freezerburn

that's anice lookin new rad you've got there.

I have the exact same problem man. My oil pressure also likes to jump around but not as much. I am just living with it lol

Hahaha, i also thought this thread was going to be about Ozzy Osbourne.

When i removed my gastank the 8 bolts or so that hold it and the skidplate up there were very hard to get off. I actually stripped the heads on 2 of them and gave up until i had a friend come over to help. I realize you can only use this trick for seized nuts on the bottom of your vehicle but it got my gastank off so i'll share it. Get your breaker bar,a 4 foot metal pipe that will fit over the end and a long extension for the socket. Insert stubborn nut or bolt-head into socket wrench and manouver floor jack into position so it can push upwards onto the breaker bar forcing it onto the offending hardware. Jack floor jack up as much as you are comfortable with I ended up lifting my vehicle about 6''. Get friend to hold floor jack in place while you walk in the direction you want your bolt to turn. This got every single bolt for my gas-tank off even the ones I thought I stripped.

Maybe it is the voltage regulator for the instrument cluster. That seems to be what is going on with my pathy right now. Drove it on a 2000km round trip with the temp guage, oil pressure guage, and fuel guage on drugs.

Very nice pathy, I can't believe with a body so clean and nice that the frame is rusted out. i have the opposite situation here, my frame is fine only surface rust, but my body was deteriorating badly... still is in some spots lol. good find man

that's a really nice bullbar, i gotta find me some steel and make myself one

i just took a 2000 km round trip with 85w140 in the rear diff and it worked great. i have an 87 pathy with an open diff

I've been up to 130 km/h in 4hi without any complaints from the truck, just a little less power.

WE've got some real nice GEL socket wrenches and sockets here. Love em real heavy duty. Out of all the socket wrenches we have the Gel's still don't have any slop in em. Nothin worse than tryin to work with a half broken socket wrench.... I really have no preference though, if the tool fits and it's solid thats all I need.

My pathy didn't have a rip per-se but it was very rusty at that spot. The spare tire rack was pulling the body apart at that point (very minor but i took it off anyway). There is somewhat of a subframe that the spare tire carrier bolts into and it had come partially detatched from the body. My fix was to remove spare tire rack and bondo/ fiberglass it closed and its doin alright.

Hahahaa, I'm such a pessimist! It runs solidly below centerline on the temp guage. I just took it for a bit of a highway drive and all the air has gotten itself out. Everything is peachy now.

UPDATE: After 1.5 weeks of running without a t-stat and no overheating whatsoever I decided it was time to buy a new T-stat. So, I purchased the new thermostat and thoroughly flushed my engine and rad and cleaned out the overflow tank. Everything was surgical clean. I replaced the thermostat and drove it around and lo and behold the truck overheats EXACTLY like it did before I took it out the first time. THIS is with a brand new 170 thermostat. I bought the 170 just in case i tow some heavy loads on my trailer. SO, the problem is not the thermostat but something else. **When I drained the soapy water mixture after 1.5 weeks of driving without a t-stat it was kinda brownish, same colour as the gunk i took out of my overflow tank but there was no visible oil in the mixture** **After driving around a bit the pipe leading to the thermostat was cool to the touch and so was the lower rad hose** Water pump maybe?

Hahaha yes the dreaded number 6! I think they all suck to change but yea that one is the worst. Try getting the inside bolt in when you're changing the thermostat and tell me how that goes lol. As for me I'm running bosch copper's and they work alright.

I like your wheel man! that would look really out of place in my 87 though haha. Maybe a nice black and steel one thats a little smaller than stock, I like lots of knee room. As for rain its doin it here too its been great, not muddy enough for me though need another day or two to really test out the pathy.

Maybe your engine mount bushings are shot.

awesome thanks man. I actually took it for a bit of a highway drive and it was in 4hi last nite. Oh well, i didn't notice until I got into the parking lot anyway.

Ok guys, i'm new to having 4wd and I have a question regarding my machine. I recently had my truck in 4 Lo and was about to climb a steep hill. I put it in 4lo while still on the pavement and had to turn around in order to get onto the hill. As I was turning around I noticed my front tires seemed to squawk a little and the truck would come to a stop without the brakes even while in neutral. It was like there was a lot of drag coming from the front axle being engaged as I do not have this slowing down problem in 2hi. I wheeled it around quite a bit in 4lo earlier on some nice trails and didn't notice the sqawking probably because I was on mud and grass. Anyway is there something wrong here or is it a normal thing. I would think that the vehicle should still be able to coast freely in neutral or at least more freely than it was while 4wd is engaged. ** it also has this trouble turning and slowing down problem in 4hi **

I don't have a button but my 87 starts in gear anyway! Thought I'd see what kinda torque the starter had and therw it in 2nd and wham im running and on my way it was awesome.

