back and forth between them in a zigzag that averages out to stoich. This means these rigs can only run in closed loop for light acceleration and cruising. In any other conditions, they fall back to open loop, and run on stored values. A while back I added LEDs to my dash that mirror those on the back of the computer, and running the computer in one of the first two test modes lets me monitor the operation of the oxygen sensor while I'm driving. The green light flashes with the oxygen sensor when the system is in closed loop. I only ever see the green light flash under light-to-moderate throttle. Under heavy throttle or engine braking, the light does not flash. The light does not flash at idle, either, though I have seen it continue to flash briefly after the engine has returned to idle following closed-loop operation. I assume idle (even warm idle) is set a little on the rich side, and as such cannot be monitored with a narrowband sensor. (*There may be a little more going on here than I'm giving the system credit for. One of the test modes is supposed to tell you if the mixture is more than a certain percentage rich or lean in closed loop, and hell if I know how it's working that out from a sensor that only reads 0 or 1. Nissan may have done something clever to squeeze a little more data out of these primitive sensors, but clearly they were not able to get wideband performance out of a narrowband sensor.) Anyway, Teesetz, good to hear it's back on good behavior, and good luck tracking down any residual gremlins.

Wrong fuel pressure, unmetered air, and 30-year-old EFI that doesn't monitor the mixture at idle. Yeah, that makes sense.

I would never have called that being the problem! I'm guessing the incorrect fuel pressure was throwing off the idle mixture, which threw off the idle speed, and the computer ran out of adjustment trying to fix this and went to high idle. Still not sure why electrical loads calmed it down. In any case, good work finding it! Hopefully the issue stays gone.

Sounds like the slide pins are seized. The caliper's supposed to float from side to side so it wears the pads evenly. Once that's sorted, I'd look up the spec for endfloat on that axle to hopefully rule out the clips being damaged from the last guy driving it like that for who knows how long before scrapping the truck. The nice thing about (most) domestic rigs is parts availability. I remember someone on here having a hell of a time trying to find a flywheel for a VQ/manual R50.

atomic monsters

C clip rear end? Some play is normal, don't know about 1/4" though. Never heard of one oscillating like that. My best guess is a warped or bent brake rotor, or debris/rust making the rotor sit wonky on the axle. Or the axle itself is bent, that would do it.

alarm clock

If it's not isolated to the headlights, then tracing the headlight circuit might be less useful than I hoped. I would expect the alt to struggle more with the lights on than it does with them off, but I'd be curious to see battery voltage at idle, loaded and unloaded, when it's acting up vs when it's not. Was your defroster on when you heard it idle up on its own? The auto HVAC system kicks in the aircon when the defroster's running to dehumidify the air. Could be the compressor cycled and that's what made it idle up. It's been a while since I had working aircon in mine, so I don't remember how much it's supposed to idle up for that, but I don't think it was that high. I don't think the manual HVAC does that.

That's a weird one. I've had low idle/stalling issues with mine when the MAF connector was acting up, but I've never had it stick on high idle. And the headlights playing into it is bizarre. There is an adjustment on the IACV, and the procedure to adjust it is in the service manual. If you think it's acting up because the last guy messed with it, it might be worth ruling out. The crosstalk with the headlights tells me something else is wrong. Adjusting it to mask the current issue may complicate your diagnosis of what's actually wrong, or give you other issues. For some damn reason, these have two idle control valves. The IACV-AAC (the one under the back of the intake, with the adjustment screw) has a solenoid that's pulsed by the computer to fine-tune the idle. The IACV Air Regulator (the tall one behind the EGR, with the plug on top) is wired to the fuel pump relay and acts like the electric choke on a carburetor, except backwards (starts wide open for high idle on cold starts and slowly closes as it heats up). Test info for the two valves is on EF&EC 117 and 119 of the '95 manual. I suspect the valves themselves are alright, but a weak connection in the headlight circuit is confusing one of the sensors that tells the computer when it needs to raise the idle. The computer controls the IACV-AAC according to input from the sensor in the dizzy (which tells it the engine speed--you'd have other symptoms if this was bad), coolant temp sensor (idles up when it's cold--check the sensor and its connector), ignition switch (start signal, doubt that's got anything to do with it), throttle position (presumably so it's not thinking about idling when it's not idling--it is idling, so I doubt it's this, though it wouldn't hurt to check its adjustment), neutral position switch if it's an automatic, aircon switch (idles up when the aircon is on), power steering pressure switch (idles up when the power steering is working hard), battery voltage (I assume so it can idle up if the alty needs more RPM to hit its voltage target), and the vehicle speed sensor (I assume this is so it can work out if you're coasting or engine braking). If the valves themselves check out, I would go to the EL section, work out which fuse link and ground point the headlights use, and check them both. If any of those points are shared with other equipment, and are poorly connected, power could be backfeeding all over the place. Make sure the connections are clean and tight and the fuse links are in good shape. If that doesn't get you anywhere, I would check the sensors that tell the computer to raise the idle (EF&EC should have test info for each) and their connectors. Failing that, check the battery voltage at idle (with the headlights on and off), check the engine grounding (voltage from the engine to the negative post on the battery should be pretty low), check the other fuse links, and check whatever other ground points you can find. Look for any obvious harness damage. Wiggle stuff with it running, see if you can find something that changes the idle. Hell, check the vacuum lines, if you haven't, though I doubt they have anything to do with this. The '95 manual also has some basic troubleshooting, including various idle issues, starting on EF&EC-50. When it's at low idle (with the headlights on), does engaging the aircon or the steering switch (turn full against the stop and hold it) bump the idle back up? Does it idle down for just the parking lights, only low beams, only high beams, some combination thereof? And finally, does loading the electrical system with something else (rear defroster, blower motor, something like that) have the same effect?

Check the U joints before tearing down the rear end. The ratio and it only happening on deceleration does sound like it could be gear-related, though.

cat burglar

barn door

pole vaulted

I think you're overestimating the current draw of the aircon clutch. I can't find a spec for yours specifically, but it looks like aircon clutches generally take less than 5A. If your relay was happy switching two 55W halogen fog lights, it should have no trouble with the compressor clutch. If some blue relays were heavier-duty than others, and would cause issues if switched, I would expect the service manual to call that out somewhere. It doesn't, at least not that I've found. It just calls them Type 1M. Looks like there are at least three different pin layouts (two in the '03 manual, one in the '95), so that may explain a few of the different part numbers. Other than that, could be different suppliers, slight revisions, something along those lines. Hopefully an R50 owner can get you the PN off of theirs to put your mind at ease.

I don't have an R50 to check, but nissanpartsdeal shows the aircon relay as 25230-79915 or 25230-79945 for an '03. Both say they were replaced by 25230-79917.