TheRadBaron

My question is in regards to how well a VG30I engine responds to performance modifications of the intake and exhaust. I'm working on an engine swap in my '87 Pathfinder. As much as I would have liked to swap in a VG33E, I ended up going with another fresh VG30I. While I'm working on it I'm attempting to increase the performance a little bit without spending a bunch of money. I have a set of Pacesetter headers installed that dump into a 2" single exhaust with a free-flowing performance muffler. That should be a big improvement in flow over stock. Looking at the stock air cleaner it looks like the poor motor is trying to breathe through a straw. That little pipe that connects the "cold air" duct into the air cleaner housing has to cause a significant restriction. I thought about cutting more holes into the housing to let more air in but I don't really want to feed the motor the hot engine compartment air. I have this K&N air filter lid that has a large amount of filter media built into it. If I modify the air filter housing by cutting out most of the top and attaching the K&N lid I should be able to get a lot more air into the housing. The lid would protrude through the hood so I'd seal it to the bottom of the hood with foam to keep engine bay heat out and cover it with a cowl induction hood scoop. I also plan to carefully cut out the charge heater grid in the throttle body for every last bit of flow and as insurance against the grid crumbling into my new motor. Now, I'm a gearhead/hot rodder from days gone by but I always fooled around with carburetors and I don't have much experience with performance mods to fuel injection systems. I've heard that some systems can readily adapt to basic performance mods like intake/exhaust but others cannot. How does the VG30I system like these sort of modifications? Can it adapt to these type of mods and provide a performance increase? I'm trying to get more performance and I can live with dodgy running while the engine is warming up, etc. but I don't want to do these mods if they're just going to cause trouble and make the truck run worse than stock. What do you guys think? Thanks.

Thanks for the info. I think I'm going in a different direction now, though. I have a '99 Pathy with the VG33 that's about dead from rust. I'm going to look into swapping that engine and engine management system into mine. I'm going to start a thread about that so please chime in if you have any insight.

My '87 Pathfinder with the VG30i recently suffered some significant engine damage when it blew a head gasket and overheated. A few of the pistons are damaged and the bores are scuffed and scraped. I'm looking into the options available to get my truck back on the road. I'm considering having the engine bored and installing new pistons but it would (or could) be a lot quicker and easier to buy a good used engine and just swap it out. I'm finding a lot more of the newer VG30e motors locally and I'm wondering if I could use the long block or short block from one of these instead of having to locate an early "i" motor like mine. I'd love just swap the "e" long block into my truck and use my "i" intake and everything. Looking around on Rockauto suggests that the "i" and "e" motors used the same heads. I'm hoping that they used the same blocks, cranks, etc, too. Looking at part numbers for long blocks might suggest that the cranks/crank snouts are different between the two, though. Anyone have any insight? Thanks.

I'm pretty sure that I bled out all the air. I loosened the little cap on the upper radiator hose and filled it through that port until everything was full. Do these motors have more of a bleeding procedure than that? And as far as the head gasket goes, it's not showing any of the classic signs. There's no evidence of coolant in the oil, no steam or coolant smell from the exhaust, no sign of oil getting into the cooling system. I think the coolant loss could just be that it was all boiling off through the catch tank. Every time I stopped the tank would be boiling away and dumping coolant all over the ground from its overflow tube.

