jjonez

Thanks! yeah it's e-taped for now. I've got some liquid e-tape at work that I'll put on later for better protection.

Overall the carrier feels solid. When fully latched there is zero play at both the quarter panel and bumper assembly. When open about 2 feet or less, if I lift up on the carrier I can see slight movement of the quarter panel right above the tail light. Not really flexing, but more like movement between the metal pieces that join up at this location. In any case, this doesn't happen when fully open, and when I apply downward force (i.e. hang off it like a monkey), there is zero quarter panel movement across the entire swing arc. The only time i can see it flex is at the lower right bracket when it's already open and I give it a little tug. The way the stopper is set up on the lower bracket for when it's open, it actually looks like the force is directed more to pulling on the left set of bolts as opposed to pushing on the right. So as long as its opened carefully and the latch bracket doesn't fail while driving, it shouldn't be a concern. For perspective, I can tend to be a worrier, and I've been sleeping like a baby the last couple nights haha.

OK! So with the hard part finished next was relocating the plate, which was mercifully easy in comparison. I went straight with the hawairish method on this one because its simple, cheap, gets the truck legal, and my opinion looks really good. Since he doesn't have pictures of the wiring here's what I did: Just expose a segment of each wire, solder wires onto each segment, feed through the corner of the brake light housing, solder to the bracket light wires, then cover everything up. I plan on adding fuel storage to the carrier at some point in the distant future, in which case the license plate would be remounted on the jerry can bracket, so I made the wiring extra long to accommodate and just stored the excess in the brake light housing. The tire carrier contacts the the "Pathfinder" logo trim as Hawairish and Towndawg have noted, and it was actually making it difficult to fully latch. I was having to pretty much slam it. For now I just removed it and am going to fill the holes with some rubber grommets. You have to remove the hatch interior trim, (held on by ONLY plastic clips that we know love to break) and there are three nuts you have to undo as well as the plate light harness. The carrier is still kind of difficult to latch due to the rubber bump stop on the bumper pushing it away. Presumably this is cuz of the aluminum reinforcement moving all of these brackets outwards. If it gets bothersome I might trim down the bump stop. And that's it! Up next is getting a full sized spare (265/75/16), but first I need to fix this: I already have the right sized bolt. Just need to grind off the old one and have a shop weld it in.

Happy Friday! I managed to get it installed on wednesday but haven't had time to do a write up. I was able to utilize regular nuts and washers on the inside, and my one trusty hardware store carried M10x1.25 class 10.9 nuts, so I was able to reuse the bolts that came with the carrier, except for one that got lost, lets see if you can spot the replacement in one of the pictures. As far as drilling the holes goes, this is the first time I've done anything so drastic to my vehicles, so of course I did extensive googling on the best method of drilling into metal. The general consensus was "high pressure, low RPM". Well no dice in my case. The sheet metal is pretty thin, and without a backing material to drill into, things can get hairy. I managed to booger two holes before working out my technique. Fortunately this isn't as critical as with rivet nuts. The left hole is one of the good ones. I did clean the others up a bit after this. For me what worked best was the opposite, a little higher RPM, and lighter pressure. A nice new drill bit will cut through this stuff in seconds, so there isn't a problem with overheating. Also working up the bit sizes helped me a lot. I think I did 3 or 4 smaller holes before the final 10.3 mm (13/32" bit from home depot). The last bit of material tends to want to pull the drill, don't let it bottom out cuz it could end up deforming the sheet metal (like what happened to that hole on the right). I'm no expert on drilling, and I realize this probably isn't "proper" or anything but hopefully it'll help some other novice deface their car... in a nice way. For the inside of the quarter panel I used M10 fender washers as well as well as normal washers to help prevent the nut from deforming the former. I used a thin amount of adhesive to glue the nut/washer assembly together, this makes installation WAY easier. Inside the quarter panel is pretty much a black hole for hardware, there's probably half a dozen washers down there that will be with the truck forever haha. I had some scrap buna gasket that I punched into washers for each hole, however I don't recommend this approach because they ended up deflecting a lot and squeezing out. I think some kind of dense foam would be better. I covered the bracket surface in electrical tape as well so I'm gonna try not to worry about it too much. Now the fun part. These are the bolts for the bottom bracket. Looking at the truck from the outside, the right hand bolts (first picture) aren't any trouble, and the right bolts on the top bracket are just a bit more challenging. For the bottom left bolts (bottom picture), you have that nice little viewing angle through the metal while you attack from the left (where the red wire is). The left bolts on the top bracket are straight up TERRIBLE. I was kicking and screaming before the end. Even with your head stuffed into the quarter panel there's no way you'll get a visual. It's all by feel, and it's tight, and it SUCKS. I have average sized hands and somewhat slender wrists/forearms. If you've got sausage fingers or popeye arms I'd steer clear of this approach. This is where gluing the hardware together really helps. And then after you've finally got the nuts threaded on you've got to get a wrench on those suckers. I had a much easier time with the leftmost hole (the absolute hardest one) after removing the bolt next to it. Oh yeah, a flex head wrench is mandatory for this, I bought this one: https://uedata.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F5124X4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I was able to torque the crap out of everything without any deformation of the quarter panel or the washers. Oh yea Hawairish, the panel is very close to flat where the bolts go, and the fender washers I used seemed to be the sized just right so that they still sat flush, no cupping necessary.

