hawairish

Lost me. That's a rear diff. Our front diffs are offset to clear the engine bottom, and attached by bushings to the subframe (via a bracket attached to the axle housing). Essentially the same thing, and neither technically a floater. I mean, it is because the weight of the chassis doesn't rest on the axle shafts, but isn't because floating is a reference for solid axle shafts (i.e., not CVs).

Ha, yeah, I forgot about that. This was the pic you sent prior to having to adjust it a little... Can barely fit a 31" tire underneath...

Ok...little bit of research here. The quick answer: Find P/Ns 38164-0W060, 38164-0W000, or 38164-VE060. The last one is the latest P/N for 97-04 Pathfinder, 97-03 Terrano, and 00-04 Frontier/Navara/Xterra with the VG33E engine. The long answer: According to http://nissan-europe.epc-data.com/terrano/, the Terrano is the R50 with production dates of 10/97 to 08/03. Not sure if this is a Nissan site, but it is worth noting that www.nissan-europe.com is the Nissan Europe domain, and the structure of the epc-data.com website mirrors exactly the parts sections and subsections that I see on my normal US-based Nissan parts websites. I assume it to be reliable. Part code 38162 is the designator for axle shafts, found in section "Axle & Suspension [G]", subsection "Rear Axle [430]". Depending on model year, it'll show 38164-0W060, 38164-0W000, or 38164-VE060 for the axle shafts. According to US sites I use, 38164-VE060 is the superseded/latest part number for the other two for all 97-04 Pathfinders. Additionally, that P/N also shows as being applicable to 00-04 VG33E Frontiers/Navara and Xterras. That all said, you have a match if you can find one from a comparable-year Terrano I, Frontier/Navara, or Xterra (not sure they have those outside US?), or if the part numbers you see are of those three. Best bet is to get 38164-VE060, as this is listed as being OE for the 03-04 Pathfinder here. ... Related parts: Bearing: 43210-0W000 Grease-Seal: 43232-42G10 O-Ring: 43085-42G00

Sorry to detract from the topic, but is your truck parked level B? From what I can tell, the bottom of the fill hole is below a flange on the inside of the tube ends. I didn't have any gear oil drips when opening three axles for my recent projects, so maybe you're just at an angle and you need a new grease seal?

Haha, yep, that!

Understandable. Guess my point is make sure you trust the source because there's nothing that stops someone from copying a key before sending it...and of course, they'll know where you live. What's the problem with your ignition switch? It's worth mentioning that if you have some sort of bad electrical connection, you can just replace the electrical part of the cylinder. It just screws onto the back. The cylinder part is to unlock the steering column, but it provides a pass-through for the tip of the key to turn the electrical switch...or, at least this is how my 98 Frontier was. If that's the case, you just need a junkyard part from just about any Nissan, and you can keep your keys.

Thanks for the detailed response! I think he did remove the axle shaft a little...if that pic is from your truck, the wet spot is probably brake fluid, indicating he disconnected the brake line at the top of the backing plate to pull the axle shaft out properly. The brake drum should stay centered, so changes in gap are probably a good indicator that something is wrong, either axle shaft, bearing, or both unfortunately.

Something about the idea of buying a pre-keyed switched from the internet bothers me... You can buy a kit like this from the dealer, or pull things from a local junkyard...assuming the keys are with the vehicle. Whatcha looking to replace? Busted door cylinder or ignition or both?

That sucks...especially since I have two extra axle shafts in my garage! Not sure about the Terrano II, but the Terrano I should be a match...it is a Pathfinder. The axles are the same. Probably not dangerous to drive on, but it will wear out the wheel bearing faster and potentially put undue stress on the side gears in the differential. Do you have any other symptoms beyond noise? What's the noise sound like (a low humm or whirrrr sound)? Any vibrations? It's pretty simple to pull the axle shafts for inspection if you've some some mechanical skills. Edit: Kyle mentioned as I typed, but I also think it's wheel bearing. The axle shafts are beefy.

I know for sure it can easily support 350 lbs when wide open. When closed, it's supported by the latching bracket and another bracket meant specifically for supporting weight. Two full jerries, holders, tire, carrier...maybe 200 lbs? I'd have no concerns.