I've owned my '87 for 30,000 miles or so and it's always been a great truck. That all changed on my last road trip, though. I'll try to give some background of the sequence of events without rambling on forever. It was hot out, I was pulling a small trailer, and running the AC on the interstate. Maybe asking a bit much of the poor truck but I've done it a lot in the past without any trouble. The gauge always shows the truck running pretty hot under these conditions but it's never gotten into the danger are of the gauge and never used any coolant. In fact, the cooling system has always been perfect in the past. Anyway, we're cruising down the road and the gauge starts to rise into the danger zone. I pull it over and it's boiling over into the catch tank. I let it cool down a bit and find that the radiator is really low on coolant. I look at the radiator cap and the gasket is rotted and parts are missing. I figure that the system wasn't fully pressurized and it just boiled off the coolant. I fill up the radiator with water and go down the road to Autozone and buy a new cap, and top up the system again. I hit the road and about 10 miles later the top tank of the radiator blows apart. I think that it was the original '87 radiator so I figure it was maybe just brittle and didn't like the full pressure that a new rad cap provided. At this point I have the truck towed to my destination. While I'm there I install a new radiator and thermostat. I fill it up but I now notice that the engine is running a bit funny. The "cadence" is off while cranking and the idle is just a slight bit rough. I drive the truck around and top off the system a few times. It's now consistently running hotter than usual, though. Also, I notice that it's having oil blowby into the air filter that it didn't used to. But other than the slightly rough idle the truck runs great. On the way home it starts running in the danger zone after about 30 minutes. I pull over and it's boiling over again. I let it cool a bit and add more coolant. Back on the road, things are looking alright for another 30 minutes or so. At this point I try to turn on the heater and it's blowing cool air even though the engine is piping hot. Every once in a while the heater would blow a gust of hot air and the temp gauge would dip down a bit at the same time. I pull it over again and go through the same thing, adding more water. Back on the road this time, the gauge stays right in the middle and the heater is blowing hot. I begin thinking that everything is cool but after maybe an hour this time it starts acting funny and running hot again. From this point on I have to pull over every 20 minutes or so and fill it up. It's constantly boiling over, running hot, and won't blow hot air. Anyone have any ideas? I'm sure that it could be a blown head gasket but I don't know how that could prevent the coolant from getting to the heater core. And it's odd to me that for about an hour of the trip the heater worked, the engine ran cool, and it didn't seem to lose coolant or boil over. I'm kind of at a loss with this one.

No, it's not that the pedal doesn't go down at all. In fact, it goes down more than it should. The front brakes are operating but the rears aren't. It's just that when the pedal is pushed down and any of the bleeder valves in the rear brakes are opened, the pedal doesn't go down any further like it normally would. It's probably just a bad master cylinder. I have a new one on the way that should be here today. I'll report back with my findings. Thanks.

I'm at one of those stages in life where all of my vehicles break at the same time. I ran into something odd on my the 1999 Pathfinder that I just bought today. I didn't have time to look into it further than I did this evening so it might be something obvious, but I thought that I'd take a few minutes and ask here first in case it was a known problem. My truck has rear drums. When I bought the truck I noticed that the brakes were acting strangely. In my experience they felt like maybe the rears weren't working. I had my wife help me look at them today and this is what I found. I had her pump the pedal and I cracked the rear, driver side bleeder valve. Fluid came out, pedal went down, just like normal. We did this another time or two and then no more fluid came out when the valve was opened. The pedal didn't go down, either. I moved to the passenger side rear and nothing came out there, either. Pedal didn't go down. It was like the valves weren't even opening. So then I moved to the rear load-sensing proportioning valve. I had her pump the pedal and I cracked the bleeder on the prop valve. Fluid came out, pedal went down. After that, same story of no fluid and no pedal movement. At this point I had to call it a night and I didn't look into it any further. Any ideas what could cause the rear brakes to not get any pressure? I know that it could be a number of things but I thought that it was worthwhile to ask here and see if anyone has had a similar experience. I'm an old hand at working on brakes but I'm pretty new to ABS and load-sensing prop valves. Thanks.

I just bought a '99 Pathy that only came with one key. This is kind of a beater truck and I'm not willing to pay the $80 each to get some key copies with transponders. Does anyone know how to disable the immobilizer? I know that people sometimes take the chip out of the key and glue it onto the steering column in a location that allows it to register to the immobilizer, but I'd prefer to do something a bit more thorough. I'm guessing that you could trick the immobilizer into thinking that the chip was present by jumpering some wires together in the ignition switch harness but I have no idea which ones. Has anyone attempted anything like this? Any other good ideas or techniques out there? Thanks.