Will do. I ordered a 17mm flex head wrench today to hopefully make holding the nuts on the inside of the quarter panel easier. It'll arrive Monday so I'm aiming to get this done by the middle of the week.

Yea the aluminum is angle, there's a few more rivets underneath. As far as installing the rivnuts, I haven't had an issue with them being off center from over-tightening. I can feel when the top of the threaded portion makes contact with the opposite side of the material and I stop there. I find with the rivnuts threaded on the astro tool such that the arms are fully open, it's too difficult to compress while staying accurate. So I'll thread them so the tool is half open, compress, then thread a little further and compress fully. This consistently gives fully compressed and centered results. For those tests I did I was able to spin the bolts all the way till the head and washer bottomed out on the rivnut flange. No binding. Then I cranked away and the threads were toast. Again, they were surprisingly resistant to spinning out, though I could see how tightening/loosening several times could weaken their grip. I think what I'm gonna try first is just a regular high strength nut and washer. I pulled the interior trim and it looks like I can get tools back there to tighten. The only ones that might be trouble would be the left 2 for the upper bracket, in which case I'll use the rivnuts for those. I like the prospect of putting smaller holes in the body, and if it doesn't work out then I can just enlarge for the rivnuts.

Like the sound of that. Thank you

I bought the same ones from McMaster. When I install them with the tool it takes some muscle to get them to collapse, but there's still a point where I can tell they don't want to collapse any farther and I stop there.

I thought I'd share my progress as well as ask a couple more questions. So far I've got the bumper latch assembly all mounted up as well as the aluminum reinforcement, which is definitely necessary. The metal that you drill into here is super flimsy and was deforming just from the pressure I was applying during the drilling. Here's the full assembly And here's the reinforcement underneath. Is this the right idea hawairish? So today I was planning on doing the rest of the install but had some reservations after doing a torture test on an extra riv nut. I installed an M10 in a piece of unistrut with the intent to see how much torque they could resist before spinning out, but before it would even budge my bolt destroyed the nut's threads! I was applying a moderate amount of force with a regular 1/2" ratchet. If I had to guess, no more than 40 ft lbs. Also I was just holding the unistrut against the ground, no vice or anything. So my question to those of you that have completed this install, how tight did you make the bolts? Based on this test I would only be comfortable getting the bolts a little past snug with some loctite. Does this seem a little iffy or not a big deal? Thanks! Edit: I tried this test again with an M8. This time I felt like I was a able to apply a little bit more force and the insert actually spun before the threads got jacked. It's worth noting though that it didn't completely fail, it still had a good grip on the unistrut and I was able to still turn the bolt inside the insert to remove it or tighten it further. I kept tightening it and ended up jacking up the threads again haha.

