Slartibartfast

Almost looks like you had mud daubers living in that valve body. Sorry pulling it apart didn't fix it, but yeah, definitely a learning experience--for you and for everyone following this thread! If you do find another trans for it, make sure to flush the holy hell out of the trans cooler lines before hooking them up and replace the cooler itself (new rad or aftermarket cooler with the stock cooler bypassed) to get rid of all that debris.

I have no idea why or for how long, but Nico's manuals are back online! I saw a post about this on the NPORA FB page, and sure enough, here it is. http://nicoclub.com/archives/nissan-pathfinder-factory-service-manuals.html

That's annoying. I doubt the circuit will notice or care, but if you've got a meter handy, you could check the five resistors and use the one closest to spec.

Don't trust the waterproof ratings on some of the cheaper stuff. I put a pair of Kawell LED lights (not proper bars) on mine as backup lights, and the ad said they were waterproof, but they weren't sealed for crap. The fittings for the wires were loose, and I discovered after sealing those up that the lenses weren't sealed either. I ended up tearing the leaky one apart and putting them both back together with a bunch of silicone. They're bright as hell but it's a good thing they're mounted down where you can't see them, because they look like they lost a fight with a tube of Ultra Black. Oh, and if you're even considering using the bar on the road, hook the switch into one of your high beam leads instead of constant + so that the bar turns off when you dim your lights. I've driven past one bro truck with the light bar on and that was enough.

+1 for checking the solenoid block, see if there's anything obviously clogging it up, or if that connector had some effect, but yeah, that's a lot of debris.

What was the problem?

Those connectors look interesting, though I'd expect them to work better on new wire than old, possibly corroded stuff that can be a pain to tin even when doing it normally, and I'd still want to shrink-wrap the components themselves to keep water out. Let me know how it goes if you try them, I've read about them but haven't tried them myself. Non-polarized means you can't hook it up backwards, so that's nice! Hooking up a cap like that is a very common way to deal with noise. Current flows until the cap has charged to the same voltage as the circuit it's connected across, and then it stops. If the voltage rises, the cap draws power until it's charged to match; if the voltage drops, the cap discharges back into the circuit until it matches. So if the voltage is fluctuating, the cap will smooth it out, blunting the peaks and filling the valleys. If the voltage is constant, and the cap is charged, no current should flow through it. I don't think a failure of the ignition switch would've damaged the cap. More likely your ignition was replaced due to the usual click/no-start of worn-out starter contacts, and the cap failure is unusual but unrelated. (Did the PO of yours bother to have the key matched to the doors? The PO of mine didn't, annoyingly.) The + connection on the ignition switch that the b/w wire eventually finds its way back to is shared by many other things (the other things that come on when you turn the key). I'm a little confused by your units (different scales?) but it makes sense that the wire going straight to ground would have bugger-all resistance, and the wire going to positive and grounding through various other things might have slightly more. If your meter shows battery voltage across the cap (between b/w and b) when the key is on, I wouldn't worry about it.

I usually order off Amazon/eBay, or Digikey if it's something more specialized, mostly because there's no brick and mortar near me that sells this stuff. Fry's looks like a good bet if there's one near you. Interesting if that's a date code. That would suggest Nissan ordered a whole bunch of these things for an earlier model and had enough some left over to last them at least until '93. Might explain why the plug doesn't look like any of the others. Good to hear the wiring's okay. I'm guessing the other one you tested was the black/white? That wire goes to the ignition switch and tees into a whole lot of other things that also run to the ignition switch, and all of those things are grounded somewhere. Your ground might be through the blower motor, the radio, the ECU, or any of the other stuff on that circuit. I had a run-in with that kind of thing on my '95. It had a door switch for the tire carrier, and an idiot light for when I left it open, so I rewired it to turn on the cargo light when the carrier was open. Everything seemed fine until I turned the key off and the idiot light came on! The cluster (which was + when the key was on) was grounding somewhere, and the cargo light was hooked to constant +, so current was backfeeding through the bulb. Once I finally figured out what was going on, I added a diode to the circuit and it stopped doing that.

I judged angle on mine from the long end of the allen, if that makes sense. The bolt just locks it in position. Unrelated, I still can't talk about an allen wrench without thinking of a prairie dog yelling "Allen! Allen! Allen!"

That one's a little easier to read! I've scavenged a lot of components from old electronics, but given how cheap these components are new, I'd save myself the hassle and just order new ones. Used caps are kind of a crapshoot and the short leads left over on salvaged components can be a pain to work with. Also, most resistors I've found in stuff I've taken apart are quarter-watt, so you might have some trouble find the half-watt spec'd on the case. If you want to dig through what you've got, start with the older stuff, it's more likely to have through-hole components. I'd just cut off the blob and solder the new components to the wires. Hopefully there's enough wire to work with without having to unwrap the injector harness. If you're buying a capacitor, I'd look for an axial capacitor (one lead coming out of either end of the can), just so it's easier to solder/shrink wrap in line than the usual radial cap (two leads out the bottom) would be. I like the shrink wrap with adhesive in it (won't slide off and water can't get in). Basically you'll have two loops where the blob was, one with a resistor and one with a cap, and then you can just wrap the whole mess in tape and either tape it or zip tie it back to the harness so it doesn't bounce around.