Well... Nissan was probably using up inventory since they knew the R50 was reaching end-of-life. I don't think the dash light is any more or less useless than the door-ajar light. Are you saying you wouldn't want to know if you were driving around with a door ajar? Having a swing out carrier will never grow old on me. My Jeep had it, and I loved it. Not because it's looks cool, but because it makes sense. The thought of putting a tire under the vehicle on any SUV (or worse, inside the cargo area) is ridiculous. Hated it on my Frontier, hated it on my Pathy. It's undeniably far more work, and this is just to get the tire back onto the truck: Flop flat tire on the ground. Watch your toes. Lay/kneel down with it. Sweep away all the rocks where you'll lay/kneel, because it's about to get awkward. Push-drag the tire (with some exponentially-higher coefficient of friction) under the vehicle, scuff up sidewall. If it the tire is flat enough, scuff up rim. Oops, tire not centered enough for the chain to reach the center bore, push-drag again, scuff up sidewalls/rim some more. Oops again, you're truck is lifted now so chain isn't long enough anyway. Tilt 50-lb tire up a little with one hand without blowing out back while you're laying/kneeling under a truck. Use second hand to put hoist cradle into center bore. Use third hand to support body weight and prevent blowing out back. If the chain reaches on first try, congratulations: you aren't lifted and you have small OE tires (but it's still heavy and you have less space to work in). Avoid burning face and/or hair on muffler. If you've left the truck running so your wife and or kids don't suffer from the heat the way you're suffering from the heat, avoid carbon monoxide poisoning (optional; perhaps less painful than continuing at this point). Bump head on the tow bar and/or bumper trying to get out from under the truck, even though you know one or both are there. Crank some silly rod hoping the chain doesn't jam like it usually does (and then reverse crank, jiggle it, try again) Kick/punch the tire to make sure it's seated properly before giving it one more snug-crank. If the stars are aligned, you get to do all this on clean, flat ground that's as cool as the other side of the pillow (or perma-frozen, like for all our CAN owners). Other options include an uneven, gravel-and-rubber-ridden 125°F highway shoulder with semi-trucks flying by at seemingly 100-mph while you're playing crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon under your truck; in mud; in dirt; in other (Mexico). Oh, and the area underneath can barely accept a tire bigger than stock, which you now have because you're lifted...and it's heavier. The rear carrier alternative: Pull pants to natural waistline, roll up sleeves (or tug shoulders of shirt like those rappers do), flex biceps for nearby females (or males), followed by the classic "hey ladies/guys, watch this" head nod and wink. Lift tire (use your knees, not your back) Give a little rotation (or with simple planning, line up the holes before lifting...picture the Y-shape of the lug nuts) Tighten three nuts, prove you've got two more where it counts. Terrain: irrelevant. Crawling: unnecessary. Process: no different that just changing a tire. At least, that's how I approach it. I can squat 400, and can leg press a half ton...lifting a tire is trivial to me. Swinging a carrier open, also trivial. Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't follow your logic. I don't live where anyone needs to parallel park, and in the few spots downtown Phoenix where it might be necessary (and where I seldom find myself), the parallel spots are twice as long as they are in Chicago (where I mastered parallel parking anyway), which are twice as long as they are in Paris (where it's literally le-bumper-to-le-bumper...and I've seen this first-hand and talked to locals/co-workers about it). If I've parked too close to a wall on the passenger side, then I'll probably re-park. If I know I'm going to be loading/unloading things from the rear (like when grocery-getting or mall-crawling), then I know enough to not back into a parking space. Otherwise, I know to leave ample space...if someone decides to consume that space (like passenger drop-off at an airport), I'll give them 5s to back their POS up before I open the carrier into their hood for encroaching on space I was already about to occupy and that they should expect me to be unloading from. Two of the three carrier bracket pieces are adjustable, designed specifically to prevent rattling/noise, of which I have neither a rattle nor noise, and have tested for this in both mine and my buddy's truck (duke90). I plan to keep OE wheels, so clearance is, well...stock. I hope the above is good for a chuckle and doesn't come off as being d!ck!sh, but I didn't do this to be cool, different, or to prove a point (well sorta, I was growing tired of the hearsay about it being some sort of ordeal). I did it because this is how it should have come stock. I mean, did I buy a Pathfinder or a RAV4? Oops, bad example because even RAV4's have rear mounted tires...and seemingly tons of flex and aftermarket support: ("Dude, rollin' on 29.5" and dubs, brah! But my brakes suck and that's why I'm in the hilly brush of...Florida?") I can only assume a RAV4 owner has enough muscle to open these doors, let alone the competency to change a tire (let alone tow anything). And are these FL owners on drugs or something? Eventually I will, and it will be OE. It'll only fit in one spot (it contours the lift gate), but your license plate holder is different than the one for mine (lift gates are different). I've already put 16 holes in the exterior of the truck...I can handle a few more when the time comes.

