Slartibartfast

That sucks! Good luck with the swap and post pics if you tear down the old motor. I'd be interested to see what chain of events connected a failed belt to a holed pan.

Given that the forum isn't flooded with VQ R50 owners complaining of slipping T-case chains, I wouldn't worry too much. Cuong, that sounds about like most of what I've read so far. I just haven't tracked it back to a spec or a comparison yet to verify it. One other thing worth noting: It looks like some of the early-style TX10As have the 4x4 switch (for the light on the dash) right next to the neutral switch where that plug bolt is on Nissan Nut's writeup, on my '93, and in the '94/'95 manuals. The '89 manual shows the two switches next to each other, and Bobsterriffic's '92 is like that too, so I guess Nissan decided to move the sensor at some point between '92 and '93. I guess the spotting tip should be that if there's a hole there with something threaded into it, it's the early style, and if it's not drilled, it's the late style.

Damn, sorry for the confusion! The '94/'95 manual shows a bolt there and the switch mounted farther back, and that's how my '93 is set up. Guess Nissan found another thing to change mid-year for no well-explained reason. (Just checked the '89 manual, and it looks like yours.) If all else fails, you might try unplugging the switch and see if the light still acts up. If it does, you know it's the wiring. If not, test the switch.

That's my standard operating procedure. Seriously though I've never had a TBI apart so I don't know if there's anything spring-loaded waiting to ambush you. If you're nervous about it all going back together again, clean what you can get to for now, put it back on, and see if the other work you did was enough to solve your problem.

I haven't messed with a TBI, but cleaning the throttle body on my '95 did seem to bring some power back. I'd be inclined to clean what you can get to for now, make sure the MAF is clean, deal with the corrosion issue, then put it back together and see if it's happy like that or if it needs more attention. I don't imagine the TBI is too difficult to remove if you decide to give it a full rebuild down the line.

Looks like the switch should be the one towards the back of the transfer on the passenger's side.

O/D off locks out overdrive (keeps it in third) but it also changes the operation of the torque converter lockup, which could account for the small change in RPM. This suggests the O/D switch isn't part of why it won't engage O/D the rest of the time. The overheating is not normal. I climb mountain passes with the O/D off and the only time I've come close to overheating was on a 100°+ day with the aircon on full.

Always nice when it's the easy fix!

A little wipe of dielectric (it's actually an insulator, but it squeezes out of the way as you bring the contacts together) might prevent it from corroding again, so it's not a bad idea. I wouldn't call it required, though.

That was my first thought at the time, and something I blew a whole lot of time checking. At one point I think I even ran a conga line of gator clips from the battery to the trailer. Made no difference. That said, the next time I've got a minute I might check the ground from the headlight harness against another body ground and see if there's any drop there. I probably did this before but now you've got me thinking about it again!

(This came up in a thread on the facebook page, and I figured I'd put the info here as well on the off chance it ends up being helpful to someone.) I've seen a lot of guys say that the older TX10As have "thicker" chains that are less likely to stretch. These guys say the WD21 chain is better than their WD22 chains. These guys make it sound like they have a lot of issues with the chains in the D22 (Navara, Frontier), but one of them says the WD21 chain looks about the same to him (in a picture). This guy did a writeup for replacing a stretched chain, but on an early D21, which doesn't really fit the hype of the later rigs being the ones with issues. Nobody seemed to know when the cutoff date was for one chain vs the other. I was curious. Down the rabbit hole we go. By comparing part numbers from the diagrams at parts.nissanusa.com, I found that there are in fact two different chains. Pathfinders from 7/1/88 up to 01/01/00 ('87 didn't list a part; it's not the best lookup system) spec a # 33152-33G01 chain. 07/01/01 + call for #33152-30C00. (Rugged Rocks lists the -33G10 chain for '86-'93; I'm not sure where they got those dates.) Exploded diagrams in the FSMs show the same exploded view in the '95 and '99 editions, but the 2000 FSM has a different diagram which includes a few parts marked "M/T Model Only." (I have no idea what these parts are for.) A part # search for Xterras turned up that they used 33152-33G01 07/01/00 to 01/01/01 and 33152-30C00 for 01/01/01+. The '02 WD22 FSM shows the same exploded diagram as the 2000+ R50. This tells me that there is in fact a difference in early/late TX10As, and the changeover year was '00 for Pathfinders and '01 for Xterras. Nissan Nut's how-to for installing Calmini crawler gears even has the info to tell them apart. Check out the fifth picture down, and the plug bolt above and to the left of the front-most electrical connector. If there's a bolt there, it's the early style. If there's just a flat spot, it's the late style. (I checked this against the transfer in my '93 and pictures of an '03 transfer on eBay, and it checks out.) This, unfortunately, is as far as my research has taken me, and I'm not going to put much more time into this given that my '93 has the (supposedly) stronger box already. If anyone else has more info, or has had both boxes apart, I'd be interested to hear what you've found.

Nope. Looks like each window motor has its own circuit breaker, and the whole system shares a fuse link, but there doesn't seem to be one fuse that would take out two windows at once.

