AlekAuto

When I say "no brakes", I don't mean a spongey pedal. I don't mean you have to bottom out the pedal to get braking power. I mean it has NO brakes. 0. It's like the brake pedal is attached to thin air. Brake light is on. This leads me to believe possibly air got into the ABS module? You can build up some, extremely minimal pressure with the engine off. Like, "I definitely wouldn't drive this" minimal pressure, and it loses that pressure if you keep it depressed until you're at the floor. And then once the engine is on, any semblance of resistance in the pedal instantly goes away. Master cylinder? Worked absolutely fine when it was parked. Vehicle sat for a few months, I changed the pads and rotors in the front, and on the passenger side, I didn't crack the bleeder before compressing the caliper piston because I'm an impatient bastard who didn't wanna get up to grab the brake bleeding bottle. I didn't perform a fluid flush after this, and I plan on doing so on Monday, but the situation in which not doing the flush when using the bleeder bottle on one single caliper and topping off the brake fluid could result in NO brake pedal whatsoever is strange and esoteric to me. No leaks, fluid level never changes. I should also note, I recently changed the valve covers out, as well. Maybe something I forgot to reconnect when doing that job? You have to take the intake manifold off. I can't imagine what could cause NO brake functionality, seeing as the only thing I could imagine forgetting to reconnect is the brake booster, and that'd result in a hard brake pedal. Everything I know can cause these issues causes a spongey pedal or extreme travel, NO brake pedal while having a full master cylinder reservoir is unheard of for me. Basically makes it impossible to diagnose when the symptom is "nothing happens for no apparent reason". Except I guess the behavior when the engine is off feels kind of like how a bad master cylinder feels? Rear drums needing to be re-adjusted? Wheel cylinders leaking? Master cylinder's completely fskced? Basically my flowchart right now is: Do the full fluid flush, starting from the proportioning valve and moving up to the front driver side Redo the shoes/wheel cylinders if it's still a problem Replace the master cylinder, and if I can see a leak from the back of the master cylinder, replace the brake booster as well. After that, I'm out of ideas. I'd like to hear if anyone has any better ideas than me or ways I can actually properly troubleshoot it before I just start throwing the parts cannon at it, though. Could there bed something wrong with the pedal itself? That seems difficult to imagine, seeing as you can build some resistance when the engine is off. Thank you for any of your ideas.

A user on the NICO Club forum actually found the service manual for these valve covers, and it turns out, I was right when I said it was a good idea to use the Maxima torque spec in two steps technique, but I was wrong about the torque pattern. Here's the official torque pattern: That's right, they hid it in the timing chain portion of the service manual! fskcin Nissan. Even more in my defense than just the weird placement, there's a good chance there's a typo right there, since all other versions of these instructions tell you to torque it to 26in/ibs, and this tells you to torque it to 78in/ibs twice in a row. There's a chance it's just an extremely poorly written way of telling you to do the right one and then the left one, but I feel like this time Occam's razor says a typo is more likely. Here's the lesson: Don't reuse valve cover bolts on the aluminum valve covers! The used ones have just enough corrosion on them to cause a bit of extra friction, which makes them reach the torque spec early compared to the new ones. I gave one side new bolts, reused the bolts from the donor Pathfinder for the aluminum valve covers on the other side, and guess what? The side with the new bolts is sealing great, and the side with the reused bolts isn't. This is especially apt, since the side that got the new bolts was actually the side that wasn't sitting entirely flat when I first installed it, so if all things were even, that'd be the side you'd expect to leak. The scientific method at work! See? I'm not just a lunatic doing everything wrong on a valve cover job, I'm offering valuable information to future generations of R50 owners