Hi guys, I was wondering if there was anything else worth replacing when I do this job. I did the spark plugs recently (amazingly simple with the TBI setup) but otherwise I'm not aware of anything that would be good to replace. Also, do I need to use RTV anywhere on the valve covers? Or just clean off the old gasket and install the new? Thanks for your advice!

Here's what I ended up doing: The upper bushing and sleeve worked fine with the stock mount and bolt (1/2" ~ 13 mm), I just used a couple of 13mm ID fender washers to take up the slack and allow the bolt to apply torque to the sleeve. For the lower mount hawairish you and I were kind of both right. The stud has a tapered section so the surface that the shock eyelet sits on is actually thicker than the threaded portion. Turns out this surface is a perfect fit for the shock bushing with no sleeve, so I greased it up and it slid right on. The bushing was also the appropriate length to extend a little past the tapered section, allowing it to be compressed before the stock nut and large washer were stopped by the taper. This allowed me to get the right torque specs without over compressing the bushings. It's not ideal since it's not a flat surface, but I don't think it should be an issue since the torque is only around 50 ft lbs. Thanks for your help guys!

So do you think I should just sandwich the lip of the riv nuts like you did or could I maybe install them through the aluminum piece and frame at the same time? BTW I received the Astro riv nut tool thing today and it is nice! Hard case and everything, wasn't expecting that.

That should be just fine. I currently have 265/75/16 Kumho AT51's on my stock 2002 SE 6 spoke wheels with no spacers. Backspacing is 4 5/8" for my wheels and I have about 3/8" clearance between the edge of the tread and spring perch so you should be golden with 4" backspace. The stance won't be as wide as your current setup but personally I don't think that's a bad thing.

This was actually what i was thinking for the lower mounts. They're just barely too small so removing a bit of material should be ok. And luckily the sleeves didn't come pre-installed in the bushings so I can just throw them in a vice and go to town. The bushings and sleeves are identical for the top and bottom of the new shocks. Luckily the new sleeves are 1/2" ID so the tops should be all set with some washers like you said. Are you sure the bottom bolts are 16mm? The sleeves seem to just barely be too small, which makes me think its closer to 14mm but I'm not positive. For the bottom I don't think there's any wider ID sleeves that will fit the included bushings, so I was thinking I could do what Cuong suggested above or even buy the larger sleeves and just drill out the bushings to fit them in. Any issues that could come of that? Thanks for your input guys!

I received my pair of bilstein 33-185552's for the rear and I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for making them fit properly onto the shock mounts. The metal sleeves that came with the new shocks are slightly too small in diameter for the lower shock mount bolt and slightly too large for the upper. I've looked for alternative sleeves but I haven't found anything that would fit the bolts while still fitting inside the bushings installed in the shock eyelets. I have some other ideas for making them work but I would like to know if there's a "proper" way of going about this. Thank you!

Did it happen to look like this? Kind of hard to tell but there is a crease in the metal about an inch from the left-most mounting hole. This was the pathfinder I pulled the carrier from. Did you have any ideas about how to reinforce that area from the start? Thanks.

Hey hawairish how is the retrofit holding up 2 years in? Any spots where durability is a concern? I know you said you reinforced the latch and support on the bumper. Could you elaborate on that a little? My understanding is you used a piece of aluminum with holes drilled to match the assembly, then drilled additional holes in the frame to rivet it into place. Is that about right? I was lucky enough to score a carrier assembly on my first trip to the junkyard so I will hopefully be doing this mod very soon!

Can't remember the exact specs, but about 2 inches both extended and compressed.

For anyone interested, there's currently 10% off ARB (OME) and bilstein products. I pulled the trigger on OME HD front/MD rear springs as well as longer bilstein rear shocks (33-185552 courtesy of reading XPLORx4's posts). I saved around 50 bucks. Also free shipping Website says the sale ends tomorrow, but I bet if you called a store after the fact they could probably hook it up.