Alright! I went to the junkyard and pulled a $15 distributor today. Got home, put in in my truck, and it fired right up. I took it for a 10-mile test drive and it runs and drives great. I still need to fine-tune the timing, reset the codes, etc., but I think it's safe to say at this point that the problem is solved. Not bad for $515. Thanks everyone for the help. Cheers.

No kidding. Sheesh. I guess that I missed that part about code translating. Thanks very much for the tip. I was just about to start looking for a "no spark" flowchart but now I have a better place to start. Wish me luck.

Alright, I went out an got some information and symptoms. I'm thinking that there's more than one problem here. The first weird thing that it was doing is related to the fuel system. When I turned the ignition on to being getting the codes from the computer, I left it on for maybe 30 seconds while getting my phone ready to record the MIL flashes. After about 30 seconds with the ignition on, things started to happen under the hood. The fuel pump was cycling on and off, over and over again. On for a few seconds, then off for a few. Then on again, etc. I could hear a sort of "swishing" noise under the hood that sounded like maybe fuel rushing though the lines. When this was happening it was making MIL act really strange so I couldn't get the codes. I took out the fuse for the fuel pump and that stopped the pump from cycling with the ignition on. But there were other relays or devices clicking and whirring and going crazy under the hood. I'm an electrician and it sure sounded like relays or contacts opening and closing very quickly. They sounded more like they were coming from around the motor and I couldn't feel any of the main relays in the two relay boxes actuating. The MIL was still going crazy, dimming when certain things under the hood were clicking and blinking nonsense patterns in time to the underhood noises. This went on for about 30 seconds, then suddenly stopped. After everything stopped clicking and whirring the MIL stabilized and I was able to read the codes. Here's what I got: -0101 MAF sensor -0201 #1 fuel injector circuit open -0304 Cylinder #4 misfire None of these would seem to cause a "no spark" condition to me. Plus, there seems to be something weird going on with the fuel system. I don't see any leaks anywhere. What could cause the pump to cycle like that? Maybe a faulty fuel pressure regulator?

Thanks for all the information and responses. I didn't really have much time to fool with it last night so I just checked for spark by pulling off a plug wire, popping a new plug into it, and grounding the plug body to the motor while my daughter cranked it over. No spark present. I tried it on two different plug wires. I checked all the fuses and looked for any obvious problems with connectors under the hood and found nothing. I'll be back at it after work today and I plan to pull the codes as a starting point. The PO told me that he changed the fuel filter, fuel pump, and crank position sensor. I didn't get the impression that he was a very experienced mechanic so hopefully those parts were replaced correctly. I can hear the fuel pump run when the key is turned on but I haven't checked for fuel pressure.

Hey guys. I just took a gamble on a 1999 Pathfinder that I bought non-running for $500. It's a 3.3, AT, 4x4 with 196,000 miles. It looks like it was a pretty well maintained machine for most of its life and it's overall in good shape. The previous owner told me that it's a 1999.5 and that it's kind of odd because it takes some 1999 parts and some 2000 parts. I don't think he really knew a lot about it, though. He bought it and drove it for 6 months or so until it suddenly started running really bad. He and some friends just started to throw parts at it without doing any real diagnostics or troubleshooting until he got discouraged and sold it...to me. My preliminary testing shows that it has no spark. I haven't gotten much farther than that. I checked all the fuses and pulled the distributor cap to look underneath. Everything looks alright. I have an '87 WD21 that I love dearly and I've gotten pretty good at working on it. Being able to pull the codes off the ECU by using the diagnostic switch has been really handy and helped me fix it a few times. This 1999 is the first R50 I've owned so I don't know a lot about it. I tried searching around a bit for some answers but I'm not having much luck. I'm working crazy hours and trying to get this thing on the road as quickly as possible. I guess what I really need to know is (1), where is the ECU located? It doesn't seem to be under the passenger seat like my '87 and (2), can someone link or describe how to pull the codes from the ECU using the diagnostic switch or dial? I've come across a few descriptions of the process but they haven't been very clear to me. A while back I found a really good description of the process but now I can't find it. Those are the main things that I need to know, but while I'm asking; Are there any common problems with the 3.3 that cause a "no spark" condition? Thanks a lot.

