Slartibartfast

The service manual says that a code 51 means an open circuit somewhere in the injector harness, likely caused by a bad injector or a fault with the harness. The diagnostic procedure starts on EF&EC 108 of the '95 manual--looks like it's basically just having you test each injector circuit from the plug on the ECU to the plug at the injector. The only other injector code is 45, injector leak, which is supposed to trigger only if an injector's leaking, but can apparently pop up for just about anything else that causes the truck to run pig rich (sensor faults, fuel pressure). I was able to tighten up a loose plug on one of my idle controls that was just loose enough to cause intermittent issues by squishing the pins in the female end a little bit (with a knife, in a parking lot, so probably not how you're supposed to do it)--if your injectors test good, I'd be inclined to try something similar, on the off chance you just have a loose plug that's making an injector drop out occasionally and setting a code without making a consistent misfire (which I assume you'd notice driving the thing). The guy who was modding the ECUs (I think it's the same guy) is active on the NPORA Facebook page, and it sounds like he's done a few for people. Ekim Naelcm, I think he was Nefarious on here.

+1 for FSM. The 1990 manual is available, but not from Nico. These guys have it. When Nico's archive went down a while back (Nissan's lawyers got bored or something) someone posted a link to that site, and I downloaded the '90 manual to hopefully fill in some of the things about my '93 missing from the '94/'95 manuals I downloaded from Nico. Luckily my computer remembered where I got it from because I sure didn't! The '93 manual on Nico isn't actually a service manual, unfortunately; it's more of a catch-all for snippets from other manuals, random tips, and Nissan recall and service bulletins labelled in what Google Translate tells me is Latvian. There is some good stuff in there if you're willing to wade through it, but yeah, it's not a service manual; the '94/'95 manuals are the oldest proper WD21 manuals Nico's got. I've sprayed down my engine bay at the self-serve car wash with no major issues, though I did get a little water in the power steering res once, so don't go too crazy with it.

Yep, what he said. They're not sealed units like some trucks, they're built more like trailer bearings, only they've got a lock ring held by a couple Phillips screws instead of a castle nut and a cotter pin. There's a special socket you can use for the lock ring that makes things easier. Good to know I'm not the only one finding them loose after a while!

Hauled a trailer loaded with a little over a metric ton of floor tiles up to the house from the highway. We needed it in the basement, and the driveway doesn't go to the basement, so I went the "fun way" up through the yard. Low range is a wonderful thing! Also readjusted the front bearings, because they felt a bit loose. Didn't solve the front-end clunk it's developed on turns. Everything looks tight up front, but something clearly isn't.

I doubt the U-joints are making much noise in park, unless it's a separate issue. Fourth is overdrive, yes. If the noise is gear-dependent I'd assume it's internal to the tranny, though I don't know its workings well enough to guess at what would only make noise in third and park.

Yikes. That's unhelpful--also bizarre. Like someone took the cap off to check the bearing and didn't re-torque. How's the journal?

The click/no start (at least in auto-trans models) is usually the ignition switch from what I've read. I recently had a slow cranking issue and a no click/no start that I thought was a worn-out starter, but the replacement did the same thing until I replaced the ignition switch as well. Unplug the signal wire for the starter (grey plug, attached to a bracket on the side of the starter or dangling nearby if the last person who had the starter out didn't have time to mess around with the stupid bracket) and can hook up a test lead to the side coming from the starter. If the engine cranks poorly on the ignition switch, but cranks properly when you touch the test wire to battery +, the solenoid isn't getting the power it needs from the switch. The switch itself (not the lock cylinder) is cheap and surprisingly easy to swap out. (You can also hotwire it right from the ignition switch by bridging the black/yellow and black/white wires, which may be easier than getting to the starter wiring, especially if the bracket's still there.) The hard starting once it is turning over does sound like an idle control issue, but I doubt the idle screw moved on its own. More likely an idle component isn't working for some reason. I solved a stalling-at-lights-once-warmed-up problem on mine by cleaning the plug for the IACV (tower-looking deal at the driver's rear of the motor) and re-bending the female pins a little because they were loose. You might also have a look at the plug for the other idle valve (the IACV-AAC), which is the one with the screw. I'm not sure why there are two idle valves, but there are. Also make sure your battery terminals are clean and tight. Doesn't sound like it's the starting issue but it's easy to check, and worth a look if the issue started when you swapped the battery.

I used Timken L68111 cups when I did mine, and got them from a local parts store.

LEDs are diodes. No current should flow if they're backwards, unless there's some kind of driver circuitry or something in yours that's unhappy with reverse polarity for some reason (and that seems like a really dumb thing to build into a bulb that can be hooked up backwards). Again, I'd test the one you're putting in the dome light to see if it's shorted out internally, or look for any way it could be touching things it shouldn't during installation. I built a bench power supply a while back from a computer power supply from an old PC tower. Pretty easy to do and you can find instructions online. It does 3.3v, 5v, and 12v, and it's got a built-in breaker to shut itself off if it's shorted out or overloaded. It's really helpful for this kind of stuff.

