Slartibartfast

Well damn, didn't know that was a thing! I probably tried it years (and a few software updates) ago, couldn't make it work, and never checked it again.

Figures. PM me your email address and I'll see if I can get it to you that way.

Yep, PB took a big chunk out of forums, and FB was well-situated to pick up the pieces. The one thing that Farcebook has over forums (apart from the fact that people are already on their platform) is the ease of posting pictures. Drag, drop, done. Here, it's a pain in the ass involving external hosting that generally either isn't supposed to be used for this purpose or requires a paid subscription, and either way they may go dark at any time. (Except Tapatalk, I guess--I haven't tried that but seem to remember hearing it has some kind of image hosting built in?) A database of knowledge isn't as useful when half the pictures are greyed out. I know hosting pictures takes a ton of room, and costs money, and would require constant growth (or pruning, and who's gonna go back and delete their junk photos), but another forum I lurk on for my dad's truck makes it work, and is still very much alive. (It's also covering a much more popular vehicle, so, our mileage may vary.)

Could also be a strut top bearing. Turn the engine off, work the steering manually (key on so it doesn't lock itself), and see if you still hear the noise. If rust is an issue in your area/on your truck, inspect your strut towers as well.

EL-38 of the '03 manual shows how to get those apart, but not how to put them together again. Looks like to get them apart, you push the slider forward (towards the TPS). From that I'd guess that you'd stick it back together with the slider still all the way forward, and the slider would then return on its own to the locked position as the connector seated. Maybe having the slider fully forward lifts the springs that are getting in your way? I didn't even know those connectors were a thing, so that's all I've got. Good luck!

You're already draining the coolant, might as well pull the rad and give yourself some more room to work with. Easier to see, less chance of damaging the radiator if it's not in your way, and more skin left on your knuckles when you're done. If you've got an auto trans, you'll also need to disconnect the cooler lines. You can plug those hoses with old spark plugs (insulator side, not the threaded side).

PM'd. Hopefully Dropbox plays nice. Good luck!

I don't know the 3.5, but that looks like a dowel pin to me.

Parts: everything you can get at now that you won't be able to later. Water pump, timing belt, timing belt tensioner, cam seals, crank seal, water pump bypass hose, thermostat. This is stuff you'll have to pull the belt to fix if it fails later, so you might as well do it while it's easy. When I pulled mine apart, I didn't like the look of my lower rad hoses, so I replaced those as well. Also remember you'll need to top up or replace your coolant afterwards. Tools: Torque wrench, something to hold the cam sprockets when you remove/retorque the bolt (you can use the old timing belt and vise grips like a strap wrench, I made an F-shaped tool from scrap metal that made it easier), a puller for the balancer (duck's foot puller worked great for me, make sure it comes with the right bolts), and something to pull the seals out. To remove the seals, I sharpened the tip of a flat screwdriver, bent it 90°, polished the back side so it wouldn't garf anything, slid the tip between the shaft and the seal so it hooked the seal from behind, and tapped a socket against the handle to pull the seal out (like a slide hammer). There's probably a better way to do it. I also had to buy a 1 1/16" socket to get the crank bolt out because I didn't have any sockets that big at the time.

My dad put up a camera at his office, and not only did the tweakers steal it, they left a "thanks for the camera" note. The Wi-fi system seems like a good idea if you can swing it with your neighbors. Maybe posting pictures of the thieves on a few telephone poles would spook them. You can probably bend the metal back enough for a new lock to seat. I don't know if the back of that panel is any easier to get at than it is on the WD21, hopefully it is. It's a common enough type of damage, you might even find a video guide for how it's done.