Well, I got a lot of it figured out. I checked the coolant lines that run along the back of the engine, nothing. I made sure the battery was charged, replaced the crankshaft position sensor, and put 5 gallons of 91 octane with some fuel system cleaner, then finally reconnected the battery with the car closed so I could unlock it with the key before entering to prevent the security lockout. So, after all that, it fired RIGHT up like nothing was ever wrong. However, it ran rough, and I noticed the valve covers I just installed were leaking. Badly. Like, not drip-drip leaking, but almost like they weren't sealing at all leaking. Smoke was coming out and everything. I torque'd the valve covers to around 40in/ibs 'cause I couldn't get any actual information on what the real torque spec is (the manual says literally nothing on valve covers), and some guy online said it was "literally like 20in/ibs", and another guy said "no more than what you'd do with a screwdriver". Getting info on the torque spec of the valve cover bolts is hard enough, but getting information on the torque spec of SPECIFICALLY the aluminum ones from 2001 is nearly impossible. I did find, however, that the Nissan Maxima, which doesn't share the same valve covers but is the only vehicle with the same valve cover bolts, does have the valve cover torque spec in the service manual. I wish they'd stop hiding these things. It says to tighten the valve covers in two stages, once to 26in/ibs, and again to 82in/ibs. That's double what I torque'd it to. So, I'm gonna go in and tighten these down to the Maxima torque spec, see if that helps at all. Is it a bad idea/overkill to get these milled to make sure they're flat while I'm already taking everything off again? I've already started taking the intake manifold off, so I'm gonna replace that thermostat while I'm down there. God knows I don't need more potential failure points. Once I've finally finished all this, I'm gonna have stumbled my way into being the Nissan VQ Valve Cover Expert. My video on the subject is gonna include all the potential pitfalls one might fall into doing what would be a simple 30 minute job on any other engine, simply because I fell into every one of them. If anyone has better information, I'd love to hear it. Thanks.

Some guy on the NICO forum said they were actually just standard M6-1.0 bolts, and he ended up being right; turns out, I had 8 of them in my toolbox this entire time and just didn't know what they were until someone told me I was looking for the wrong thing. For any future-people who're finding this post having the same strange issue as me, the concrete answer is M6-1.0x30mm with 10mm heads. Technically, you could probably get away with something slightly different, like ones with 6mm heads, but on something like valve cover bolts, it's best to match the original as closely as possible to avoid any issues (ex. clamping force being ever so slightly different with a different diameter bolt). It was actually somewhat difficult to track all of these bolts down. I ended up using AutoZone NeedaPart bolts, not the best in the world, but a hell of a lot better than the "mostly correct" Menards and Home Depot offerings. Home Depot was out of them, Menards only had ones with 6mm heads, even Fastenal doesn't stock them. Turns out, M6-1.0x30mm with a 10mm head is actually really rare. No wonder Nissan stopped making them, this must be the only thing they ever got used for.

Update: I decided it'd be better not to have this looming over my head while I'm trying to sleep, so I undid the oil pan bolt and the oil was clean the whole way down. The oil pan is completely empty, with the bolt removed, and 5qts of the most lightly used oil ever sitting in a jug in my garage, and the coolant is still dripping from the oil pan the same way it was before. This is not the oil pan gasket leaking coolant that's somehow defying physics by sitting on top of the oil. So, wherever this coolant is coming from, it doesn't seem to be the worst-case-scenario. Tomorrow, I'm gonna try the other troubleshooting steps I mentioned; making sure it's not the security system, replacing the crankshaft position sensor, and putting a few gallons of 91 in it to dilute the fuel. Once again, if anyone else has ideas, especially about where the hell this coolant is coming from (this seems like a mighty large leak if I can watch it drip in real-time like this), then that'd really make my day a whole lot easier. Thank you. I love that you can tell my moods from these images lol