Not sure about two jerries, but without a doubt one and a 33. Check out DeltaR50's on the previous pages, that's how he rolls (his carrier came stock).

Got a set installed on duke90's truck over the weekend. You can sorta see where the OE bumpstop was removed and replaced with a 2"H x 3"W body spacer puck and 1/8" steel disc. Sorry I didn't get any close-ups of the disc, but it's got a flat head socket bolt that recesses into a countersink to produce a flat surface. If I end up going this route, I'll get some pics that. We noticed that the bags had a tendency to lift about an inch after riding at 5psi. I left enough slack in the lines just in case this happened. I suppose more air would prevent this? We ended up plumbing them into a single valve, located in the front of the driver's side rear wheel well. No chance of a tire hitting it, easily within reach. Lines were routed up the control arm. I'll try to get a pic of the location.

Ha, one day...that'd have been hell. Instead, we had our own mini-hell over about 40+ hours in 2.5 days (especially mini-hell considering it got up to 117° and stayed just below that the whole weekend.) We stopped around 5AM on Monday night, only to pick it back up at 8AM on Tuesday to hammer out the last few items before he had to hit the road. Major crunch on time, and the Kr-ap PHB bracket I've been whining about in my review really screwed us. The busted motor mount set us back a few hours...an hour and half just to find one in in town and pick it up...then we couldn't get the winch working (solenoids clicked, but the drum didn't flinch and I ran out of time troubleshooting). Everything else went smoothly, but we just had a LOT of things to do. I'm just glad I decided to build up donor diffs before he arrived, or we'd have been screwed. And nope, his didn't have the tire carrier either. Installed his exactly like mine, no issues.

LOL...looks like I'm buying another set of diffs from a 95 WD21 this weekend. In case having two sets in my garage already wasn't enough... It's got the LSD, so I will see what the starting number is and try to get it up into the mid 200's per the FSM. The front diff is part of another project I can't stop thinking about right now...I have no use for the diff on my truck, but I think I can design a cradle for making any non-R50 R200A fit our truck (i.e., OE 4.9 gears!)

I run AZ-flavored 91 all the time...never a ping.

Our plate is on the passenger firewall under the hood hinge. Mine has it on both the firewall plate and the driver's side door jamb near all the tire information, but this wasn't the case for my buddy's 02 SE. All R50's have the H233B rear axle. Only options were HG43 at 4.363 (48:11) and HG46 at 4.636 (51:11). Other Nissan trucks/SUVs have different ratios with the same codes: HG43 at 4.375 (35:8) and HG46 at 4.625 (37:8). Early Xterras and Frontiers had HG43 and HG46 in our ratios, as well as HG49 as 4.90 (49:10). Any of the above, plus several others not listed, work in our rear axle. Front R&Ps from any other Nissan will not work in ours, in case you're planning to swap in gears to match. Unless a vendor says specifically that the R200 gears are for, and only for an R50, will they work. Our R200 axle is unlike any other R200 axle. Here is the 'original' thread, but isn't fully applicable to the R50, and doesn't discuss the differences in the R200s (I can explain if you'd like). Whatcha got planned?

No sweat, man. I think you'll be very pleased with that setup, too. Two more thoughts: You may still want to measure break-away and clutch pieces on the donor WD21...at minimum to inspect for wear. If you can have the downtime, you can use the better pieces from both the donor and current LSDs to freshen up the LSD. Again, just need to know the starting thicknesses of each piece. The FSM also provides measurements/specs for dimensions inside the carrier halves, so using the halves with less inner dimensions would provide more clamping pressure...just don't get the bearing races mixed up. I presume that the 33-spline side gears will fit the 31-spline carrier because they use the same LSD pieces. This is entirely dependent on the lip at the ends of the side gear. You would also need to swap over the spider gears and 4-pinion cross shaft (the side gear cuts are completely different). As an after-thought, you for sure can just move the LSD clutch packs to the 33-spline carrier...they are the same part numbers. Doing it this way, you won't have to remove any ring gears, side gears, spider gears, etc...just undo the 8 smaller bolts that clamp the two carrier halves together. (Sorry for the mixed info...I realize now how exhausted I was when typing that all up...I had just completed a 40+ hour marathon of R50 overhaul over 2.5 days...brutal!)