There's some good info here, though of course the pictures are screwed up because Photobucket (apparently there's a browser extension that'll get you past that). Can you see where the smoke is coming from? Could just be oil and crap burning off, doesn't seem like the TB should be getting that hot though unless the mixture heater's kicking on for some reason or the smoke is drifting up from somewhere else. Does it also surge in gear? Does it clear up off-idle (revving it or driving)? I had a look at the '89 manual. For an unstable cold idle, it suggests checking the ignition timing, the fast idle cam, the fuel regulator, the idle speed control valve, the EGR valve, the EGR solenoid, and then run codes, in that order; if that doesn't do it, unplug the cylinder head temp sensor and see if that changes anything. For an unstable warm idle, it suggests checking for vacuum leaks in the PCV system, the intake, and the vac lines, checking spark quality/plug condition/plug wires (I assume more for a misfire condition than for surging), timing, compression, and EGR. I would also check the electrical connections on the throttle body to make sure they plug in securely and the pins are clean and not oxidized. If a plug seems suspect, wiggle it with the engine running and see if the idle responds. If you want a PDF of the '89 service manual, let me know and I'll try and remember how I got it to the last guy.

Four-stroke engines don't need backpressure, they need scavenging. Each exhaust pulse helps to draw out the last of the pulse before it. When you've got two banks of cylinders joined up, each bank can scavenge the other, improving the engine's performance. (Even hot rods with dual exhaust tend to have an H pipe or X pipe crossover between the two banks for this purpose.) Looking at how the VQ exhaust is set up, it looks like it's got two mufflers, and the first one doubles as the Y-pipe between the two sides. If that's the muffler you messed with, the loss of scavenging could explain your power loss (and why it came back once you revised the exhaust). If the muffler you messed with was the one behind the axle, then I've got nothing. A gutted cat leaves a big empty chamber in your exhaust system, and those empty chambers are probably screwing up your exhaust flow. (If this doesn't make sense, look up a video explaining the expansion chamber exhaust system used on two-stroke engines.)

He's saying you can run the auto trans rad and just leave the trans cooler capped off. It's the same rad otherwise.

Cleaning the upper slide on the B pillar (by your shoulder) helps a lot with seatbelt retraction. Hold the belt up and (mostly) out of the way and you can feed a thin piece of wire or something between the belt and the slider, and use that to scrape the schmoo off the slider (being careful not to damage the belt webbing of course). The belt should slide more easily afterwards. Mine doesn't shoot back like a tape measure, but I don't have to feed it in by hand and it doesn't get caught in the door. I imagine taking the seatbelt out and washing the hell out of the webbing would help a lot, and probably slow the accumulation of schmoo on the sliders as well. I'm not entirely sure where the schmoo comes from. I assume it's human slime of some variety, but it's not like I drive shirtless or wipe myself with the belt. (We're not out of TP yet.) Also, a dealer failing to honor a lifetime warranty because their VIN archive sucks is some serious BS.

Don't forget the water pump bypass hose.

I skipped the crank seal on mine because I didn't have one and it wasn't leaking yet, and the damn thing started leaking like crazy as soon as I put it back together, bad enough that I pulled it right back into the shop, tore it back down, and ordered a new seal. When I helped a friend do the timing belt in his dad's Kia, we skipped the water pump. I didn't like it, but we didn't have a new one, and it seemed alright. A year or so later the pump bearings locked up and tried to kill the engine. Point is, the parts are old, their failure could take out the engine, and you're in there anyway. Just because they've gone 90k without issue doesn't mean there's another 100k (or another 20 years) left in them. I think I used a Gates belt when I did mine, along with a new tensioner pulley, cam seals, crank seal, water pump, thermostat, and water pump bypass hose. I also replaced the lower rad hose (didn't like the look of it) and the hose coming off the bottom of the thermostat housing (don't remember why, but I probably destroyed it trying to get it off). I did not however replace my crankshaft keys. They looked fine and showed no signs of wallering out their keyways. I suspect they only get chewed up if the crank bolt isn't torqued properly, but don't quote me on that.

I just looked again, the '92 listing shows a bunch of the new style links and also the ACDelco I noted before, and '91 shows only the ACD. ('87-90 show yet another set of part numbers, so, that's weird. Maybe there's a third type?) I haven't needed to track down an older link so I'm not much help beyond that.