LONG overdue update in case this can help someone in the future: So my half-measure fix mentioned in my first post has worked like a charm the past 8 months. That was locking the doors with the keyfob, hitting the unlock button on the fob once to unlock the driver door, then locking it manually and shutting the door. This prevents the security system from arming, so any misconnection issue due to thermal expansion/contraction becomes irrelevant. But today I decided to investigate again. I removed the right side B-pillar interior trim, exposing the seat belt assembly, the rear passenger door wiring harness, and the front passenger door open/closed switch harness (important). A bunch of fiddling revealed the same issue: I could lock the car, hold the rear passenger door switch down, and the passenger dome light would turn off and the security system would activate (as it is supposed to). But if I applied just a slight downward pressure anywhere on the open door, or even on the roof rack above the B-pillar, the dome light would turn on and the alarm would go off if I had waited at least 30 seconds. On a whim I decided to try the same thing but with the front passenger door switch disconnected from its harness, but still screwed into the pillar. This essentially gives the "always closed" signal to the smart entrance control unit. To my disbelief, flexing the B-pillar yielded no dome light turning on or alarm sounding. I swapped the driver/front passenger door switches around to verify that it wasn't just a bad switch, which it wasn't. I repeated the test, but this time with the front passenger switch unscrewed from the pillar but connected to its harness. I held this switch closed with my finger, disconnected the rear passenger door switch to have it register as closed, flexed the B-pillar again, and got the same positive result. OK! So the problem is something to do with the front passenger door switch connections. The fact that the front door switch can register as closed even when not screwed in tells me that it is not grounded in the same way as the rear doors. Indeed the front switches have 3 wires as opposed to 1, but I'm not sure why this is. Even so I still think the issue is in the connection between the body and the screw that holds the switch in place (I couldn't incite a misconnection when just fiddling with the wires). I don't know why, but somehow flexing the B-pillar messes with that screw/body connection. I tried cleaning out the threads to no avail. So my official three-quarter measure solution: I simply disconnected the front passenger door switch and left it screwed in place so there wasn't a gaping hole in the body. Now the door registers as always closed so I can lock the car normally. The only drawback is that now the alarm won't work for the one door, but having at least a partial security system and being able to lock the doors without some fancy procedure is several steps in the right direction. Since I only just did this today I can't yet say 100% that it's going to work, but I am very confident and I'm currently up north where it's quite cold at night, so the next few days should confirm the theory. Again, sorry for the long post, but I figured I'd put it all out there while it's fresh in my mind, and so when some poor soul 5 years from now is having the same issue they can hopefully have all their questions answered. Cheers!

Awesome thanks for the info. Can't wait to get going on this. How's the handling with your new suspension? I'm hoping fresh heavier-duty springs and shocks will limit some of the body roll and sloppiness I'm feeling with my 145k mile OG parts.

Nice lookin Q! I currently have the same spacers as my only lift (except 2" all around), and after about 10 months or so I noticed the front has definitely come down a lot. I went from slight lean to definite rake, so I'm thinking of doing a similar set up to yours. OME HD/MD as part of a full suspension overhaul, but then include just 1" of spacers all around rather than 1" front, 2" rear like yours. Based on the experience with your rig do you think I could expect to keep just a little bit of rake? Also, are you using camber bolts for alignment? I currently have some on, but I'd like to use the stock bolts when I do the overhaul if possible. Thanks!

Do your turn signals flash when you lock it using your keyfob? On my 2002 they only flash sometimes, and when they don't it's an indication that the security system hasn't been armed. Part of a larger problem I'm having where the alarm goes off in the middle of the night. I bring it up because I had an instance where I was camping in the back with the doors unlocked, and they locked themselves randomly right as I was falling asleep. Gave me a good jump. Possibly related issues?

Figured I'd ask here rather than starting a new thread. From your guys' experience would this repair be significantly easier with the transmission dropped? I'm planning to have a shop replace my clutch at some point (no slip, but pilot/TO bearings are making noise), and I'm wondering how much labor time it will add to have gaskets replaced at the same time. Thanks!

Good suggestion I'll look into the door harness first. For the wiring along the rocker panel do you have an idea how to get at that? I can't find anything promising from underneath the vehicle, so my only thought is pulling up the carpet inside...