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onespiritbrain

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Posts posted by onespiritbrain

  1. Wanted to update this thread. I was too scared to put 15w40 in while my QX4 was my only mode of transportation but when I got the truck I put it in and the valve train noise disappeared completely. 

     

    I am now putting SAE30 "Heavy Duty Diesel" oil in and I have no valvetrain noise at all. When winter rolls around I will probably switch to 15w40 Delo.

     

    SAE30 is cheap and its always in stock at Walmart 

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  2. i would suggest identifying a clear communicable issue, for example, my steering wheel doesnt return to the exact same place after taking a curve (steering rack bushings) or it is harder than it should be to drive in a straight line (tie rod, ball joint, alignment). if you present a vague issue then we can only really provide vague responses. 

     

    when you say mountain roads, do you mean paved roads, gravel, dirt? i cant imagine driving in a straight line would be an issue traversing a mountain since there wont be any straight lines. 

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  3. The boys and I went to Charlies Creek last weekend to camp and it turned out to be one of the best camping experiences I've ever had. The spot we got was one of only three established camping areas on the entire trail and was right beside the trail. I didn't like being right beside the trail at first but we ended up getting to see several convoys, one that was comprised of at least 30 vehicles, travel right next to us. It was pretty cool. Only one vehicle came thru after dark and was lit up like a Christmas tree with amber light bars. 

     

    I remembered hawairish saying that the amber color produces more usable light and it did appear to be the case. It was like the trail was awash with very warm light instead of the abhorrent purple blue light that light bars otherwise output. I think I am going to get some gel film to either go full amber or at least get down to about 3000k.

     

    The only negative was I couldn't sleep a wink. This however enabled me to be present when two owls began hooting to each other at precisely 2:36AM and ended at 2:40AM. There was one owl which was, I would guess, 20-30 yards away from me and then another one which was much further away. When the one close to me would hoot I could almost feel the sound. It was a powerful hoot with three smaller hoots right after it. After the one close to me did its thing, the other one made the exact same hoot with three smaller hoots behind it. Toward the end of their hooting to each other they started changing the amount of smaller hoots. The one close to me only did two smaller hoots and then the other one still did three. The the one further away did two smaller hoots and the one close to me did four. They were clearly talking to each other and when they finished they did not make a single peep the entire rest of the night. It was truly something and I will always remember the wonder I felt when it was clear to me they were talking to each other. 

     

    Here are the pics and vids of us. It really was so much fun and my youngest son, who is incredibly picky and wont eat anything, tried all the camping food I made. I was so proud of him. What a great time and the trees surrounding the campsite were amazing. I dont know what kind of trees they were but it was a beautiful twisted mess of dense woods above a crystal clear creek. 

     

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  4. Mine rattles a lot louder under load and over a larger RPM range when the engine is cold. For instance when I drive up the hill after I pull out of my driveway in the mornings, the rattling is very pronounced and I can literally hear it echoing off of the houses as I drive by but if I have to go out to get food after I get home from work and the engine is still warmed up I can barely hear it at all except for right at 1800-1900rpm for a brief second. 

     

    Im sure the loose or broken heat shielding or whatever is vibrating will eventually begin rattling even in neutral/park. You may have to wait until the problem can be identified under safe conditions.

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  5. I have removed a lot of my heat shielding because it was all falling apart and I do not notice any issues with heat damaging components under there. I too have rattling and I'm almost positive it is coming from resonance in the exhaust piping itself. I have observed the pipe vibrating when the sound appears. But I can produce the sound in neutral..

     

    Have you tried power braking to see if you can find a spot where the rattle appears? If you can force the sound to appear while stationary maybe you could back up against something completely solid (if you have a tow hitch or something that wont get damaged), like a giant cement structure that you're 1000% sure cannot move, and then have someone apply power until the rattle appears and then you carefully find it with a long stick. The rattling should stop when you jam a stick against it.

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  6. Hello everyone. I am driving the QX4 again after crashing my truck so I thought I'd come here to provide a life update and QX4 update.

     

    So I have a major issue with road rage.. or hopefully HAD a major issue. When driving the QX4 I can't really do anything but get bullied by vehicles with more power and driving authority on the road. That changed with that truck and I found myself in pissing matches almost daily during my commute to and from work. If someone slighted me on the road I would get them back with a brake check or cutting them off.. etc. The greater offense toward me, the greater my response.

     

    Well.. someone cut across the interstate and I literally had to swerve to avoid the collision and directly afterward I fishtailed and crashed into the median which damaged something in my steering/suspension because my steering wheel was sideways while driving straight. The wonderful person didn't stop so I chased them down. When I found them I cut in front of them and stopped. They immediately threw it in reverse and backed into the car that had pulled up behind them. Then that guy, who was gigantic and extremely pissed, ran straight up to my car with his fists balled and started screaming at the top of his lungs for me to get out of the car. I immediately went from "badass" to scared @!*%less and told him to back away or he is going to die. He listened, backed away, and stopped screaming. This gave me clarity to get my vehicle into reverse and get away from the situation so I could call the cops but a passenger from the original vehicle that pulled out in front of me lunged at my door causing me to floor it and ultimately crash my truck into the curb, breaking my rear axel and trapping me in a position which gave the appearance that I was trying to flee. 

     

    Luckily everyone there told the truth so I did not receive any charges related to trying to flee but, per the arresting officers statement, "because you brought a firearm into the situation, you are getting an aggressive driving charge". In Georgia aggressive driving is a mandatory trip to jail. I sat in jail for 8 hours which wouldn't have been too terrible but there was an extremely insane child predator that was there for a "failure to register as a sex offender" charge and he constantly said incredibly inappropriate and foul crap the entire time. This was of course in between bouts of screaming from another person laying on the floor kicking the door as hard as he could, for 8 freaking hours. I am traumatized from the experience. 

     

    I am currently working through the court requirements which were anger management and defensive driving. I will say that I am very thankful for the way it all played out. No one was hurt. Only 3 weeks later and about 1 mile down the road from my incident, another 22yr old shot at a person he was road raging with and struck an old lady instead who was in critical condition at the hospital for a long time afterward. Everyone involved in that incident had their lives turned upside down.. and for what? Some minor inconveniences on the road??

     

    Anyway, until I am finished taking care of the ramifications of my mistake and prove to myself that I can handle driving a vehicle with a little power, I will be driving the QX4 daily. Unluckily a week ago while driving home a truck bowed up and stopped in an intersection (there was a firetruck which I could not see because it was blocked by a tractor-trailer in the turning lane) and the person behind them of course did the same leaving me with less room than required to stop my QX4 so I changed lanes. Well the car behind that truck that stopped couldn't see the firetruck either and decided to pop out right in front of me so I stomped on my brakes and if they had continued to accelerate then it might have been ok, but again, they too couldn't see the firetruck until they got out into the intersection a bit and when they saw it they slammed on their brakes and stopped.. this was of course the death blow to my ability to avoid collision so I swerved as hard as I could to the left and barely clipped their driver side bumper and quarter panel. It still did some damage to both our vehicles and the cop gave me a ticket for it and apologized saying that he understands the situation but he has to give me the ticket because I was in the rear. 

     

    My insurance company hates me I am sure.. At any rate I am glad to revisit this place and hopefully I can make some posts detailing the repair. Its going to be a headlight, passenger fender and flare, maybe a bumper (which I already needed), and all the underlying bracketing. 

    • Like 1
  7. I havent been on here in a while and I thought i'd make a life/vehicle situation update. My best friend's Grandpa died in 2010 and his Granny has been driving the old mans truck (2003 Ford F-150 King Ranch 4x2 with the SOHC 2valve 5.4L Triton V8) ever since, basically as a grocery getter and doctor office transport. Well she is at the point where she has to have a chauffeur and so the truck has been sitting. They tried to drive it one day and the battery had died so she decided to sell it. 

     

    I bought the truck @ 138,000 miles for $5,000. She told me that it was meticulously taken care of with dealership oil changes every 2500 miles since birth. I got a flipping deal... Looked inside the oil cap and theres not even a hint of varnish anywhere in sight. It drives incredibly well too, just the epitome of a blessing really. The cowhide leather is in good condition, no tears or anything! Literally one of those vehicles that an old couple took very good care of.

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    In addition to the truck I also bought a house, no more renting! No more white walls!! And if that wasnt enough I also landed a new job getting paid correctly for what I do and with a real, funded, and staffed maintenance department. None of these things, I mean not one of them; the vehicle, the house, or the job could I have attained without supernatural help. The way everything came to be was legitimately miraculous.. or incredibly lucky... and someone came out of the blue and helped me on the down payment for the house...... which was a large sum of money...... I assure you, I have not been good enough to anyone ever (and really have mostly been the opposite of good to those closest to me) to deserve what has been done and it can only be explained by love from a higher place than this earth. Things fell into place that had to be set in motion long before I even asked or knew to ask for them. The Lord really is there, and He really does love us. 

     

    So, the QX4 will now be my toy!!! Yay! I get to love my Nissan again lol! The engine needs to be replaced. The heads are absolutely trashed and the rods/mains are worn pretty severely (slight knocking at certain RPM has begun). I plan to replace the engine at some point and possibly stick a manual transmission in it. Then it will be driven every time I go fishing, which I hope starts to be more frequent than recently as I haven't been but one time this year and didnt catch anything. I will put 15w40 in it next to see how the knocking reacts. 

     

    Anyway I miss getting on here and I hope to at some point contribute more content in the form of another engine replacement and also a auto/manual trans swap.

    • Like 1
  8. I was just driving down the road, on the way back to my job with a smile on my face, and THUD....engine is dead. I coast into the turning lane and put it in park. Attempts to crank the engine all fail...the engine turns over and sounds completely normal but just will not crank! I get out and look under the hood for some time and cant locate a single thing that might be wrong.

     

    After sitting there a while and debating whether to walk back or call someone (just started a new job and didnt want them to think I suck at fixing things...if only they saw my transmission blunder hahahaha) I remembered that I have the OBDii scanner and so I ran a scan. "P1320 Primary Ignition Signal Fault" was the code..

     

    After researching for a little while I settled on the coil pack inside the distributor. Damn! I work in the middle of Lawrenceville GA on highway 20 and there's a ton of traffic... I waited for a break in traffic far off in the distance and started pushing as hard as I could and when the break got to where I was I jerked the wheel and made it across the lanes into a small African produce store. 

     

    I went inside the store and the kindest old African man not only let me leave my car in front of his store but also insisted on helping me fix the issue. The part wouldn't be there until much later that evening so I thanked him and walked back to work.

     

    A month or so prior my best friend and I went to a junkyard we found in the middle of Jefferson GA and I just so happened to find a pristine factory OEM Nissan distributor on a QX4 that just so happened to also have the rear wing that I'd been searching for since the beginning of this thread! I had my wife bring me the part and my vehicle fired right up! Woo!

     

    Now I have a waterfall of an oil leak coming from somewhere...better not be the heads! I believe its a camshaft seal or maybe the front crank seal. We shall see...I'm adding 2-3quarts a week at this point.

    • Like 1
  9. I don’t know that I’ve been honked at but I can say that 95% of the time when taking off from a stop that I am an inconvenience due to being slower than nearly every other vehicle out there (aside from a loaded down tractor trailer).

    It’s definitely a pain to drive my VG33 QX4, my wife’s GX470 has so much more power it’s like night and day.

    I haven’t does this... but I often imagine opening my sunroof right when I leave the house and then flipping pennies out from below the plane of view at people that ride my ass. Then when they hop out at the next stop to do something about it— well the imagination goes on but I’ll leave it here.

  10. I went to a new junkyard the day before yesterday called Encore in Jefferson GA ( @03TroutFinder ), and it has pathfinders that are not raped to the bone. I found an OEM dizzy that looks pristine, it even had the original cap/rotor (I'm saving it for when I eventually need it). I also, after at least 10 trips to other junkyards, found a rear wing. Finally I grabbed a passenger side marker to replace the one that broke when that guy crashed into me and peace offered me a mcfish sandwich at 8am in the morning...

     

    So after acquiring the above mentioned parts I went to work and performed the following:

    new spark plugs

    new spark wires

    new dizzy cap

    new dizzy rotor

    fixed coolant leak under throttle body

    installed new to me passenger side marker

    installed new to me rear wing

     

    Happy New Year!!! _,,..--;;:::2021:::;;--..,,_

    • Like 1
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