The Rockauto parts finder shows a different centerlink after 7 or 8/'92. The tie rod end tapers and the pitman-side centerlink taper got bigger for the later years. Yours should have the earlier (smaller taper) parts, so if you're trying to fit a later centerlink, the driver's side joint will be too large for the pitman and the TREs will be too small for the centerlink. Looks like the only centerlink RA has that'll fit your truck is ACDelco 45B1153. If you want to look elsewhere, you might try searching for a '91 centerlink to avoid the changeover-year uncertainty.

I'm running 5W30 in mine at 247k. 10W30 seemed to make my '95 tick a little more on cold starts. IIRC the manual recommends either depending on temperature conditions.

Try a heavy-duty flasher unit? Those are supposed to flash at a constant rate regardless of the load or lack thereof.

The '80s two-door trucks have a reed valve between the airbox and the charcoal canister for the air injection system, is that what you read about? The pad you're looking at isn't mentioned in the emission control section of the manual (or anywhere else, at least not that I've seen; even the exploded diagram here doesn't show it). It looks like it's made of carpet padding wrapped in the stuff the hood insulation's covered with, so I doubt it's anything special. More than likely it's just sound deadening for the intake for people who don't like whoosh noises. Mine's been gone since I got the truck. A packrat shredded it for nesting material, and I removed the brackets when I cleaned out the mess. I didn't replace it with anything and haven't noticed any issues stemming from it (though now that I think of it, there was a whistling noise from the PCV connection to the intake tube that took a while to track down). We don't have smog checks out here, but I'd be surprised if even California made a fuss about a manky pot holder that's not in the service manual or on the emissions sticker under the hood. If you want to replace it with something, you might try egg-crate foam. Just make sure you don't block off the drain hole underneath it.

Both times I've had one fail, it was leaking around some little mystery port next to one of the hose connections. Have someone push the pedal and watch the master, I could see fluid welling out of that hole when the brakes pressurized. I don't think I've seen a seal kit to rebuild these, doesn't mean they don't exist though. New MCs aren't too expensive. I tried a few brands when I was having issues with my brakes (long story) and didn't notice much difference between them. There is supposed to be a difference between the rear disk vs rear drum masters, though, so make sure you get the right one for your truck. Good luck, hopefully your brake work doesn't turn into a colossal PITA like mine did!

^Gotta love those old training films! An open diff applies equal torque to the left and right wheels, regardless of speed. If a wheel is slipping, the torque it takes to make that wheel slip is all the torque the other wheel on that axle will get, and giving it more gas just spins the slipping wheel faster. The power that two wheels on an open diff axle can put down is limited by the wheel with the least traction. TL;DR: if one front wheel is spinning and the other isn't, that's normal for an open diff. Also, don't worry about auto hubs, those were a WD21 thing. Your R50 came with drive flanges, which have no moving parts and should be pretty much bomb-proof.

The stock trans computer won't work well (if it works at all) without the throttle position and engine speed signals. Even if you came up with a way to feed it the info it needs, I'd expect its shift points to be all kinds of wrong for a TD27. Maybe you could find a donor D21/WD21 that came with a TD27 and an automatic and use its computer, harness, and sensors. If you don't mind shifting your own gears, but like the auto for its torque converter, you could ditch the computers entirely and run a rail shifter like this one. This also assumes you have the bellhousing you need to connect the TD27 to your existing automatic. I'm not 100% sure but I don't think they use the same bolt pattern, and I wouldn't be surprised if the diesel versions used a different torque converter too. The closest I've seen to this build was Ekim Naelcm's truck, which is a WD21 that he TD27-swapped and kept automatic. IIRC he got a trans from a VQ R50 to work with his TD27 by swapping the bellhousing, but had to have a torque converter custom made. He had a full donor, and wasn't crossing platforms like you are, but he'd be the guy to ask if you get stuck trying to figure out what parts you need to make this thing work. He posted a bunch of info about his swap on the NPORA Facebook page a while back.

The knock sensor has a two-pin plug, you may be looking at a wire for something else. You might check around in case the sensor was just relocated. I relo'd mine to the back of the driver's side head so I wouldn't have to pull the intake apart again if it went out. Is it throwing a code?