Wires and connections simply getting wet isn't usually enough to cause a fuse to blow in a 12V DC system. I agree that electricity and water don't agree with one another but if a fuse blew every time a wire or connection got wet it would be almost impossible to drive in the rain. If the water IS a factor in making the fuse blow there's something else wrong. There's enough road spray under the truck to totally drench the top of the fuel tank and fuel pump when driving on the highway in the rain. That's how mine got wet.

So my '87 recently started blowing the fuel pump fuse. I at first figured that it was the fuel pump going bad but I've done some reading here and now it seems that the problem might be caused by bad wire connections on the top of the fuel pump and fuel gauge sending unit assembly. Here's a post that details the problem. http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/topic/22462-fuel-sending-unit/ A summary is that the wires to the fuel level sending unit corrode where they pass through the metal cap and that causes them to short out and blow the fuel pump fuse. What I don't understand is how this would happen since I don't think that the fuel gauge has anything to do with the fuse that runs the actual fuel pump. I studied the wiring diagram for a while and the fuel gauge fuse seems to be included with the rest of the instrument cluster and totally separate from the fuel pump. Plus, when the tank is full I believe the fuel level sender is basically shorted to ground anyway. This causes the gauge to read "full" and the resistance increases as the fuel level drops. Am I thinking about this correctly or am I missing something major here? When my fuse was blowing it was raining hard and the top of the fuel tank (along with the rest of the truck) was soaking wet. Then I replaced the fuse and it didn't blow but the pump wouldn't run either. Once the truck dried out the pump ran again and the truck ran fine. I'm tempted to just buy a new fuel pump and sending unit assembly but I don't really like to just throw new parts and money at a problem without understanding what the problem is. Thanks for any insight.

After fixing the coolant temperature sender that was causing my '87 SE to run poorly everything was great and I was loving life for a few days. Then my fuel pump fuse started blowing. It was on a really rainy night and I had to trailer the PF home. I first thought that it was the fuel pump but after doing some research on here it seems that it's likely the sending unit shorting out. I found this thread http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/topic/27467-fuel-pump-fuse-blowing/ where the problem is discussed and it's the EXACT problem that I'm having. GrimGreg posted a few links to courtesyparts.com for the parts. One is the entire fuel pump assembly that incudes the cap/sender part, and the other is just for the cap/sender. I think that I want to buy the cap/sender assembly that's listed as part# B5060-41G01 for $195. There isn't a picture shown so I wanted to make sure that this part is indeed what I want before ordering it. I'm looking for the metal cap with the wires that go through the plastic caps to the fuel pump and sending unit. Also, isn't there a member here who can get good prices on factory Nissan parts? Can someone steer me in his direction. Thanks.

Alright! The coolant temperature sensor wiring was the culprit. I bought a new connector pigtail (BWD #PT5630) and spliced it onto the original section of wiring. This connector was a bit hard to find, though. This basic type of 2-pin connector is very common through our trucks but most of them have the indexing slot cenetered in the connector. The CTS has an offset indexing slot so it takes a very specific connector. Truck runs prefectly now. In fact it runs noticably better, especially at idle. I think this is due to my removal of the IAV system. Man, I'm glad I got it fixed. It was really bringing me down. Thanks for the help, everyone.

