chrisfromthelc

And just like that, I'm rolling on into the sunset with the Pathfinder. My young BIL moved to AZ to get out of a bad housing situation and start over here, and was in need of a vehicle. Since the Pathfinder is still solid (I drive it about half the time and my F150 about half the time), I decided to put the halt on building it out and sell it to him for "cost" (basically just what I paid plus the cost of some maintenance/repairs I made on it). We'll do the timing belt in a couple of weeks, but I think my next rig will likely be a Jeep WJ. I got a bit trigger happy on the Pathfinder since it was such a steal, but after having it a while, I've decided that a WJ fits more of what I want to do with my rig. I'll be popping in on occasion, since the BIL will want to make his own upgrades, and I'll likely be the one helping him with those.

12 volts already is at the bulb, so any wiring you add would need to be the ground, not 12V. The switches at the light itself switch the ground. Very important to get that part right. I'd have to pull one of the actual lights themselves, but it might be possible to tie into the switch with your new switch wire without needing to diode-separate them. If you tie into the wiring outboard of the switch, you'll most likely need the diode to isolate the ground signal.

Yeah, I'm also interested in this. I don't have controls on my steering wheel, so that would be a pretty nice upgrade.

Yeah, actually, that's a good point. It looks like the alarm system is tapping right after the door switches (didn't think about that initially), so that should trigger the "open door" dash light. This may require more extra wire running than would make it worth it. Looking at the schematics again, I think you'd have to catch each light, instead of just one easy location like I thought at first. It looks like there's no central ground to hit except for the door switches themselves.

So, the door switches are grounding switches. You can apply ground to the switch, and it should power the lights up. Any of the door switches would work. If you want to double check wire colors, it's page EL-81 in the 1997 FSM, but you can just pull the switch and look at the wire color there as well. I'd probably just pick up the front driver door switch wire with a t-tap, and ground on the opposite side of the switch with a 2 conductor wire. Run that back up to the dash where you want to put the switch. When you hook it up to your switch, you're basically bypassing the driver door switch. That's the simple implementation of it. I would maybe also think about using a rely powered off the 12v ignition feed to provide a failsafe. Make it so that the ground side of your light switch is disconnected when the vehicle is off. That way, you can't accidentally flip the switch on and leave it on all day/night, running the battery down. When the vehicle's off, the switch is dead.

So, if one were to replace the radiator for whatever reason, it would make sense to bypass transmission lines then, or even go with a separate cooler at that point? I don't have any leaks on mine currently, but there are some suspect looking spots on the fins from a previous accident. I was thinking about replacing it at some point before it became a problem.

@RainGoat I had been thinking about something like this, but for holding a solar panel that could slide out over the windshield/hood when parked while camping. I didn't realize there was a product out there already, but this definitely gives me more ideas...

Yeah, I would definitely go down the balance path. I had a 55-65MPH wobble that I could not fix. No bad bushings left to change, but it couldn't have been balance because it was just done. I took it to the tire shop and got it road force balanced, and the wobble is pretty much eradicated. One of the tires wasn't set on the wheel properly and it had too much weight trying to balance _that_ issue out.

When I got my Pathfinder a bit over a month ago, the previous owner had bathed it in some sort of deoderizer/scent, obviously to cover up smoking smells in it. While the vehicle was pretty clean, a close look (under the driver's seat, for example) revealed cigarette ash. Now, a smoker's vehicle isn't an automatic disqualification for me. I don't smoke (and definitely not in vehicles), and I've always had good luck getting the smell out with a very thorough cleaning and usually a fabric shampoo (seats and carpet). This one, however, was the worst by far. The smell wasn't actually even the smoke that was bothersome; it was the scent used to cover up the smoke smell. I have used every trick in the book on this. Super deep cleaning; even cleaning A/C ducting, pulling dash, interior , and door panels, shampooing the carpet and seats, all manners of neutral deodorizers, baking soda, vinegar,...when I say everything, I mean everything. No matter what I did, it still smelled like this stupid Axe-body-spray-like air freshener once it heated up again from the sun. My wife wouldn't even ride in it because it aggravated her allergies so much. I finally broke down and bought an ozone generator from Amazon a couple of days ago. It was cheap enough if it actually worked, and with Prime, it would get delivered next-day. I got it in, set it up on the vehicle, and ran it for the recommended 30 minutes. Then, I left the vehicle open with a fan to ventilate it for about an hour. I went to pick up some things from the store, came back, and once the hour for venting was up, I went to smell the truck interior. It smelled like....nothing. It had no scent whatsoever, even in the rear seat backs where it was undoubtedly the most potent previously (I guess that's where they set off the scent bomb at). I closed it up and let it sit out in the hot sun all afternoon (which is guaranteed to heat up whatever smell you have and bring it to the forefront). After 6-7 hours of baking in the Arizona sun, I opened the door again expecting the scent to be back at leas faintly, and still...nothing. I was skeptical that ozone would really be that effective, but I'm now a believer. If you've been battling smells in the interior, the small cost to eliminate them are worth it.