Please for the love of God let someone know what's going on here I just finished doing valve cover gaskets, getting new spark plugs, new ignition coils, new radiator, suspension rebuild, I really treated her right. I even turned the crankshaft by hand before trying to start it. I go to start her up, she'll crank for a moment like she has a low battery, then suddenly start clicking. When I check the battery voltage, it's around 11.5v. I tried again with a battery that was around 12.5, and it cranks longer, but still goes into the clicking thing. The fuel gauge drops to the minimum whenever I'm cranking, then goes back to a quarter tank. Mind you, that quarter tank is probably half a year old, and it wasn't very high quality gas to begin with. All the lights flash as you'd expect from a dead battery, but once again, battery isn't dead. My initial thoughts were either a security lockout, since I plugged the battery in with the key in the ignition, or the crankshaft position sensor, since I had a code for that and I had the replacement lying around but hadn't actually installed it yet. When I crawled under to double check where the crankshaft position sensor is, because I had an existing code for that, I noticed there was something dripping from the oil pan. I thought "Oh, guess the valve covers weren't the only leak", but to my shock, it was coolant dripping from the oil pan, not oil. I immediately grabbed a wrench and undid the oil pan bolt, only to find nice, clean oil. Which unfortunately doesn't ease my mind much, since the coolant is also completely clean and fresh looking, so that doesn't exactly sate the part of my brain that worries there's a layer of coolant just sitting on top of the oil in the pan. But why would that literally ever be the case? Every time I've seen oil and coolant separated in the oil pan, the coolant is the bottom layer. Dipstick is just clean oil, too. The car hasn't even actually started yet. How could cranking it for a couple minutes tops possibly dump coolant into the oil pan? Why would it be so clean and not milkshaked at all if the motor spun while it was cranking? Is it a cracked block, or is the coolant coming from somewhere else, like the heater core hoses or something, and it's just dripping in the scariest possible place? This thing was completely fine when I parked it, I parked it over a wheel bearing and decided to give it the full treatment before putting it back in service. What could possibly be causing this problem? I have my own list of troubleshooting steps I'm gonna go through. I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and drain all that fresh oil out to see if there's a layer of coolant on top, or, y'know, if coolant settles to the bottom of the pan overnight. If it's not the absolute disaster my brain won't stop circling around, then I'll install a new crankshaft position sensor and go grab some 91 non-ethanol gas to dilute the stale gas with. Disconnect the battery for a few minutes, make sure the truck is closed and locked up, then reconnect the battery and unlock it with the key to minimize the chance of a security lockout After that, uhhhhh kind of out of ideas other than "Time to start tearing it apart and looking for anything that might be keeping it from starting". Yes, I probably should have done those things before posting, but I've been working for like 12 straight hours just to get to the finish line and have a panic attack. I just spent my last like 4 paychecks on this thing and was really relying on it during a move. If it's the worst case scenario, I have absolutely no idea what I'm gonna do. So, if anyone has any ideas other than what's already been listed, reassurance that I'm on the right track, or ESPECIALLY if anyone knows where the hell that coolant could possibly be coming from, please let me know. Thanks for reading my memoir. Here's some pics of the coolant dripping and the clean oil. Yes, I'm aware the oil pan should be replaced because of the rust, but I mean, c'mon, that's not gonna magically make coolant appear.

Hey, everyone. New to the forum. I'm currently recording a video that goes through everything you need to know to swap the 2002 plastic valve covers for some 2001 aluminum ones. It's a bit less straightforward than you'd initially expect, so I wanna be able to get into all the details. I've got basically everything down; the spark plug seals, the different ignition coils, all that good jazz, but there's one major issue I've run into: the valve cover bolts are different. The 2002 model doesn't use grommets, while the 2001 model does. The 2002 bolts don't fit into the 2001 grommets. Nissan calls these grommets "washers", and they're part number 13268AD200 . However, what I can't seem to track down is the actual valve cover bolts themselves. You'd think that'd be fairly easy to find, but I can't find them anywhere. I think they're part number 13224AD200 , but I'll be honest, I'm not even 100% certain what I'm looking for. Are they just skinnier versions of the 2002 bolts, or are they normal bolts that don't have a step up in size, like Toyota valve cover bolts? Could I find bolts with the same thread pitch and get 'em from Home Depot, or am I gonna have to track down the actual original bolts? Given that they're aluminum, I'm a lot more worried about them stretching or cracking if I just skip the grommets entirely. Anything that comes with grommets should use the grommets. Any help on how to track these down, what substitutes can be used, or just a picture of what the 2001 bolts even look like would be great. Thank you.