That's funny. I haven't read that book and I didn't catch the reference. I often wondered just what the heck that username meant. I'll have to look that up. I made some progress this evening. It seems that my coolant temperature sensor has a bad electrical connection. The resistance value at 68 degrees (about what it was today) across the two terminals in the connector from the sensor should have been around 2.5 kilohms (2,500 ohms), but I was reading around 7 megohms (7,000,000 ohms). The sensor isn't exactly easy to get to but I got the connector off and found the terminals to be very corroded and the wires in bad shape. I then tested the terminals on the sensor directly and got the correct 2.5 kilohms. This suggests that the sensor itself is good and the problem lies in the bad wiring. I ordered a new connector pigtail that should arrive on Saturday. I'm really hoping that this solves the problem. I also checked the power and ground wires to the MAF sensor and crank angle sensor and visually inspected them. I checked the power and all the grounds to the ECM per the service manual as well. All of those were good. I didn't check the input wires or remove/clean the MAF sensor yet. If the new CTS wiring doesn't fix the problem I'll start with those thing.

Alright. Thanks for the tips. I should get a chance to start troubleshooting it later this week or weekend. I'm happy to have a direction to go in. I love this truck and I want to get it back on the road ASAP. Hey slartidbartfast, you're on ADVrider, aren't you? I spend a lot of time on that forum and I recognize your username. It's a pretty unique one. I'm TheRadBaron on there, too. Is it the BMW GS section that I see you on? Anyway, thanks again and hopefully I have some luck with the multimeter.

Alright. I read the pinned post about the codes and went out and pulled mine. Here are the codes that were indicated: (I verified these with my FSM and listed the codes as they appeared in the manual rather than the pinned post) - 11 - Crank angle sensor - 12 - Air flow meter circuit - 13 - Cylinder head/ Water temperature sensor circuit I guess I'll start digging into these components and checking them as per the FSM. Anyone know anything about these specific to Pathfinders?

Thanks for the responses and ideas. The ignition system tuneup parts all look very new and seem to be good. The previous owner installed a new distributor, distributor cap & rotor, plugs, and wires a few thousand miles ago. I pulled the distributor cap and everything looked good inside. I'll head over to the garage section next and try to find the pinned topic about ECM codes. I also have a factory service manual that has detailed troubleshooting info. I identified the corroded exhaust components as the AIV system. It sounds like a known problem and some guys remove them with good luck. No emission inspections where I live so I'll be going this route. The throttle body injector is also relatively new and doesn't seem to be coked up at all. Something to look at for sure, though. Thanks again and I'll report back when I learn something new.

I have an '87 Pathfinder 4x4 with a 3.0 and 5-speed. I recently bought the truck and I've only put about 2,000 miles on it so far. It's always run very well and it was running very well when I was driving it around yesterday evening. This morning it fired right up and I drove off to work. About 10 miles into the trip it starts running badly, though. It didn't want to take throttle. If I accelerated very gently I could get it up to interstate speed but if I gave it any real throttle it would sputter and stumbled and the truck would jerk violently. I made it to work and I was fiddling with it in the parking lot. If I punched the gas it would sputter badly and then the revs would go up a bit. The idle quality was fine and the truck ran down the road pretty well as long as you didn't accelerate even moderately. When I left work this afternoon the truck fired right up. I looked under the hood for any obvious problems and the only thing that I saw that looked bad was a device that's just behind the passenger-side headlight that has something to do with the exhaust (like maybe the EGR or air injection). It had a large pipe going down to the exhaust manifold. I didn't look at it that closely but there's a little vacuum dashpot on top that was corroded and falling apart. It could be lifted up by hand and it would sound slightly loud and like the exhaust. It didn't seem to effect the way the motor was idling but I ziptied it down into the position that it was supposed to be in. Another thing that I noticed was that there was another device that was attached to the one behind the headlight. It looked sort of like a bellows with a large tube coming out of it to the other device. Sorry, I know that I could look this stuff up but I don't have time right now. I'm really scrambling around. Anyway, the bellows device is making sort of a gurgling sound when the engine is running and seems to be leaking a little bit of water. Again, this stuff is connected to the exhaust manifold with a large diameter pipe. I have no idea if it's related to these problems. So I drove off in the truck and it was behaving just the same as before. I drove it across town to NAPA and shut it off. When I went back out it wouldn't start. It would crank and crank but wouldn't even hint at firing. I tried giving it throttle to no effect. It smelled like it was getting gas but it was hard to tell. I removed the air cleaner assembly so I could look around and I didn't see anything out of sorts. I tried a bunch of different things but nothing worked. I let it sit for an hour and cool down and then I was able to start it up. It ran really badly for a few seconds and didn't want to idle but then it settled in and idled. I drove it home but the condition had worsened. I could barely hit 55 this time and it just all around ran terribly. I once had a Chevy van that I accidently ran low on oil once. The hydraulic lifters collapsed and it ran almost exactly like my Pathy is now until I filled up the oil. My oil gauge isn't working but the idiot light does and it never came on. When I got home I checked the oil and it's full on the dipstick. It's probably not this but do these oil pumps have a pickup that can fall off or anything like that? Does anyone have any ideas or seen anything like this? I'm a pretty good mechanic but I'm not an expert at fuel injection systems. I'm not sure where to even start troubleshooting. I supposed I can check fuel pressure and do some other basic tests but I'm hoping someone here has some insight. Thanks a lot.