Yeah it really wasn't that bad only took me a couple of hours to do. Now i've got to figure something out about my four wheel drive actin funny.....

EHH FIXED IT!!!!!!!!! It was simply the thermostat. When I took it off I found a sick buildup of some kind of gunky brownish slurry right in front of the t-stat in the housing. I removed the thermostat and reinstalled everything minus the t-stat and fan shroud and the thing won't go over 1/4 temperature on the guage. I flushed the rad while I had it out and found a similar brownish residue when I hosed it. I also cleaned out my surge tank which had the same brown pudding residue in it. Right now I'm going to run it for the next week or so minus thermostat with a bit of laundry detergent flowing through there with just plain old water and get it right clean then i'll buy the 30.00 thermostat and redo everything. That sucker is an absolute bastard to get out holy crap. Had to remove the shroud, fan, and radiator just to get enough room for a socket wrench. Not to mention I had to use a u-joint extension for that bolt thats closest to the block.... I really don't want to have to do that again. Getting that housing back on was the absolute worst part of everything though. Looks like i'll be doin it again next week when i get the new thermostat anyway though... Thanks for the help guys, now she runs like a swiss.... i mean japanese watch hehe.

yup had all the plugs out when i tested her. I'm pretty confident I was consistent with all the plugs but maybe i'll give it a retest this weekend. It likes to put a little bit of black smoke out when you rev it in neutral if that helps any. I know thats a sign of a rich mixture but I don't think that has anything to do with overheating. The thing runs like a champ aside from the overheating and a mild hesitation that I think might just be the way this engine is. I'm going to clean out the throttle body to see if that has anything to do with it but I doubt it. Holy crap i'm still awake and I have to be up in 5 hours..... Damnit, this pathfinder totally destroy s my sleep schedule I just want to make it perfect. *what do you think about the water pump going* Sometimes it can sit there and idle for any length of time without that needle shooting up. It just shoots up and the strangest times. im going to bed

Yeah it was kind of hard to screw on the tester 100% tight due to it having a rubber hose going to the fitting and having to tighten it with that hose alone. (toughest spark plugs i've ever removed) Initially we got 60 on the problem cylinder but I knew I hadn't screwed it on very well (the threads were a little bit crummy on that one I suppose but I finally really gave'r and got it down as much as the other cylinders. On the second attempt we got 80. We cranked the engine over until the reading peaked on the tester and that was it. (about 3-4 times) My belts are 100% My dad was saying that it might be the t-stat too so I'll remove it this weekend and see what happens. Next stop water pump. Thanks for the great reply man.

SO I have been having an overheating problem since a few days after I started drivin my new pathy. **** just went for a drive and I realized something, often times an overheat session will occur after just a short spurt of heavy throttle application **** When I changed my oil about a week ago (this was probably 1 week after the problem started I did not notice anything unusual about the dirty oil I drained There was also gunk of a pudding like consistency in the overflow tank which i did a half ass job of cleaning out with my garden hose. I flushed the cooling system repeatedly as soon as my problem began. a compression test revealed: 5 110 6 105 3 102 4 100 1 100 2 80 I think that hammering the throttle down would be causing higher pressures thus forcing exhaust gases into the cooling system causing some temporary vapor lock conditions which is resulting in my overheating problem which mysteriously goes away shortly after it starts. *(average 1-2 minutes duration sometimes more)* Sometimes I can gun it without causing an overheat though but it pretty much does this every time I drive it. anybody have any insight on this? I for one am just about sure its the head gasket. I'm going to empty out my cooling system again tomorrow and see what the liquid looks like and maybe that can further help any diagnosis. I'd love to hear your opinions guys.

Hey guys, I've been lurking around this forum since I bought my pathfinder about 2 months ago and I thought its about time i make some noise. Ok, so I've taken out my cat and fabbed up a replacement pipe complete with flanges that bolts up exactly where the cat used to be. Ok so I need to seal these pipes together better. I don't know if I want to use stock gaskets is there a material I can buy maybe 1/16 inch thick that I could cut and slam in there to make it tight? Btw I made my own flanges so theyre not exactly perfect hence my need for 1/16 inch gaskets lol. Im also having an intermittent overheating problem it comes and goes away just as quickly but I was kind of concerned. I read just about every thread on ehre about overheating and IM still lost. I can't find this burping bolt ont he back of the block though I haven't looked tooo hard yet. I took it for a looong ride today in all kinds of different situations *(highway, offroad, traffic)* and it stayed solid in the middle of the heat range so im completely baffled. I will post a new thread about this later on. SO anyway nice to be a part of this community now and I hope y'all can teach me some things about my pathy. If anybody needs tips on gastank removal and patching I am quite up to snuff on 87 pathfinders lol.