Hahaha, I think he was complimenting your lady friend (and spoiler). Some good pics up there! Here's a couple from the weekend overhaul of my buddy's (duke90) 02 SE (the white one)... Before... Hard to tell, but it (expectedly) sat a bit lower than mine. He has OME springs all around, HDs up front, no other lift. After... Was hoping to get a lot more pics, but ran short on time. I'll get him to post more up. We now both sit about exactly the same, front and rear. Added to his 3" of strut spacers, 3" SFD, 2" rear spring spacers, and Air Lift 1000 bags, and negated it with an ARB bumper, Warn M8000 winch, super sliders, and R50 tire carrier. Also swapped in a Lokka, 4.636 gears, and re-packed LSD, and replaced a really bad motor mount (fortunately discovered during the SFD install). Outside of the winch and bumper, we have pretty much the exact same trucks now...twins!

Honestly, I've not heard any noises that I can associate with the SFD spacers. I developed a slight creak/pop at full turn after upping to 3" strut spacers, but I believe I know why...the bolt-hole bore on my spacers is too tight for the bolts (1/2" drill for 1/2" bolt, previously 1/2" drill for 12mm bolt). The fit was very snug (I had to mallet the spacers onto the strut mounts), but had the purpose of gripping the bolts while I tightened them to the strut tower. I think it's too snug and I get the creak under heavy twist. We installed the 3" SFD on my buddy's truck over the weekend, and this time I bored out the strut spacer holes just a tad over 1/2", and we didn't have any noises whatsoever. The notable difference between mine and KrF's is that my front spacers butt up against the sides of the subframe because they're 2.5" wide instead of 2" wide. Very tight fit. Because of the radius edge on the 2" tube that KrF uses, there's only about 1.5" wide of flat mating surface, but I have a full inch more, too. Both of those differences will greatly reduce any shift that might occur. We also torqued what we could to 90-100 ft-lbs. For what we could put a torque wrench on (the upper/OE hardware), we made sure it was tighter than what we could feel by torquing the lower hardware.

As part of the retrofit for the R50 carriers on my and a buddy's trucks, I replaced the OE hinge pins with a 5/8" bolt and used 1/8" nylon washers between the hinge brackets and carrier frame. This a produced a very good adjustable compression to control the swing...and super silent. OE pin is a 16mm shoulder-style pin with a 14mm end IIRC, so I just bored out the lower holes to get the bolt through. I like the idea of the poly bushing, but I does it allow for excess motion? What sort of tension adjustment does the WD21 carrier have?

Well, keep us posted then. I can understand a 21mm socket not fitting, but the fact that it comes in contact with the hole in one spot vs. simply not fitting...clear indicator to me that something isn't centered. But, as long as the nuts appear fully seated (as best as you can see, of course) and the spacer looks centered on the wheel hub centers, then that's a good sign.

Funny you had to even use the BFH...must've been a lot of rust swelling?? Maybe the next mod is some media blasting and POR? So for the spacers, I have a concern...are you saying that you can use the open-ended lugnuts because they take a 19mm socket, which is a smaller diameter socket than a 21mm? That just means that the socket won't interfere with the holes, but there's no way the lug nuts are seating properly in the hole at all faces if they weren't doing that before. And unless all 6 nuts are exactly at the same depth, then the spacer for sure won't be centered. Did you ever get ahold of Steven?

Two weeks would be better...but that was my exact concern. For a lot of people, especially for non-essential vehicle parts, this is very much an impulse buy. I'm glad to see so much interest though. I know they keep some sort of decent inventory. We bought two of the R50 kits on the same day and they arrived in about 4 days from AUS, no joke. I can't get stuff from eBay in our own country to arrive within 4 days. But I think if everyone knows up-front what the terms of this sale is, it'll be far more successful for us and them. I'd love to see this as some sort of eye-opener for them (and other manufacturers). Thanks for staying on top of this!

Full float diff? Not sure what you mean. The axle (shafts) can be a floater, but not the diff. How's the width on the axle housing, though? It'd have to be narrow enough to allow for some sort of flange-to-CV adapter. Otherwise you're talking about needing entirely different wheel hubs...which means different spindles...which means entirely different suspension. I hear whispers chants of "SAS, SAS, SAS"...