The original front end parts on my '93 had little plug bolts that you could remove and replace with a zerk to grease them.

I'd just go through each of them and test them, either with a meter or with a power supply, and see if any of them are in fact defective. If you find a bad one, pitch it (or take a closer look and see if you can find solder globbed over two pins or something). Then reinstall the lights one at a time and see how it goes.

I'm pretty sure the windshield glues in, so the glue should be providing the seal. I'm not sure about the trims but I imagine your local windshield place could tell you. I've also heard of rust problems in the metal behind the trim.

Doesn't look like it sticks up high enough to damage the rest of the front end if it moves, so that's a plus. Probably mounts about the same as what RainGoat's got. Doesn't look like it covers much, though.

Sounds like you've got a pretty good idea of what needs doing already. Even if your tire sizes are identical, if your wheels are anything but dead straight while you're driving in 4H on pavement, you're still winding up the transfer. If your diff is sagging, the U-joint angle could be just wonky enough to vibrate a little when it's spinning but not under load, then get wonkier (and noisier) when loaded.

I'd be inclined to try the figure 8s in reverse at low speed, but I'd be concerned about damaging something elsewhere in the system by beating on it too far beyond that. If the backwards routine doesn't do it, it may be time to just drop the case and pull it apart. That said, having looked through the section in the manual that covers that box, I can understand not wanting anything to do with opening it up. TF-145 of the '03 R50 FSM has a procedure for looking into "tight corner braking symptom," which I'm guessing is just a really stupid way of saying "torque bind" or "stuck in 4x." Looks like the procedure boils down to checking for power from pin 34 in the connector to ground. If it's there, check the clutch pressure switch circuit; if it's not, tear the thing down and check the control valve assembly, 4WD solenoid valve, 2-4WD shift solenoid valve, clutch piston, and clutch assembly. If you jack up one of the front wheels with the engine off, can you turn that wheel without moving the truck? If not, the problem's probably in the clutch or maybe the piston. Looks like wet clutches on motorbikes tend to lock up from sitting, but that's because they sit with the clutch fully engaged; if I'm understanding this thing right, the clutch should be disengaged with the truck shut off, so that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If turning the truck off releases the clutch, I'd suspect a hydraulic fault (solenoid stuck open). The lack of codes suggests it's probably not wiring, except that the last step in the troubleshooting is to check the connector for loose or damaged pins, so maybe have a look at that as well before tearing the whole case apart. Good luck! If you haven't yet, you can get the US manuals here. I'm not sure how much will hold true for your Aussie model, though.

I haven't seen a lot of diesel swaps but IIRC somebody put a TD32 in a WD21 a while ago. In the US it's pretty common to swap out the VG30 for the VG33 from the R50 Pathfinder or first-gen Xterra or Frontier (might be a Navara in your market), but that uses the electrical system from the VG30, so it would be more work than usual in your case. Is your TD showing signs of weakness?

It's not really a brush guard, it's a whole bumper, so its mounts don't have to work around the factory bumper cover or crash bar or whatever. I assume it bolts straight to the unibody where the factory bumper mounts, where the body's built to take that kind of load. The nice thing about RainGoat's guards is that if they do fail, there's only so much damage they're gonna do to what's behind them; they don't have a big tall section to slap back against the body and cause damage away from the site of the actual impact. Worst case, your bumper cover gets screwed up, and that was gonna take a hit either way. Looks like a good setup and sounds like they were well-built.

The trouble with brush guards, as I understand it, is that the guard tends to slap into the front of the truck if you hit something and damage more things than would've gotten hit by what you ran into. It looks like that one's got half-decent lower mounts, but if those bent pieces of flat bar are supposed to be the middle mounts, I wouldn't trust them for much. And if those fail, and the lower mounts don't, you've got a bunch of leverage acting on a part of the truck that probably wasn't designed for that. Even if all the mounts are good and attached to solid parts of the truck, that thing doesn't cover a whole lot, does it? It might keep most of the sticks or tree branches out of your headlights (provided they don't get stuck in the little cross-bars), but they'll still hit the bumper cover or drag along the hood/fenders as you pass. I doubt it would do much if any good against a hoof rat, unless said hoof rat was considerate enough to stand in just the right spot. About the only thing I think it would be good at is pushing something wide, like the bumper of another vehicle--assuming, once again, that the mounts could take it. I'm also imagining trying to clean out behind those headlight hoops after a good snow. Especially if it's melted a little and then re-frozen. That might not be as much of an issue in your area, though!

