Slartibartfast

My understanding is that the diesel and gas engines don't share a bolt pattern. IIRC the guy on the Facebook page who put a TD27 in a (formerly) gas WD21 had to track down the correct bellhousing to get the TD27 to play nice with his automatic.

The suggestion of bad hubs isn't entirely off base from what I've read (pistons get pushed back by the rotor wobbling, so you end up with free play in the pedal extending the pistons back out until the pads meet the rotors) but you'd only have the problem while the car was moving, and then it would pump back up after a few strokes. The Pathy brake booster I had apart did not have a solid rod from input to output, but the two rods met in the middle and should give a solid pedal whether the diaphragm is working or not. The slop between the two rods is what opens and closes the valve that controls air pressure against the back of the diaphragm in the booster. But no, unless the booster went entirely to pieces inside, a failed booster should not allow the pedal to go to the floor. (I replaced mine thinking it was the only thing left that could be wrong, and it solved nothing.) I'd be hesitant to say the new MC didn't do it without bleeding the thing first, even though it sounds like you were careful with it. I'd also be suspicious of the ABS system. After the fun I had last summer with mine, I hate brakes. There's no telling what's wrong unless it's leaking, or where the air is, or if there's air, or whether the new part or the bleed was what changed something.

Wondered what the hell that noise was. It sounded like a wiper motor or a fuel pump having a really bad day, but it didn't stop when I turned the truck off. Then I got out and realized the sound was actually coming from the from four or five lonely bloodhounds in the back of a Chevy pickup parked nearby.

Thanks for the confirmation! Happy soldering.

Wow! Yeah, I'm no engine expert, but that ain't good.

No idea, sorry. You might try looking up the business to see if other people have posted forum rants about it, and see what their warranty policy is. Also get compression #s if you can.

Yep, that sounds about like mine! Being concerned about it didn't change anything the last time and it doesn't seem to be hurting anything, so I'm not worried about it. It doesn't happen very often, either. Sometimes on a hot day I can shut a door and the vibration starts the valve making noise, which is amusing sometimes. Like, man, what am I feeding this thing? The only common fault I've read about with the R50 evap system is the carbon can barfing its guts into the purge valve, locking it up and throwing a trouble code. I don't think it's got anything to do with the noise, but here's a writeup on fixing that issue if you're curious about the system.

Nice fix! Hopefully the thread tape keeps it all sealed up.

If/when mine craps out, I'm hoping to do the 3.3 swap, because if I'm going to that much work anyway, I might as well add some go while I'm in there. If I track down an X or Fronty engine with the accessories, I should be able to sidestep the whole balancer/V-belt issue, which sounds like it's the most problematic part of the swap.

Mine does that too.

I don't know if it's the same noise, but my '93 makes a sort of groaning duck noise from the fuel tank area sometimes after I shut it off, or even sometimes when it's just sitting there on a hot day. There's a check valve in the evap line to the charcoal can that prevents the tank from draining fuel into the canister if you roll the truck, and I guess it takes a certain pressure to lift the ball inside and let fuel vapor through--so pressure builds until the valve opens, and then the valve kinda flutters and makes the groaning noise. I actually replaced the valve on my '95, thinking the noise meant there was something wrong with it, and the replacement made the same noise. I don't know the R50 evap system but wouldn't be surprised if Nissan used a similar valve.

Given the angle it's at I'd assume the problem isn't so much that it's pulled out as that the pipe going into the manifold is bent and deformed. That sucks, definitely a bad design to have something that fragile that close to a stubborn nut. Caulk might work for a while, but tapping for a 90° fitting sounds like a better fix.

The third brake light on my '93 sucked when I got it. Some of the LEDs were trying harder than the others, but they were all pretty dim. I too took it apart expecting a smoking gun (moisture, corrosion, something burned up inside) and didn't find anything obvious. LEDs have a life span like anything else, and I figured mine had just worn out over twenty-odd years and 230-odd thousand miles of urban driving. I had a good one in my parts car, so I didn't spend too much time troubleshooting the bad one before swapping it out for one I knew worked. I doubt the issue is one string drawing excessive current. I think you'd see evidence of heat or blown fuses if that was the case. I'd verify that the voltage across each string is the same as the supply voltage (to rule out high resistance in a joint or trace or something), maybe test an individual LED on 3v to see if it lights up properly, and if both of those come up negative, order a bag of red 5mm LEDs and get ready to do a whole lot of soldering. If that doesn't sound like fun, there are aftermarket ones on Fleabay. They've got red ones, they've got black-tinted ones if you like painting your lights so they work less, and they've got clear ones because Altezza, yo. I didn't check to see if Nissan still sells them, but yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.

^What he said, only the one I skipped started leaking almost immediately after I got the thing buttoned back up. And yes, it's much quicker the second time.

I've heard of headlights popping bulbs like that. Makes sense that a tail light would do the same. I did a similar fix on a friend's Yota years ago, except we couldn't be arsed to remove the housing, so we just drilled a little hole through the lens to let the blinker fluid out. Hers didn't pop bulbs that I remember, but it sure looked funny following her at night watching the tail light slosh. As for how the water gets in, I had a headlight start fogging up a while ago, and found that the seam between the glass and the housing was leaking. I dried it out, covered the seam with JB weld, and put it back together. It hasn't fogged since! Nice!

Compression will go up a bit generally when you do the test, but if it goes up like crazy then yeah, not great news for the rings. You'd have to tear it down pretty far to do rings, plus possible machine work if it turns out the bore is chewed up. I don't know what a VQ goes for but replacement would be less screwing around for sure. Make sure the motor you're putting in is better than what's coming out! When my dad looked for an engine for his '03, he couldn't find one locally with good compression numbers. One last idea... I've heard of guys freeing up stuck rings by pouring seafoam or marvel mystery oil down the plug holes and letting it soak. If the rings in #1 are just stuck in their slots rather than actually damaged, and you can get them loose again, they may go back to sealing up properly. This assumes that the rings are stuck rather than worn out or damaged, but it's a cheap thing to try, especially if the engine's junk otherwise.

Ohhhh nooooooo. On the plus side, now we know how canned icing is made!

EGR clog seems like an unlikely cause of stalling, but might be worth trying to clean out on the off chance it's confusing something else. When it dies, is it sudden like you turned the key off or does it idle down or struggle first?

My Mile Markers are holding up pretty well too, though the chrome plating on the trim rings is coming off in sheets. Thanks for the heads up on the Carquest axles. When I had my front end apart, I rebooted some factory axles, figuring it couldn't be that hard and I'd be sure to avoid a bum reman. Next time I'm taking my chances on remans! Those things are a right greasy PITA to get apart, and of the four axles I disassembled (or tried to), only two of them were in good enough shape to put back together.

After seeing a few examples of tire carrier tables, I've been considering it myself. Definitely interested to see what you come up with, especially for the latches/hinges/hardware.

Nope, I just see plain text with a couple of links. I clicked on one of them and nothing happened except that a little shield popped up next to the address bar in Firefox, which says "tracking blocked" if I mouse over it.

Make sure you do all the seals/hoses when you do the timing belt. I skipped the crank seal the first time I did mine and the SOB started leaking as soon as I had it back together. Might be worth doing the rear main while you can get to it; a friend and I skipped that when we swapped the engine in his Blazer and the engine bay looks like the La Brea tar pits now. Also probably a good idea to check the condition of your engine mounts so you can have replacements on hand if you need them. The mounts on that Blazer were completely shot, and we didn't know until it was too late to get parts. I don't know what kind of baling wire the wrecking yard tied to the replacement engine to the pallet with, but I will say that it did a surprisingly good job of holding the one separated mount together until we got around to redoing those. I like the shopping cart roof rack. Cool that it made the DED video! Make a partout thread when you start cutting up the old gambler truck, there are a few bits I'd be interested in.

Working for me on copy/paste. Given that it's on Facebook, I wouldn't be surprised if it was an issue of FB not playing ball. See if this link works:

I was thinking less of damage to the spring and more of your brake bias changing depending on which way the axle was flexed. The stock bracket has the spring connected pretty close to what I assume is the "pivot point" on the axle (assuming the diff stays about the same distance from the body as the axle articulates). Add seven inches to that arm and the end of it will move back and forth more as the axle flexes. Enough to matter? That I don't know.

Seems like the easiest way would be to extend the bracket on the axle, but then it would be yanking the spring when the rear end articulates, which is less than ideal. The best way to preserve the geometry would be to make a bracket to lower the LSV towards the axle, but then you'd probably have to extend the brake lines. And yeah, I just Google NPORA + whatever I'm looking for.