There shouldn't be that much slack. These don't use a sprung tensioner. The center of the tensioner roller has an offset mounting hole and a hex hole, and you just turn it with an Allen key until it's tensioned how you want it and then torque the nut that holds it so it can't back off. I did mine based on a writeup on here (I think it was this one) and IIRC I just pointed the allen key at the crank, torqued the nut to spec, and checked that the TB was hard to twist past 90°... then redid it several times because I was paranoid about setting it wrong. Do the seals. I skipped my crank seal when I did mine because it wasn't leaking, and it started leaking as soon as I had it buttoned back up. There's also a bypass hose on the water pump that's a good idea to replace while you're in there. Good luck! Hopefully the PO didn't leave you too many more easter eggs.

That doesn't look bad at all. Mine had that kind of color fade across the rockers too, I think it's just because of the PCV design. And yeah, my old gaskets were brittle junk too!

Too bad it's not making ATF! Good to hear the trans seems to be recovering. Hopefully you won't have to pull the valve body, though a friend of mine did that on his S10 and was able to replace a broken accumulator spring or something and get it shifting right again. I put a Magnefine on mine when I added a cooler to hopefully pick up whatever was left after the flush.

That sucks. Brushless is a wonderful thing, but it does make things more difficult to hook up. I wonder if there's a brushless hobby ESC out there with enough capacity to replace the converter.

Yeah, definitely some zoom needed on that one! Thanks for trying to upload, not surprising it wouldn't go though. I had a look at mine today. The end of the module actually has the component ratings marked on it! The condenser (aka capacitor) is 2.2 microfarads, 50v, and the resistor is 2.2k ohms, 1/2 watt. It's also marked 8115 in white paint for some reason (probably a batch number or something). I wasn't entirely sure how it was supposed to come apart and decided I didn't want it apart bad enough to risk breaking it. EF&EC-10 of the '90 manual has the color codes for the wiring. Looks like the resistor goes between blue and white with a green stripe, and the cap goes between black with a white stripe and black. If the replacement cap is polarized, make sure you hook it up the right way around (black is ground).

I've got a few manuals on here, including the '90 (thanks though!), but for some reason it's missing the wiring foldout that the later manuals came with. A few little things changed here and there just to be unhelpful, but yeah, most of the info is the same 90-95. Thinking about it, I wouldn't be surprised if fixing this module made the knock code go away. The condenser's job is to filter out the noise made by the coil, and the knock sensor's basically a microphone feeding noise to the ECU. What do you want to bet the coil noise is getting picked up by the ECU and interpreted as abnormal knock sensor noise? I didn't get to checking mine today, but I'll have a look tomorrow and see if I can work out what's inside!

Sorry it took a while to reply to this one! Took me a little head-scratching. Best I can find as far as components is a rating of 2.2k ohms for that resistor (marked in the full wiring diagram of the '95 manual). The resistor's between switched ground to the coil and the ECU, so I suspect the ECU's using that circuit to monitor switched power to the coil, and the resistor limits that current to protect the ECU. I see no spec for the condenser, which looks like it's just there to muffle the electrical noise the coil wants to spit back into the electrical system. Electrical plugs can heat up and melt themselves if they get corroded inside (the corrosion adds resistance, resistance with current across it makes heat), but that requires current. Looking at the diagram, neither component should've been passing anywhere near enough current to let the smoke out. The condenser has 12v from the key switch on one side and ground on the other, so if that condenser shorted out somehow, or corrosion shorted it out in the plug, that right there would definitely let some smoke out, right up until the connection got so hot it burned through. Hopefully the plug and the module are the only casualties and the wires feeding it didn't fry, too. Wreckers would be my first thought too, but failing that, 2.2k resistors aren't hard to find. Sucks not knowing what the value is on the condenser. I've got a meter with a capacitance setting, I'll have a look at mine see if I can figure out what value it's supposed to be.

Finally got around to drilling out the broken bolts so I could reattach the skid plate. I gave up on saving the old threads, drilled the holes out to 3/8" or so, and hammered in M6x1 nuts. Little welding, little grinding, and I've got threads again! It's like riv-nuts, except not. Oh, and I discovered that one of my 555 LBJs had the boot half falling off for some reason. It popped back on again, but it looks like the rubber's already starting to crack. That didn't take long!

The '90 service manual suggests 173 PSI is normal, 128 is the lower limit. I don't know how low it can get and still run, but 90 does not sound promising. Slipped timing/damaged valves seems likely given the state of the timing belt, though I'm not sure you'd be getting any compression if the valve was bent. I'd be inclined to hook up a timing light and see if you've got the replacement distributor timed anywhere close to right before pulling the heads. Did you count teeth when you set up the belt? The marks on the belt should be right, the marks on the cover are in the right ballpark but don't trust them past that. Should be 40 between the marks on the cam sprockets, 43 from the driver's side cam mark to the crank sprocket mark.

You must've really wanted that pitman arm!

What's your compression now?

^I've got the little brother of that for TREs. Works great. Considered picking up the big one too but couldn't justify the price for something I rarely use.

Mine wasn't happy about coming off, but the right puller and the torch got it eventually. At least I could get to it! The pitman on the Chevy has a crossmember right below it so you can't get a wrench on it, let alone a puller, until it's out of the truck.

Gassed it up and actually drove it somewhere for the first time in months!

Locking hubs in the front have nothing to do with the diffs. They just allow you to save a little gas and some wear on the CV joints by disconnecting the front drivetrain entirely when you're not going to be needing 4x. Common mod for the R50s.