Slartibartfast

Yeah, I had to borrow a 12-point impact socket when I did the CVs in mine. I did give it a go with a chrome socket, but naturally it turned to glitter when I hit it with the 1/2" impact.

Well that sucks! Hopefully something simple. Re-check anything electrical that you had apart, hopefully it's just a loose connector somewhere.

Wrecker or part-out would be my go-to as well. If you strike out locally, I have two of them from my '95 parts car. Grey, cloth, hole in the middle. Not mint, but not bad. I don't think they have the big ribs around the outside that the headrests in your picture do, not sure if that's an early/late thing or an XE/SE thing. If you want new, looks like Amayama still has them, but they ain't cheap.

When I helped a friend swap the trans in his S10 Blazer, we just shot a spot of paint on each torsion bar adjuster. We used a different color on either side so we couldn't mix up the parts. Then when we put it back together, we just lined up the paint marks. Worked great.

That's an odd one. The wiring for the ignition switch runs through the column, so something might be loose in there. Be careful taking the clamshell apart, they're quite brittle. Once that's off, I'd follow the wiring from the ignition switch and make sure it's in good shape and the connector is firmly installed. The switch itself (not the whole cylinder, just the switch) is cheap and easy to replace if it turns out to be flaky. I cleared up an intermittent no-start on mine by removing the alarm system. It plugs in between the switch and the rest of the harness, so you can just unplug the switch from the alarm, unplug the alarm from the rest of the harness, and plug the ignition into the rest of the harness without the alarm in between. (I took a bunch more stuff apart to get the rest of the alarm harness out, but that shouldn't be strictly necessary.) Cleared up my gremlin, might get yours too. Takes out the alarm, obviously, in the unlikely event that yours still works/you have the keyfob for it. Sounds like the fuel level sender in the tank might be acting up too.

Just like that. Wire the halos to the 87a. Wire the headlights to 87. Buy a set of alligator test leads and a couple of indicator lights and wire it up yourself. Seeing it work might help make sense of it.

Sounds reasonable. Good luck with your rebuild, and let us know how it goes!

With power to 30, and no power to the coil (headlights off), yes, 87a has power. I would not however call it constant power, because when the coil is powered, 87a will lose power.

87 and 87a both get power from 30 (which is wired to battery +), but through separate contacts inside the relay, which allows them to be switched opposite of each other. Switched power to the coil (from the headlight switch) turns off 87a, as it turns on 87. Removing switched power from the coil turns off 87, but turns on 87a. Here's another way to look at it. Imagine a standard household light switch. Switch up, light on. Switch down, light off. Now imagine two light switches, side by side. But one of them is upside down. If you flip both switches up, you've turned one on, and the other off. Flip them both down, and you've turned one off, and the other on. The right-side-up switch controls 87. The upside-down switch controls 87a. Both switches get power from 30. And both are controlled by the coil, which can only move them both together.

I've done the engine-crane-through-the-door method on a Toyota. Worked great, but had me worried with how close to the windshield the boom ended up. I think I had a load leveller in between the crane and the trans, which was great for lining it up, but meant the boom sat higher than I would've liked. Might get more room to lift with the boom up against the trans. The firewall in mine had the same fluff panel, with the same layer of crumbling black plasticky crap. I assume the black crap was once rubber of some variety. Mine came apart like peanut brittle. The fluff behind it was saturated with lung dart stink, so it was all bin-bound anyway. I put a little sound deadening in its place, probably should've done more. Might do that the next time I have the dash out. I don't remember a foil bit. Where was that? Good luck with the exhaust! I was pleasantly shocked when the exhaust fasteners on my parts car just came loose like they were supposed to. Hopefully yours are similarly cooperative.

New cap and rotor can't hurt! And yeah, always nicer to work on stuff that doesn't look like it just came out of a hole in the ground. Oily/black plugs aren't a good sign. Black could be injector issues. Oily... hopefully it's just wet with fuel (leaky injector or plug not firing), but if it's actually oil, that could be rings or valve stem seals. Does it smoke?

No, it would not.

Could be a wiring fault. Could be the bulb, I've heard of bulbs failing to where the filament sorta swings around and makes contact now and then. Worth noting that the illumination in these does not use a standard ground. The circuit gets positive from the headlight switch and ground from the dimmer (pulse width modulated, I assume). Should be pink/blue and pink/black wires. I would check for power across those at the plug (marker lights on, dimmer turned up) to rule out a harness issue.

Power to 30, headlight to 87, halo to 87a, 85 to ground, 86 to signal. If there's no signal, 30 and 87a connect, halo is on, headlight is not. If there is signal, 30 and 87 connect, headlight is on, halo is not. It only powers one pin at a time. If 87a does not disconnect from 30 when the coil is powered, then your relay is defective.

If the clock takes the same bulb as the idiot lights, that may be a tricky one. I struck out when I brought one of those to a parts place to match. That was a long time ago, now I'm thinking about it--not sure if their selection of tungsten bulbs will have gotten better or worse since. Been a while since I had the auto hvac head out of mine. IIRC there's some kind of cover on top, with the bulbs under it? They're run off the same illumination circuit as the rest of the dash lights, and the LEDs I've put in my dash switches dim just fine, so LEDs should work just fine in the HVAC head. Might take some screwing around to get the illumination even, assuming it's got the same light pipe setup as the manual head. Might need some kind of diffuser. I would be a little surprised if the bulbs are a common size that you can find drop-in LEDs for.