Thanks all for the welcome. One of the first orders of business was to change all the fluids. Luckily I found this site and read the FSB about the transmission fluid capacity and fill level. This is a picture from the other night when I was filling the gearbox with Redline MT90 ($$$). I read about pouring it in from the top but it seemed like the shifter boot was going to be tough to remove due to the carpet so I decided that this way was easier. I found that if you jack the truck up to this angle (no less), the gearbox will take the full 5.1L. And don't worry, I didn't put my body under the truck when it was up like this. I had a length of hose going into the fill port so I could pour the lube in while standing next to the truck.

Hello everyone. New member from Illinois here. I just bought a very nice '87 Pathfinder. It's a 4x4, VG30E, 5-speed, SE-model. The backstory is that last year I decided that I wanted an older compact SUV and I started shopping around. I was originally looking at the second-gen (90-95) Toyota 4-Runner based on Toyota's reputation for ruggedness. However, last year I got a really rusty '90 D21 pickup in a trade and I was really impressed with it in spite of the fact that it was totally falling apart. This got me thinking about the Pathfinder. Plus, the 2nd-gen 4-runner apparantly came with a REALLY lousy 3.0 V-6 and in a stark contrast the 1st-gen Pathfinder's V-6 has just the opposite reputation. Chalk one up for the Nissan. I decided that I needed to stick with an older truck for a few reasons. I'm a avowed gearhead and I need to have an emotional attachment to my vehicles. I've just never been able to achieve that with newer autos. I've driven old stuff my whole life and I really can't get into anything newer than the early '90s. Also, I insist upon a manual transmission and the newer things get, the harder it is to find a stick. So that brought me to the 1st-gen Pathfinder. My mind was made up. Problem is, it's nearly impossible to find a good older truck here in the rust belt and I wanted a nice vehicle for once. After much searching on Craigslist and eBay I found this '87 in Baltimore. It has 150,000 very well-maintained miles and it was garage kept for most of it's life. It's mechanically very sound, the interior is excellent, and the body has very little rust. There's a bit starting in a few places but it's far from terminal and I'll fix it before it can get worse. I took a flight out to Baltimore and drove it home to Illinois. Boy, am I happy with my decision and my purchase. I love this truck. I admire the way it's built and I really enjoy the way it drives. It's pretty much all original but I'll be modifying things soon enough. Nothing radical but I'm a pathological modifier of things and I'll work in a lot of subtle improvements. I titled this thread "The Righteous Path" since that's what I named the truck. I like to give all my vehicles sarcastic or inside joke names. This way, when the wife asks me "What are we taking to the store, honey?", I can answer "We are taking The Righteous Path". Disclaimer: I don't mean righteous in the religious sense. More like "fighting the good fight" or doing the right thing.