onespiritbrain

Thanks man. I’m going to have to get into my auto climate control thing to put LEDs in it. If I dim my dash then it disappears. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You will definitely have to remove the cluster from the dash. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Great question. I just so happen to have a spare gauge cluster that we can test to see what contacts power up the odometer! Just bring something like this https://www.amazon.com/Starter-Battery-Charger-Portalbe-8000mAh/dp/B073PSMR29/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539716695&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=pocket+sized+battery+jump+starter&dpPl=1&dpID=41EJepROqLL&ref=plSrch with you and fit it with some probes to send power to the right contacts.. I might experiment with my spare tonight.

Oh yeah man that would have been a monster to remove altogether. I guess you could do it but you would need a gantry crane and the front clip removed. Or maybe you could do it with a cherry picker and a trans jack together. Anyway I think theres really only a couple or so different possibilities: 1. A TC bolt has worked loose and it catching on something. 2. The flex plate is bent and is catching on something. 3. Maybe there is still something going on with the starter and ignition switch, ie the bendix isn’t retracting. Let us know what you find.

The LEDs help a lot. Better make sure you have them OFF if you’re trying to preserve your night eyes though.. I don’t have a pic of the front seats illuminated by the dome but it is more than enough light to do whatever. If you haven’t already ordered your dome bulbs then look at these first. They’re a little higher priced but they are brighter than I expected, and I expected them to be bright. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B075MC9QTZ?psc=1&ref=yo_pop_mb_pd_title It says they’re unavailable right now.. I literally just ordered mine last week. Maybe they’ll be available again soon. Anyway, the warm white color temp is awesome. It’s whiter than the stock bulbs but not blue at all. Superbrightleds.com has colored BA9 bulbs for our map lights, if you’re looking for a solution to keep your night eyes. I got red LEDs for mine but now I’m reading that green and even blue are better than red for night eyes and enemy detection. Blue resembles the moon and green resembles moon light reflected from leaves, and red just resembles an uninformed person.. I did put a neutral white BA9 in the passenger map light and it puts out more than enough light for the driver when I’m not trying to preserve my night eyes and I just need light. Edit: I turned down the exposure a little too much on this photo.. I was trying to match what I was actually seeing with my eyes and I went a tiny bit too far, not much but a little.

Oh wow, yeah that’s not a lot of torque. The swivel can also reduce the delivered torque a little. I do frequently underestimate torque though.. but one thing about using a torque wrench is that if there is a nick on any of the threads or even just dirt/crusties then you can get a pop from the wrench way before the bolt produces the desired clamping force. I’m sure someone might argue with me on this but unless it’s a cylinder head or something really special, put the He-Man on it. I may have misunderstood but didn’t you have the torque converter loosely bolted to the flexplate during engine installation at one point. If so, did you put any bellhousing bolts in with it like that?

It’s the circuit board the LEDs are mounted on. You can probably see discolored areas on it If they shorted out. Have you checked for a blown fuse? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Strange that it blew a fuse since the LEDs should be drawing less current. Maybe one of them shorted.. I’d take them all out before replacing the fuse. If one did short then you might be able to see the trace damage on the pcb. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There was a guy that solved his shifting issues with a $50 junk yard valve body swap. That’d definitely be worth a try, especially if you’ve got a bunch sediment and crud in your current valve body. You might also consider a real filter to go along with a new valve body. That thing that’s in the pan isn’t a filter (and actually Nissan doesn’t even call it a filter- it’s a screen). Otherwise you might end up where you are shortly down the road. https://www.amazon.com/Magnefine-Magnetic-Inline-Transmission-Steering/dp/B0787KWZPS I wish I had tried a valve body swap before buying a whole transmission..