Wearing one pad and not the other sounds like slide pins to me too. Clean/lube those if you haven't already. Down to metal would certainly explain the screeching.

Mr. 510 got Gabriel 49218 air shocks for a Chevy pickup to fit his, but only in the back. Sounds like he tried the same with the fronts, but they hit the UCAs. I doubt those coilover shocks are any smaller. Maybe aftermarket UCAs would have more clearance? I do get tempted now and then to do the rear air shocks on mine. My rear springs are sagged pretty bad, and the air shocks don't cost that much more than a set of springs. And the shocks can do tricks! Here's Gabriel's explanation of their mount codes.

87 and 87a are both switched, but they're switched opposite of each other. 87 is turned on by the coil. 87a is turned off by the coil. If you do better with pictures (I know I do), try this. As drawn, the coil is not energized (headlight switch off, in your case). Spring tension is holding common (30) against normally closed (87a), and away from normally open (87). When the coil is energized, its magnetic field pulls on the armature, which pushes that middle contact up, holding common (30) against normally open (87) and away from normally closed (87a). If it's still clear as mud, maybe this guy can explain better than I can. TL;DR, your relays have a feature that is not useful in this application. Ignore 87a and treat them like four-pin relays. While we're on the topic of relay harnesses, make sure yours is connected to the battery through a decent fuse. Mine's connected to an aux fusebox I added on for that and a few other circuits, but when I first set it up, I didn't know better, and I used something like this crap. Water got in, the weak little contacts corroded, the corroded contacts got hot under normal load, the plastic melted, and then my headlights quit working mid-corner in the dark on a rural highway. I replaced that garbage with a rubber fuse holder (this style, though I think I bought mine locally). Much better connections, takes the same fuses as the rest of the truck, never let me down, highly recommended. I only swapped that for the aux fusebox because I had three or four of those things bouncing around, and that bothered me.

Ah, that's too bad. It's amazing how that smell sticks to things.

There is power to 87a, but it works opposite to 87. If there's power to the coil, 30 and 87 connect. If there's no power to the coil, 30 and 87a connect. This is wasted in most circuits (which is why many relays only have four pins), but it can be useful in some applications. If you had halos or markers or something that you wanted on only when the headlights weren't, you'd wire those to 87a.

I wish making a VG34 was that simple! There is a fair bit of machine work required to put Q45 pistons in a VG33. 0.0008" clearance from the wrist pin to the piston is definitely out of spec. A VG33 should not have clearance there at all. The writeup I linked above claims the VG33 has full-float wrist pins, but the '97 and '01 R50 and '02 and '04 WD22 service manuals disagree. The spec is listed as 0-0.0002" interference. Looks like you have to get the piston hot to get the pin to drop in. The pin is constrained by two snap rings, so they're not counting on that interference to retain it, but clearly they're not intended to float. The '95 WD21 VG30 specs 0.0003-0.0005 clearance between the pin and the piston, and the '96 Z32 VG30DETT specs -0.0002 to 0" interference, which is an odd way to say 0-0.0002" clearance. So wrist-pin-to-piston clearance is spec'd in some VGs, but not that much. That said, I'm a service manual nerd, not an engine builder. Hopefully someone who knows more about engine internals can chime in. In the meantime I would reach out to the manufacturer and ask them why their spec is looser than Nissan's. Maybe it has to do with their manufacturing tolerances. Or maybe they were tired of people sending back busted pistons with stuck pins after trying to hammer them in cold.

That'll do it! 87A is normally closed (opens when the coil is powered), 87 is normally open (closes when the coil is powered).

Thanks! Gotta get around to finishing that one.

At least you got it in the end! That must've been a grand old PITA to keep having to go through them. The service manual agrees with your coworker. It says to use brake fluid on the pistons, rubber grease on the piston seals, dust seals, and slide pins, and something called poly butyl cuprysil (or, failing that, a silicone-based grease) on the pad retainers. The ABS does have an "other" code (5), for which the first bit of troubleshooting is "overhaul both rear brakes." I have no idea how it would figure this out, given how limited that system is, but clearly it has tricks that I am not wise to! Weirdly mine did not throw that code when my rear brake circuit had air in it.

Limp mode kicking in during a hard turn makes me suspect a wiring issue. I would check that the battery is secured properly, and that the cables, terminals, fuse links, and engine grounds are clean and tight. If you find something loose/suspicious, clean it up, clear the codes, drive it, and see if the issue (and the codes) come back. I don't know that the computer would throw random codes if it lost power briefly while driving, but I don't know that it wouldn't, and it's easy enough to rule that out. If/when the codes return, use the troubleshooting section for each code in the EF&EC section of the service manual to chase them down. Which manual are you using? You have the wrong code table for '87. I don't know why, but the code table changed somewhere between '87 and '89. The code table from the '87 manual is as follows. 11 Crank angle sensor circuit 12 Air flow meter circuit 13 Cylinder head temp sensor 21 Ignition signal missing in primary coil 33 Oxygen sensor circuit 42 Throttle sensor circuit 43 Injector circuit 44 No malfunction in above circuits So you've got the temp sensor, the TPS, and the injector circuit code. The service manual has troubleshooting info for all three. I do not know of a PDF of the '87 manual, but I have an '89 manual up on Dropbox (which I found somewhere, naturally I can't remember where, or I'd send you there instead). '89 had the same throttle body injection, but the later code table, and likely various other small differences here and there. I have a paper copy of the '87, so if something isn't matching up, let me know, and I'll take some pictures of the relevant sections.