Not all do. My 97 Pathfinder doesn't.

Ah, that sucks. Maybe I'll look into a different solution..that's pretty far down the list for now, though. I'd like to have something that I could tie in data from add-on sensors (like trans temps).

I think long term I'll go with Scan-Guage..the BT dongle works for what I need for right now (quick code checking/resetting/etc). Do you happen to know if it can read external add-on sensors?

I think we'd be fooling ourselves to think that any one location is "central enough" for everyone to have a chance at making it. Even the most central location would be really too far for anyone to want to drive, I'd think. I know that even in a perfectly running vehicle, some place like ID or OR would just be too far (20 hours to Portland, OR, as a quick search reveals). It might make more sense to break it up regionally. That would give more people a chance to gather in central locations to smaller areas, rather than it just being luck of the vote as to where something happens. There's a whole eastern half of the country that is not represented by the poll; supposedly Pathfinders were sold there, too. Having been involved in planning wide-scale things like this in the past, it really does just work better to have smaller, regional events than expect everyone to agree on a singular location that's not accessible for 95% (or more) of the hopeful participants.

I have a 1997, and that list looks pretty close, if not spot on. I bought this adapter from Amazon, and it works fine. I use it with Torque. I have not gotten Nissan Data Scan II to work with it, though, but that might be due to it being such a cheap one...I need to pick up one of their recommended ones and try it.

If it were here in AZ or even SoCal, I would probably try to make it, but needing to travel more than 5-6 hours or so would probably keep me from being able to do. (that's assuming I get this heap up and running the way it should in time)

I pretty much don't trust Autozone's testing these days. I've had them test multiple batteries/alternators lately that were actually bad that they called good. A bad battery will kill an alternator for sure. I had that happen recently after Autozone told me that the battery was fine. I took it elsewhere after the alternator died, and sure enough the battery had bad cells in it. My guess is that you had a bad battery or alternator in the beginning, and every time you replaced one that died completely, the "working" older one degraded the replacement until it died. I would take your alternator to a local rebuilder to get an expert to test it.

I planned to get tint regardless. It would help slightly, but even in one of my other well-tinted vehicles, it's still no match for summer AZ sun. On an average summer day, it's nothing for me to measure 160+ degrees inside the cabin of that vehicle. I know the system is working as designed. The problem is that it just isn't designed to handle the temps we see here in AZ. The majority of my driving is low speed, around town, driving, so it's something I'm very motivated to fix.

@hawairish I see I'm not the only one having issues with the AZ heat. Did you ever do anything (auxiliary fan?), or are you just still suffering with it? I had to drive through stop and go traffic the other day, and the A/C just could not keep up. Everything checks out fine on the system otherwise. FWIW, my much newer 2010 F150 has the same exact issue when it hits about 108-109 here. When it's getting airflow (highway driving or even 45MPH roads/streets), it's great. It's just the no airflow in stopped traffic that is killer.

Measuring and "it should fit" are fine, but there are no substitutions for first hand knowledge and actual pictures of one mounted.

I came across a set of NRC9449s on eBay from Lucky 8 for a crazy good deal (less than $80 shipped for the pair), so I got them. Too bad I can't put them in for quite a while, but I didn't think I'd come across that deal again any time in the near future.

Has anyone seen this particular roof top tent on an R50? I know some others have other tents, but I'm asking about this one in particular since it's a larger size than most of the ones out there. I've seen pictures of it on Cherokee XJs, and while it's large, it doesn't look too big for the vehicle to handle. I'm just not sure if that's a good comparison to the R50 roof, area-wise.

Yeah, I think I'll set up with a standard screw-on antenna base, and get something like this that's easily replace if stolen/lost/broken.

A quick eBay search reveals one, but you could probably do a bit of digging searching for ecu vs ecm and come up with more.

I'm pretty sure your build thread is where I got the idea from! I might just end up ordering a 1/2" and 1" spacers for the front...start with the 1/2" and see where it sits after a while. I'll be replacing everything (shocks, springs, etc) at once, so I may not even have to go 1". I'm also concerned with flexing the CV axles too much, so starting slow with the 1/2" might be the way to go.

An update to this...it worked just fine for a few days, and then crapped out again. The tach board was pretty burned from the previous owner trying to fix it, and a trace was broken that I tried bypassing, but I guess it was too far gone. I grabbed another gauge cluster from eBay from another 1997 and will transplant the board over when it arrives.