Looks like it's possible to break the Xterra adjuster, but the same guys are talking about some kind of upgraded variant, so maybe that's an option. Too bad Calmini can't get their crap together. What all have you tried to free the adapter? If all else fails it seems like a machine shop could probably machine out the TRE (like drilling a snapped bolt) and then clean up the threads if they're badly galled or corroded.

Given the size of the fuse on that circuit, I'd be surprised if a shorted LED bulb had time to discolor before the fuse blew. I think the fuse for the dome light is "room lamp" on the WD21, not sure about the R50. The rest of your bulbs were probably fine; if a bulb's shorted, it's probably the last one you installed, or else the bulb is fine and something else shorted it out during installation--a ring, maybe a heat sink on the back of the bulb? Again I'm not sure about the R50 but my WD21's dome light has some exposed connections inside that wouldn't be hard to short out. Find/replace the blown fuse, then test the last bulb you put in.

I also measured diameter of the shaft on the splined ends. Looks like approximately 29.5mm. Good luck!

Hmm. How much air space is there between the tank and the floor? I wonder if you could section it and basically raise the roof of the whole thing. Probably a lot of welding for the small amount of capacity it would add, though. That's quite the splitter mechanism! My '59 Triumph has a knob for a reserve tank, but I'm pretty sure it's basically just a tray inside of the main tank. Fuel goes down the filler, fills the reserve, overflows into the main tank, and then when you run out of gas, you twist the knob to access the fuel in the tray. (It's almost like they expected the gas gauge to fail.) I'll bet the same idea could be adapted for a true reserve tank, provided the tank was between the filler and the main tank in terms of height. That's the rub, of course; I'm guessing you don't want a gas tank in the rear quarter panel. If all you're heating water for is a cup of hot something in the morning, I'd just get a 12v kettle. Should do the job and should be a whole lot easier to clean out than something hard-mounted.

I had a look at the V6 halfshaft on my pile. Both ends are 27 spline. I think I purged the remains of the four-banger CV unfortunately, and I have no Titan bits to measure, so you may be on your own there. Pick up a Titan CV and break it down to see what you're trying to match. Another possibility is if the cup size/style is the same, you could just put the ball or tripod assembly from the Titan CV into a Pathy CV cup. I'm not sure if I kept one of those around to measure and it seems like a long shot that it would be the same. Nissan's duck alignment is not the most reliable.

Quite the challenge you've set yourself! So to be clear... you're hoping to mount Fronty brackets to your frame, to fit Titan arms and hubs, with hybrid CV shafts made up of Titan outers, RR chromoly halfshafts, and WD21 inners so it'll mate up to your stock diff. Right? I don't know the spline count for the WD21 halfshafts off the top of my head but I do have one on my scrap pile that I can check. There were two different types of CVs available for these (depending on engine type I think). I tried to hybridize them when rebuilding axles for my truck (I had two of each) and found that the inners from one type wouldn't mate with shafts from the other type. I guess that means you have two chances for Nissan to have used the same spline count on a WD21 inner that they did on a Titan, though I'd still be a little surprised if Nissan made anything that easy. I'll have a look tonight see what I've got. Looks like you're correct on the lug pattern, provided you use the Titan hubs. The Fronty lug pattern is smaller for no well-explained reason. This thread might have some good info for you as well, or at least a look at another way of doing it.

Here's a dumb idea. The stock tank is flat-bottomed. The pump sock sits above that bottom, so it sucks air long before the tank is truly empty. Seems to me you could cut a hole below where the pump sits, and weld on a small sump just deep enough to submerge the sock in, and then extend the pickup accordingly. You'd have to mod the skid plate a little bit too, but provided the sump wasn't more than a few inches deep, I don't imagine it would catch on anything you wouldn't have banged the skid on before. I don't know how much capacity this would get you (I want to say it would "add" three or four gallons to a WD21 tank, plus the volume of the sump) but it sure as hell wouldn't cost $1700 or even $500. Or, speaking of just strapping an OE fuel tank to the roof, I know there's a fair bit of empty space under the floors in my WD21, and I think that's where the tank in a D21 would mount. If the R50 has similar space, is there room for a Fronty tank down there? The valving to switch between tanks may be difficult/expensive if you do it that way; I looked into it briefly when trying to sort the fuel system in my dad's dual-tank F150 and ended up simplifying to single-tank to eliminate one more thing to fail (and because the Ford part was expensive). A while back I messed with trying to make a washer fluid heater for cutting through window frost in the winter and figured out that if would take a whole awful lot of power to do much of anything, even for something fairly low-volume like wiper fluid. The pre-made systems I found had direct lines to the battery. Assuming the engine was up to temp when you wanted hot water, I'd be curious to see if a water-to-air intercooler or something along those lines could be repurposed to transfer heat from the coolant to your hot tap.