No under-dash vacuum controls on these. If your climate control panel has four levers, there's a cable (like a choke cable) going from that to the blend door. If you've got two sliders and a bunch of buttons, there's a servo. The HA section of the service manual has a troubleshooting section for both systems. Looking through diagnosis for the auto system, I really hope mine doesn't quit any time soon. Looks like the manual system has a linkage to a valve to shut off the heater core. I assume the auto version has something similar. Something to check if the door isn't the problem and the core's not clogged. If you haven't yet, clean out behind your resistor pack. I doubt it's why you've got no heat but both of mine were full of trash.

Thanks for the heads up.

Damn, that sucks! Both the failure and realizing it won't fit while it's in the air. Post #5 in Mr. 510's VG34 thread suggests that an Xterra pickup will fit in the WD21 (or presumably D21) oil pan. Sounds like the Xterra pan is the same. I've seen guys talking about rebuilding pickups and bashing pans to make other stuff work, but hopefully this gives you a place to start (or somebody who's found another way can chime in). You might look through a few VG33 swap threads, see if anyone else has made an R50 pan work. Also, is this AU balancer the same as the Canadian balancer? I remember reading those were getting hard to find.

Nope, no brake controller. I set mine up so it plugs in between the brake light harness and the light because I had a couple extra plugs and hate Scotchlocks, but I doubt it made much difference to the electrons. Looking at the numbers, I'm noticing that the voltage output from my relay setup is actually higher than what I tested from the wires tapped into the factory tail lights when I was testing the old converter. The brake light signal out of the fender tested as 10.27v; the new relay setup gave 11.20. (This is not with the engine running. I should've checked the battery voltage both times, but of course I didn't think of it until later.) The tail lights work fine, but this does make me wonder whether that volt or so of drop is just because Nissan used tiny wires and I'm using a 14 gauge line or if something else in the lighting circuit isn't as healthy as it should be.

I'd pick up a driver's window switch panel from the wreckers or a part-out, see what that fixes, and go from there. There's a wiring diagram for the power windows in the BF section of the service manual, which you can get here. Download the '94 or '95, what they have listed as a '92 manual seems to be some kind of dealer info pamphlet and the '93 is an odd collection of third-party stuff and TSBs, many of which are labelled in what Google Translate tells me is Latvian. Silicone spray in the window tracks is supposed to help a lot. I didn't notice a big change on mine, probably because the windows weren't hanging up to begin with. I haven't had to do much with my windows but the one thing I will say, which I learned the hard way, is that brake cleaner is not good for cleaning the plastic switch panels. It took a fairly awful accumulation of the PO's cigarette schmoo to make me consider this, and went about as well as you'd expect.

+1, these things do bend valves.

A year and a half later, I finally fixed this! I did some research and found out the little tap-in light converters just kinda suck. Cheap transistors, lots of voltage drop. I'm sure the angel hair wiring to the truck's tail lights wasn't helping matters, either. I ditched the Draw-Tite box for a homebrew agglomeration of relays with its own fused power feed from the battery. This means the trailer is isolated from the truck's lighting system, and can't pop anything but its own fuse if it shorts out. Lights are much brighter now! Only downside is that the cheap relays are a little noisy, but I installed them with a switch so I can shut them off when I'm not towing. If anyone's interested in hearing me talk for far too long, I put up a video explaining how it all works.

Guess you don't have to worry about wet seats in Arizona!

+1, I didn't know these things ever came without the button! Nice that it's easy to add.

New front calipers. The passenger's front got real hot just before I tore into the front end (one of those "why is there smoke coming out of my truck?" moments). The caliper had released by the time I got home, but the rubber boots on the pistons looked pretty chewed up, so I assume corrosion got in there and bound up the pistons. Hmm. I tightened them to the 95 lb/f spec'd on the Grassroots site and then I think I had to give one of them a little extra budge to get the cotter through. Thanks for the heads up on that, I'll keep it in mind when I put the front back together! I think I've got the angles close, but I'd like to get it on a real rack before trusting it with new tires.

Do you still have the junk rad? Might be interesting to hack it open and see if it's blocked up with schmoo.

Make sure you top off the blinker fluid afterwards! I think I figured out the problem with my steering. The idler arm doesn't meet the centerlink properly, so when I bolt them together, the joints bind up. Looks like the rod for the idler arm is a little bent (I can see daylight on one side of the top bushing but not the other), and I'm not sure the Bandit 4x4 bushings I installed last summer aren't changing the geometry either (which would explain why my old idler arm brace didn't fit after I installed them). New idler should be here Wednesday, and hopefully that offering of burnt cash is enough to appease this blighter so I can get it back on the road.

I'm not seeing a MAF trace on either of those graphs. The intake air temp sensor (looked it up, turns out VG33 trucks have one of these, news to me) line on the second screen is peaky, and those peaks are mirrored in the timing on a slight delay. That tells me the IAT is failing or the wiring is loose and it's cutting out and randomly telling the computer it's sucking in 216° air, which causes the computer to pull timing like crazy. There's no way that's not making it run weird. What's odd though is that the IAT spike in the first screen is slightly led by a spike in the TPS, and isn't mirrored in the timing. Maybe goosing the throttle rattled something in the sensor or wiring, but the reading didn't stick around long enough for the ECU to bother doing something about it? Looks like the engine was running a little higher than idle at the time, maybe that has something to do with how it's calculating advance. Anyway, I'd have a look at that IAT sensor.