I put a new passenger control arm on today. The bushing with a bolt running thru it was almost completely disintegrated. The driver side fell to pieces earlier this year.. I still need to change the ball joints. The steering is way better than it was. I really just wanted to tell you guys about my experience changing my universal joints today. So Autozone’s ujoint tool was bent badly so I couldn’t use it so I drove back home worrying about the beating I was about deliver to my drive shaft.. I did have to beat the original NSKs out but to my delight the SKFs I replaced them with slid in with weight of my body on one side and with light blows from the hammer on the other side. It was the same each time. One cap would slide in with my weight allowing me to seat the trunnion slightly in both caps while I hammered the second one down. Best experience installing ujoints ever. The new ujoints solved the low pitch rumble I had going on at 40mph and up. I was so afraid it was this transmission! The rumble started while my other transmission was dying it’s death and I knew it couldn’t be that big a coincidence but there was that sinking feeling in the back of my mind that this new transmission was suffering a problem that produced the same vibration. I’ve got new Moog OEM springs for the front and back I’ll be putting on next weekend and also trailing arm bushings for the uppers and lowers!

The VG30 starter and bracket are the right ones to use so that shouldn’t be the issue and the paint should be just fine also. The 8in drop could definitely have bent the flexplate. Just curious, what’s the torque spec on the torque converter bolts if you remember off the top of your head? I always tighten those bolts with every ounce of my strength. I cuss myself to hell and back when I have to break them loose but I know they’re not backing out. What did the torque spec feel like? Did you really have to wrench it or did you feel like you could have tightened them some more? Did you tighten down the bell housing bolts at all while you had the torque converter bolted to the flexplate?

Well I went with warm white for the gauge cluster but I think there is a blue hue in the actual cluster itself because it’s slightly more blue now.. but not much. Here’s a pic, you can see the 4WD diagram there has the warmer looking light and that’s what it all looked like before and now it’s a tiny bit more bluish: Superbrighrleds.com spec section said that the ones I bought are dimmable and they do dim when I roll the dimmer switch. Here’s the ones I got: https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/instrument-cluster-gauge/74-led-bulb-3-smd-led-miniature-wedge-retrofit-car/228/1068/ Here what the spec section says: So are you saying the LED burns out or the dimmer switch itself? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The 2WD output shaft may or may not be different. From this picture it does indeed look to be much longer and has what looks like a worm gear cut onto it: There are all sorts of configurations though.. here are just a few: Anyway, whatever RE4 you get whether it is 2WD or 4WD, from a Mazda or a Nissan, you should be able to swap parts from one to the other. The output shaft might require some instruction unless you know what your doing. It’s probably secured fairly deep inside the transmission by snap rings. You’re going from a 4WD Nissan to a 4WD Nissan so I bet you don’t have to change anything but the bell and maybe extension housings. The wire loom and connectors are probably even the same. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

VG30 VG33 I see a slight difference in the placement of the bendix. The bellhousing on the RE4 fitted to a VG30 might be a little different than the bell housing fitted for the VG33. I assume the bellhousing differences between all the separate RE4 applications aren’t reflected anywhere in the part number. Just like you can get a “2WD” RE4 and the only difference is the extension housing, the RE4 fitted to your original VG30 might have a different bellhousing. Since it mated to the VG33 engine just fine and the torque converter bolts lined up, I’d say the only difference is the area where the starter mounts. I had to use multiple shims to get my starter back a solid half inch so it would stop contacting the flex plate and before the shims I couldn’t turn the engine over even with a huge breaker bar. I remember thinking that I could just leave it with 1 set of shims and maybe eventually it’ll eat away at the metal until it’s not touching anymore. Maybe something similar is going on with yours. Maybe the bendix was indeed staying engaged and it finally broke in some way that is now only catching the flexplate in a certain position. Or maybe the different starter mounting caused the starter to contact the flexplate, bending the flexplate, and now it is making contact on each revolution. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just curious.. what engine did you buy that starter for? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I installed some LED bulbs in my map light and front/rear dome light fixtures. I also put wedge style LEDs in my gauge cluster. This is from last night. The camera on my phone was picking up a lot more light than what was visible to my eyes. This is closer to what it really looks like. I couldn’t get an accurate picture of what the fixture itself looks like to the eyes. The camera must pick up a good amount more than the eye. Today my other LEDs came in so I put one 5000k bulb in the passenger map light fixture and left the red on the driver. That way, I have light when I need it but I also have the option to keep my night eyes. For the dome lights I went with 3500k bulbs. I like the warm incandescent filament color temperature but the added brightness is hopefully going to be an upgrade. I don’t know yet because the sun is still up. I am most excited about the gauge cluster. The incandescent bulbs just aren’t bright enough for this new gauge cluster I got from the junkyard. The background color is a metallic grey with micro flakes and the lettering is white so the contrast is pretty poor when driving in the evening or morning and the super dim bulbs literally do nothing until it’s almost completely dark out. Here is the difference as of now. I’ll never lose another burger again! We’ll see what it looks like tonight. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You will need a multimeter and YouTube. One method is to measure the resistance across some pins on the sensor as you slowly open the throttle and if you see spots where the resistance jumps to infinity, zero, or just out of place then it’s bad. Then there is the same test again but this time for voltage and you have to have the sensor plugged in. You have to slide the test probes into the back side of the plug and watch for voltage spikes and drops. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It sounds like your OD solenoid to me. If it happens again, hit your OD off button a bunch and see if it has any effect. If you’re comfortable, you could do a flush yourself with the trans cooling lines. If you need to know how just say so and I’ll post up a step by step. Unless you’ve gone a very very long time with no trans oil change then fresh oil isn’t going to hurt anything. It’ll stop the excessive wear in its tracks though.. However, considering the solenoid may be sticking, you might be in a very badly spent trans oil situation. You need to drain some oil from your transmission pan, take some pictures, and post them up. Soak up the oil in a white paper towel and take some pics.

Throttle position sensor will cause the timing to jump all over the place also. And it can do it with no code thrown too.. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Now it’s kind of sounding like a bent flex plate. Mine was magically bent in a near perfect dish shape but maybe yours is bent in one area and it’s catching the starter on the way by. The puzzling part for me right now is that it only now has started to make such severe contact with the starter, or whatever contact is going on, and has only now become so severe that it would cause a stall. I guess the squealing might have concealed a lot of the noise and maybe there is a newly formed burr on the aluminum part of the starter. Well you’ll know right away if it’s contact with the starter when you remove the starter and the engine turns just fine. I’m interested to know how this turns out. And I got a junk yard trans from a 2002 QX4 with 158k miles. It shifts OK and I expect 50k miles out of it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Is yours mpi or tbi? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

How do you know your timing is off? With a light? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have done some serious double line pulls with those things. I was in mud though and if you’re jammed on a rock or something you might end up breaking them. Also winching and someone jerking on a strap at 15mph are two different things and those things would definitely not hold up to the latter. The points at the back can take some serious force as well. I got stuck in a bottomless mud/sand pit with my spare jammed up against a ledge and a gigantic John Deer tractor that was literally 5 times bigger than my car pulled me out with one of those tow points. It did mangle it badly and we had to beat the hook back out but it didn’t break anything... hmmm... as I’m typing this I am reminded that my car doesn’t sit right when looking from behind... maybe it did break or bend something. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hmmmmm... well one thing is for certain: if the trans is squealing then it’s probably already toast. That said, drive the thing and ignore the squeal completely paying very close attention to the shifting. Is it shifting normally? Do the squealing and clacking go along with anything transmission related, like shift points and overall speed? Or do the sounds follow RPM? Another thing you can do to confirm the bendix isn’t retracting is drive around for a little while and then park it. Crawl underneath and carefully feel the starter. If the bendix stayed engaged it will be SUPER HOT. Like burn you badly almost instantly hot. I know this because I literally just went thru the exact same thing. Except mine was because I bent the flexplate toward the engine by leaving the torque converter bolts in the torque converter while I set the engine and bolted the bellhousing down... that caused me to have to pull the torque converter forward to meet the flexplate and also made the flexplate stay in contact with the starter bendix. Made a hell of a noise. Screeching and squealing and grinding and clacking like crazy. I crawled underneath to pull the starter off and have a look and burned my fingers... Sounds to me like it’s your starter. Also, it ripped my starter a new one.. but it’s still cranking my car today. Haha! So I doubt you’ll have to buy another starter. Oh and having the torque converter pulled forward murdered my transmission... it was a flawless trans that shifted 100% perfect. Shame shame shame... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I put a 2001 QX4 gauge cluster in and when I fired it up I got this: Is this the “you left your burger on the bumper” sensor we 11/98 guys missed out on?? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk